As trade depends on money, so the encrease or decrease of the people depends on trade. if they have employment at home, they are kept at home: and if the trade is greater than serves to employ the people, it brings more from places where they are not employ’d. Sir William Petty values a man at 20 years purchase, by that computation a seaman whose wages is forty shil. a month, is valued 480 lib. Scotland has a very inconsiderable trade, because she has but a very small part of the money. there is a little home trade, but the country is not improv’d, nor the product manufactur’d. there is a little of the first branch of foreign trade, and that is carried on with great disadvantage to the people, who pay dearer for most foreign goods, and are worse serv’d, than other nations: if they have any cheaper, ’tis from the lower duty on the import. in Scotland low prices are given for goods bought up to be exported, the merchants profit being great: if a 100 stone of wooll is worth in Holland ten piece of linen cloth, these ten pieces are sold in Scotland for the value of a 180 or 200 stone of such wooll. such goods as do not yield that great profit, are not exported; and these that do, are not exported in any quantity, the merchant’s stock being small. Scotland has no part of the other branches of foreign trade, not being able to trade so cheap as other nations. Some think if interest were lower’d by law, trade would increase, merchants being able to employ more money and trade cheaper. such a law would have many inconveniencies, and it is much to be doubted, whether it would have any good effect; indeed, if lowness of interest were the consequence of a greater quantity of money, the stock apply’d to trade would be greater, and merchants would trade cheaper, from the easiness of borrowing and the lower interest of money, without any inconveniencies attending it. Tho’ interest were at 3 per cent in Holland, and continued at 6 in Scotland; if money were to be had equal to the demands at 6, the advantages we have for trade, which the Dutch have not, would enable us to extend trade to its other branches, notwithstanding the difference of interest. If money in Scotland were equal to the demands at 6 per cent, the Dutch could not trade so cheap in herring; the hinderances of that trade being the consequences of the scarcity of money. the materials for carrying on the fishing are cheaper in Holland, but the cheapness of victualling alone would ballance that. and the dearth of these materials, as of other foreign goods, coming from the scarcity of money; that being remeded, these materials, and other foreign goods that are not the product of Holland, would be sold as cheap in Scotland.