Page:A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - Johnson (1775).djvu/380

 This, however, is not the only impediment. The, with a vigilance of jealousy which never goes to sleep, always suspect that an despises them for their poverty, and to convince him that they are not less rich than their neighbours, are sure to tell him a price higher than the true. When, two hundred years ago, related so punctiliously, that a hundred hen eggs, new laid, were sold in the Islands for a peny, he supposed that no inference could possibly follow, but that eggs were in great abundance. Posterity has since grown wiser; and having learned, that nominal and real value may differ, they now tell no such stories, lest the foreigner should happen to collect, not that eggs are many, but that pence are few.

Money and wealth have by the use of commercial language been so long confounded, that they are commonly supposed to be the same; and this prejudice has