Labour is cheap in the poor state, such as Poland, Prussia, and the
Ukraine, becuase guineas are few.--"It is not," as Johnson said of the
Highlands, "that eggs are many, but that pence are few." Commercial
transactions being scanty, and the want of a circulating medium
inconsiderable, it exists to a very limited extent in the country. People
do not need a large circulating medium, therefore they do not buy it; they
are poor, therefore they cannot. In the opulent and highly advanced
community, on the other hand, the reverse of all this takes place.
Transactions are so frequent, the necessities of commerce so extensive,
that a large circulating medium is soon felt to be indispensable. In
addition to a considerable amount of specie, the aid of bank-notes, public
and private, of Government securities and exchequer bills, and of private
bills to an immense ammount, bcomes necessary. McCulloch calculates the
circulating medium of Great Britain, including paper and gold, at
L.72,000,000. The bills in circulation are probably in amount nearly as
much more. A hundred and forty, or a hundred and fifty millions, between
specie, bank-notes, exchequer bills, Government securities, on which
advances are made, and private bills, constitute the ordinary circulating
medium of twenty-seven millions in the British empire. The total
circulation of Russia, with sixty millions of inhabitants, is not forty
millions sterling. The effect of this difference is prodigions. It is no
wonder, whten it is taken into account, that wages are 5-1/2d. or 6d.
a-day in Poland or the Ukraine, and 2s. or 2s. 6d. a-day in England.
The clearest proof that this is the great cause of the superior cost of
raising subsistence in the old than the young state, is afforded by the
different value which money bears in different parts of the _same_
community. Ask any housekeeper what is the difference between the expense
of living in London, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, and he will answer, that
L.1500 a-year in Edingburgh, or L.750 in Aberdeen. Yet these different
places are all situated in the same community, and their inhabitants pay
the same public taxes, and very nearly the same of local ones. It is the
vast results arising from the concentration of wealth and expediture in
one place, compared with its abstraction from others, which occasions the
difference. But if this effect is conspicuous, and matter of daily
observation, in different parts of the same compact and moderately sized
country, how much more must it obtain in regard to different countries,
situated in different latitudes and politcal circumstances, and in
different stages of wealth, civilization, and commercial opulence? Between
England for example, and Poland or the Ukraine? The difference is there
important and durable. Wheat can be raised with as good a profit to the
cultivator for sixteen shillings per quarter in Poland, as for forty-eight
shillings in England or Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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