Besides the merchants, who circulate among themselves their reciprocal debts and credits, arising from their importation and exportation of goods, there is another set of merchants who deal in exchange; which is the importation and exportation of money and bills. Were there never any balance on the trade of nations, exchangers and brokers would find little employment: reciprocal and equal debts would easily be transacted openly between the parties themselves. No man feigns and dissembles, except when he thinks he has an interest in so doing. But when balances come to be paid, exchange becomes intricate; and merchants are so much employed in particular branches of business, that they are obliged to leave the liquidation of their debts to a particular set of men, who make it turn out to the best advantage to themselves. Whenever a balance is to be paid, that payment costs, as we have seen, an additional expence to those of the place who owe it, over and above the value of the debt. If, therefore, this expence be a loss to the trading man, he must either be repaid this loss by those whom he serves, that is, by the nation; or the trade he carries on will become less profitable. Every one will agree, I believe, that the expence of high exchange upon paying a balance, is a loss to a people, no way to be compensated by the advantages they reap from enriching the few individuals among them, who gain by contriving methods to pay it off: and if an argument is necessary to prove this proposition, it may be drawn from this principle, to wit, whatever renders the profit upon trade precarious or uncertain, is a loss to trade in general: this loss is a consequence of high exchange; and although a profit does result from it upon one branch of trade, the exchange business, yet that cannot compensate the loss upon every other. We may, therefore, here repeat what we have said above, that the more difficulty is found in paying a balance, the greater is the loss to the nation. This being admitted, I shall here enumerate all the difficulties which occur in paying of balances. Most of them have been already mentioned from their relation to subjects already discussed; and could it be supposed, that every reader has retained the whole chain of reasoning already gone through, a repetition in this place would be superfluous: but as that cannot be expected, I shall, in as short and distinct a manner as possible, recapitulate, under four articles, what I hope will be sufficient to refresh the memory upon each of them. 1_mo_, The first difficulty which occurs in paying a balance, is to determine exactly the true and intrinsic value of the metals or coin in which it is to be paid; that is to say, the real par. 2_do_, How to remove the domestic inconveniences which occur in paying with the metals or coin. 3_tio_, How to prevent the price of exchange from operating upon the whole mass of reciprocal payments, instead of affecting only the balance.