Page:Essays on Political Economy (Bastiat).djvu/159

 contrary, you look upon an abundance of useful things, fit for satisfying our wants and our tastes, as true riches, you will see that simultaneous prosperity is possible. Cash serves only to facilitate the transmission of these useful things from one to another, which may be done equally well with an ounce of rare metal like gold, with a pound of more abundant material as silver, or with a hundredweight of still more abundant metal, as copper. According to that, if the French had at their disposal as much again of all these useful things, France would be twice as rich, although the quantity of cash remained the same; but it would not be the same if there were double the cash, for in that case the amount of useful things would not increase.

B. The question to be decided is, whether the presence of a greater number of crowns has not the effect, precisely, of augmenting the sum of useful things?

F. What connexion can there be between these two terms? Food, clothing, houses, fuel, all come from nature and from labour, from more or less skilful labour exerted upon a more or less liberal nature.

B. You are forgetting one great force, which is&mdash;exchange. If you acknowledge that this is a force, as you have admitted that crowns facilitate it, you must also allow that they have an indirect power of production.

F. But I have added, that a small quantity of rare metal facilitates transactions as much as a large