other causes. In the course of this
debate, the honorable member from Pennsylvania[7] has represented the
country as full of every thing but money. But this I take to be a
mistake. The agricultural products, so abundant in Pennsylvania, will
not, he says, sell for money; but they will sell for money as quick as
for any other article which happens to be in demand. They will sell for
money, for example, as easily as for coffee or for tea, at the prices
which properly belong to those articles. The mistake lies in imputing
that to want of money which arises from want of demand. Men do not buy
wheat because they have money, but because they want wheat. To decide
whether money be plenty or not, that is, whether there be a large
portion of capital unemployed or not, when the currency of a country is
metallic, we must look, not only to the prices of commodities, but also
to the rate of interest. A low rate of interest, a facility of obtaining
money on loans, a disposition to invest in permanent stocks, all of
which are proofs that money is plenty, may nevertheless often denote a
state not of the highest prosperity. They may, and often do, show a want
of employment for capital; and the accumulation of specie shows the same
thing. We have no occasion for the precious metals as money, except for
the purposes of circulation, or rather of sustaining a safe paper
circulation. And whenever there is a prospect of a profitable investment
abroad, all the gold and silver, except what these purposes require,
will be exported. For the same reason, if a demand exist abroad for
sugar and coffee, whatever amount of those articles might exist in the
country, beyond the wants of its own consumption, would be sent abroad
to meet that demand.

Besides, Sir, how should it ever occur to anybody, that we should
continue to export gold and silver, if we did not continue to import
them also? If a vessel take our own products to the Havana, or
elsewhere, exchange them for dollars, proceed to China, exchange them
for silks and teas, bring these last to the ports of the Mediterranean,
sell them there for dollars, and return to the United States,--this
would be a voyage resulting in the importation of the precious metals.
But if she had returned from Cuba, and the dollars obtained there had
been shipped direct from the United States to China, the China goods
sold in Holland, and the proceeds brought home in the hemp and iron of
Russia, this would be a voya