s
impossible to determine what is the proportion which the circulating
money of any country bears to the whole value of the annual produce. It
has been computed by different authors, from a fifth* to a thirtieth of
that value.'

* The real cash or money necessary to carry on the
circulation and barter of a State, is nearly one third part
of all the annual rents of the proprietors of the said
State; that is, one ninth of the whole produce of the land.
Sir William Petty supposes one tenth part of the value of
the whole produce sufficient. Postlethwayt, _voce_, Cash.

In the United States it must be less than in any other part of the
commercial world; because the great mass of their inhabitants being
in responsible circumstances, the great mass of their exchanges in the
country is effected on credit, in their merchant's ledger, who supplies
all their wants through the year, and at the end of it receives the
produce of their farms, or other articles of their industry. It is a
fact, that a farmer, with a revenue of ten thousand dollars a year, may
obtain all his supplies from his merchant, and liquidate them at the end
of the year, by the sale of his produce to him, without the intervention
of a single dollar of cash. This, then, is merely barter, and in this
way of barter a great portion of the annual produce of the United States
is exchanged without the intermediation of cash. We might safely,
then, state our medium at the minimum of one thirtieth. But what is
one thirtieth of the value of the annual produce of the industry of the
United States? Or what is the whole value of the annual produce of the
United States? An able writer and competent judge of the subject, in
1799, on as good grounds as probably could be taken, estimated it, on
the then population of four and a half millions of inhabitants, to
be thirty-seven and a half millions sterling, or one hundred and
sixty-eight and three fourths millions of dollars. See Cooper's
Political Arithmetic, page 47. According to the same estimate, for our
present population it will be three hundred millions of dollars, one
thirtieth of which, Smith's minimum, would be ten millions, and
one fifth, his maximum, would be sixty millions for the quantum of
circulation. But suppose, that, instead of our needing the least
circulating medium of any nation, from the circumstance before
mentioned, we should place ourselves in the middle term of the
calculat