"Then, pray, let us have an example taken from the present order of things."
"With pleasure. In France, owing to the exigencies of climate and habits, cloth is a useful thing. Is the essential thing to make it, or to get it?"
"A very sensible question, truly! In order to have it, you must make it."
"Not necessarily. To have it, some one must make it, that is certain; but it is not at all necessary that the same person or the same country which consumes it should also produce it. You have not made that stuff which clothes you so well. France does not produce the coffee on which our citizens breakfast."
"But I buy my cloth, and France her coffee."
"Exactly so; and with what?"
"With money."
"But neither you nor France produce the material of money."
"We buy it."
"With what?"