The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English StyleWebster, Daniel
History
The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster: With an Essay on Daniel Webster as a Master of English Style
Webster, Daniel
Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861; Webster, Daniel, 1782-1852
despatched to other countries, than when coffee and sugar take the same
direction. We often deceive ourselves, by attributing to a scarcity of
money that which is the result of other causes. In the course of this
debate, the honorable member from Pennsylvania[7] has represented the
country as full of every thing but money. But this I take to be a
mistake. The agricultural products, so abundant in Pennsylvania, will
not, he says, sell for money; but they will sell for money as quick as
for any other article which happens to be in demand. They will sell for
money, for example, as easily as for coffee or for tea, at the prices
which properly belong to those articles. The mistake lies in imputing
that to want of money which arises from want of demand. Men do not buy
wheat because they have money, but because they want wheat. To decide
whether money be plenty or not, that is, whether there be a large
portion of capital unemployed or not, when the currency of a country is
metallic, we must look, not only to the prices of commodities, but also
to the rate of interest. A low rate of interest, a facility of obtaining
money on loans, a disposition to invest in permanent stocks, all of
which are proofs that money is plenty, may nevertheless often denote a
state not of the highest prosperity. They may, and often do, show a want
of employment for capital; and the accumulation of specie shows the same
thing. We have no occasion for the precious metals as money, except for
the purposes of circulation, or rather of sustaining a safe paper
circulation. And whenever there is a prospect of a profitable investment
abroad, all the gold and silver, except what these purposes require,
will be exported. For the same reason, if a demand exist abroad for
sugar and coffee, whatever amount of those articles might exist in the
country, beyond the wants of its own consumption, would be sent abroad
to meet that demand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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