conducted upon fair principles, represents some capital actually in existence, and therefore does not really add to the accumulation or capital of the producers. But it enables men in trade at once to have stock and circulating capital--to use even their houses and shops and manufactories and implements; and to give, at the same time, a security to others upon that fixed capital. This process is, as it were, as if they coined that fixed capital. The credit, which is rendered as secure as possible in all its stages by the accumulating securities of the drawer, acceptor, and endorsers of a bill of exchange, brings capital into activity,--it carries it directly to those channels in which it may be profitably employed,--it conducts it to those channels by a systematic mode of payment for its use, which we call interest, or discount;--and it therefore carries forward accumulation to its highest point of productiveness. If the reader will turn to the passage in our third chapter, where Tanner describes the refusal of the traders to give him credit, he will see how capital, advanced upon credit, sets industry in motion. The Indians had accumulated no store of skins to exchange for the trader's store of guns, ammunition, traps, and blankets. The trader, although he possessed the articles which the Indians wanted, refused to advance them upon the usual credit; and they were consequently as useless to the Indians as if they had remained in a warehouse at Liverpool or Glasgow. When the credit was taken away from the Indians, they could no longer be exchangers. Their own necessities for clothing were too urgent to enable them to turn their attention from that supply to accumulate capital for exchange, after the winter had passed away. They hunted only for themselves. The trader went without his skins, and the Indians without their blankets. Doubtless, the keenness of commercial activity soon saw that this state of things was injurious even to the more powerful party, for the accustomed credit was presently restored to the Indians. It was the only means by which that balance of power could be quickly restored which would enable the parties again to become exchangers. Every exchange presupposes a certain equality in the exchangers; and credit, therefore, from the capitalist to the non-capitalist, must, in many cases, be the first step towards any transaction of mutual profit. If the Indians had adopted the resolution of Tanner, to do without the blankets for the winter, and had substituted the more imperfect clothing of skins,--and if the traders had persevered in their system of refusing credit, that is, of advancing capital,--the exchange of furs must have been suspended, until, by incessant industry, and repeated self-denial, the Indians had become capitalists themselves. They probably, after a long series of laborious accumulations, might have done without the credit--that is, have not consumed the goods which they received before