Note A2-1-2 — Chapter III

Even the remarkable Florentine pamphlet of 1454 (Jablonowski's prize essay of 1878, app. Beilage, 4) complains of the decrease of industry principally on account of the diminution of money caused thereby. "Wealth is money," says Ernestine, essay of 1530, on the coin, and explains the smaller wealth of the silver-country, Saxony, as compared with England, France, Burgundy and Lombardy, by the greater exportation of commodities of these countries, by means of which they draw the silver of Saxony to themselves. (Roscher, Geschichte, I, 103.) Bornitz, Theorie wie sich der Staat diesen nervus rerum in grösster Menge verschafft: De Nummis (1608), II, 4, 6, 8. A. Serra, Sulle Cause, che possono far abbondare un Regno di Monete (1613), places excess of gold and silver and poverty as diametrical opposites, at the head of his work. Hörnigk, Oesterreich über Alles, wann es nur will (1684), says that it is "better to give two dollars which remain in the country for a commodity, than only one dollar which goes out of the country" (ch. 9). According to Schröder, Fürstliche Schatz- und Rentkammer (1686), the export of commodities is a blessing only "when we can turn them into silver through our neighbors." (LXX, 12.) Even Locke held similar views (Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, 1691. Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money, 1698). On Davenant's inconsistency in this respect, compare Roscher, Geschichte der Englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 110 ff. The quantity of money remaining the same, a country grows neither richer nor poorer (Christ. Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken vom gesellschaftlichen Leben, 1721, § 476). J. Gee, Trade and Navigation of Great Britain considered (1730), bewails the folly of those to whom "money is a commodity like other things, and also think themselves never the poorer for what the nation daily exports," (p. 11). Justi, von Manufacturen und Fabriken (1759 seq.), considers it the principal object of industry simply to prevent the outflow of money. Similarly, Pfeifer, Polizeiwissenschaft (1779), II, 286. Even Frederick the Great considered it "true and obvious" that "a purse out of which money is taken every day, and into which nothing is put in turn, must soon become empty." (Œuvres, VI, 77).