These evils arise from buyers and sellers bearing an unequal relation to the quantity of money in the market. If all sold as much as they bought, and no more, and if the prices of all commodities rose and fell in exact proportion, all exchanges would be affected alike by the increase or diminution of the supply of money. But this is an impossible case; and therefore any action on the currency involves injury to some, while it affords advantage to others. A sudden or excessive contraction of the currency produces some effects exactly the reverse of the effects of a sudden or excessive expansion. It lowers prices and vitiates contracts, to the loss of the opposite contracting party. But the infliction of reverse evils does not compensate for the former infliction. A second action on the currency, though unavoidably following the first, is not a reparation, but a new misfortune. Because the parties who are now enriched are seldom the same that were impoverished by a former change, and _vice versâ_; while all suffer from the injury to commercial credit which follows upon every arbitrary change. All the evils which have arisen from acting arbitrarily upon the currency prove that no such arbitrary action can repair past injuries; while it must inevitably produce further mischief. They do not prove that liability to fluctuation is an inherent quality of paper money, and that a metallic currency is therefore the best circulating medium. They do prove that commercial prosperity depends on the natural laws of demand and supply being allowed to work freely in relation to the circulating medium. The means of securing their full operation remain to be decided upon and tried. -------------- Nations exchange commodities as individuals do, for mutual accommodation, each imparting of its superfluity to obtain that in which it is deficient. The imparting is therefore only a means of obtaining: exportation is the means of obtaining importation—the end for which the traffic is instituted. The importation of money into a country where money is deficient is desirable on the same principle which renders desirable the supply of any deficient commodity. The importation of money into a country where money is not deficient is no more desirable than it is to create an excess of any other commodity. That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is no reason for its being a more desirable article of importation than commodities which are as much wanted in the country which imports it. That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is a reason for its being the commodity fixed upon for measuring the relative amounts of other articles of national interchange.