Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/401

 ment of their lands a greater stock than they can easily get, to save as much as possible the expense of so costly an instrument of commerce as gold and silver, and rather to employ that part of their surplus produce which would be necessary for purchasing those metals, in purchasing the instruments of trade, the materials of clothing, several parts of household furniture, and the ironwork necessary for building and extending their settlements and plantations; in purchasing, not dead stock, but active and productive stock. The colony governments find it for their interest to supply the people with such a quantity of paper money as is fully sufficient and generally more than sufficient for transacting their domestic business. Some of those governments, that of Pennsylvania particularly, derive a revenue from lending this paper money to their subjects at an interest of so much per cent. Others, like that of Massachusetts Bay, advance upon extraordinary emergencies a paper money of this kind for defraying the public expense, and afterward, when it suits the convenience of the colony, redeem it at the depreciated value to which it gradually falls. In 1747, that colony paid in this manner the greater part of its public debts, with the tenth part of the money for which its bills had been granted. It suits the convenience of the planters to save the expense of employing gold and silver in their domestic transactions; and it suits the convenience of the colony governments to supply them with a medium, which, though attended with some very considerable disadvantages, enables them to save that expense. The redundancy of paper money necessarily banishes gold and