B. This is not Christianity, but it is political economy.
F. Such a doctrine is detestable. But, to continue, I have made you an absolute king. You must not be satisfied with reasoning, you must act. There is no limit to your power. How would you treat this doctrine,--wealth is money?
B. It would be my endeavour to increase, incessantly, among my people the quantity of cash.
F. But there are no mines in your kingdom. How would you set about it? What would you do?
B. I should do nothing: I should merely forbid, on pain of death, that a single crown should leave the country.
F. And if your people should happen to be hungry as well as rich?
B. Never mind. In the system we are discussing, to allow them to export crowns would be to allow them to impoverish themselves.
F. So that, by your own confession, you would force them to act upon a principle equally opposite to that upon which you would yourself act under similar circumstances. Why so?
B. Just because my own hunger touches me, and the hunger of a nation does not touch legislators.
F. Well, I can tell you that your plan would fail, and that no superintendence would be sufficiently vigilant, when the people were hungry, to prevent the crowns from going out and the corn from coming in.