If the proprietor would give it a value in land, computing after this manner: an acre of land pays number 100, at 20 years purchase worth number 2000. and dispone the property of land for paper at that value; who would not be satisfied to receive or contract for that money, since it not only bought the product, but the property of land at a reasonable price?
Money is not the value for which goods are exchanged, but the value by which they are exchanged: the use of money is to buy goods, and silver while money is of no other use.
Tho’ silver were our product, yet it is not so proper to be made money as land. land is what produces every thing, silver is only the product. land does not increase or decrease in quantity, silver or any other product may. so land is more certain in its value than silver, or any other goods.
Land is capable of improvement, and the demand for it may be greater; so it may be more valuable. silver cannot be suppos’d to be apply’d to any other uses, than it is now apply’d to; or that the demand will encrease more than the quantity.
Land cannot lose any of its uses, so will not be less valuable; silver may lose the use of money it is now apply’d to, so be reduc’d to its value as a metal.
It may likewise lose a part of its uses as a metal, these uses being supply’d by other goods: so loses a part of its value as a metal. but nothing can supply the uses of land.
Land may be convey’d by paper, and thereby has the other qualities necessary in money, in a greater degree than silver.
Land has other qualities fitting it for the use of money, that silver has not.
Land apply’d to the use of money, does not lose any of the other uses it is apply’d to: silver cannot serve the use of money, and any of its other uses as a metal.
Trade and money depend mutually on one another; when trade decays, money lessens; and when money lessens, trade decays. power and wealth consists in numbers of people, and magazines of home and foreign goods; these depend on trade, and trade on money. so while trade and money may be effected directly and consequentially; that which is hurtful to either, must be so to both, power and wealth will be precarious.