remains the same, it is the same thing as if the quantity of money had been increased;” and vice versa.... “Similar changes are produced by any alteration in the rapidity of circulation.... An increase in the number of these purchases has the same effect as an increase in the quantity of money; a diminution the reverse.... If there is any portion of the annual produce which is not exchanged at all, as what is consumed by the producer; or which is not exchanged for money; that is not taken into the account, because what is not exchanged for money is in the same state with respect to the money, as if it did not exist.... Whenever the coining of money ... is free, its quantity is regulated by the value of the metal.... Gold and silver are in reality commodities.... It is cost of production ... which determines the value of these, as of other ordinary productions.”[150] The whole wisdom of Mill resolves itself into a series of arbitrary and absurd assumptions. He wishes to prove that the price of commodities or the value of money is determined by “the total quantity of the money in any country.” _Assuming_ that the quantity and the exchange value of the commodities in circulation remain unchanged and that the same be true of the rapidity of circulation and of the value of precious metals as determined by the cost of production, and _assuming_ at the same time that the quantity of the metallic currency increases or decreases in proportion to the quantity of money _existing_ in a country, it becomes really “evident” that what was to have been proven has been assumed. Mill falls, moreover, into the same error as Hume by assuming that use-values and not commodities with a given exchange value are in circulation, and that vitiates his statement, even if we grant all of his “assumptions.” The rapidity of circulation may remain the same; this may also be true of the value of the precious metals and of the _quantity_ of commodities in circulation; and yet a change in the exchange value of the latter may require now a larger and now a smaller quantity of money for their circulation. Mill sees that a part of the money in a country is in circulation, while another is idle. With the aid of a most absurd average calculation he _assumes_ that, although it really appears to be different, yet all the gold in a country does circulate. Assuming that ten million silver thalers circulate in a country twice a year, there could be twenty million such coins in circulation, if each circulated but once. And if the entire quantity of silver to be found in a country in any form amounts to one hundred million thalers, it may be supposed that the entire one hundred million can enter circulation, if each piece of money should circulate once in five years. One could as well assume that all the money of the world circulate in Hempstead, but that each piece of money instead of being employed three times a year, is employed once in 3,000,000 years.