Page:Mun - England's treasure by forraign trade.djvu/74

 them, do thereby make advantage to themselves in taking the same at an undervalue.

And contrariwise, when here is scarcity of mony to be delivered for Amsterdam, the deliverer will make the same advantage by overvaluing our money which he delivereth. And thus we see that as plenty or scarcity of mony in a Common-wealth doth make all things dear or good cheap: so in the course of exchanges it hath ever a contrary working; wherefore in the next place it is fit to set down the true causes of this effect.

As plenty or scarcity of mony do make the price of the exchange high or low, so the over or under ballance of our trade doth effectually cause the plenty or scarcity of mony. And here we must understand, that the ballance of our trade is either General or Particular. The General is, when all our yearly traffique is jointly valued, as I have formerly shewed; the particular is when our trade to Italy, France, Turkey, Spain and other Countreys are severally considered: and by this latter course we shall perfectly find out the places where our mony is under or overvalued in Exchange: For although our general exportations of wares may be yearly more in value that that which is imported: whereby the difference is made good to us in so much treasure; nervertheless the particular trades do work diversly. For peradventure the Low Countreys may bring us more in value than we sell them, which if it be so, then do the Low Countrey Merchants not only carry away our treasure to ballance the accompt between