XVI.: Ballance of trade, what.

48. The ultimate ballance of trade is reckoned in money; and it is by this scale that the profits of trade are usually computed. But as money in it self is of no farther use, but merely as a kind of instrument for the circulation of products or commodities; a very beneficial commerce may be carried on between different nations, without any of them having any money to receive at the close of their accounts. Not only the mariners navigating the ships, but also the whole train of artificers employed in the various branches of manufactures, bred and nourished by such a commerce, innumerable brokers, &c. gain all of them a comfortable subsistence: Each country is accommodated, with what it wanted of the products of the other; and the merchants on all sides increase in wealth, though at last their accounts are even as to money, or yet though one pays a ballance in money to the other.

If bullion be the sole or chief end of commerce; why are ships sent to any other parts, besides Cadiz and Lisbon? Silver and gold are in a manner, the peculiar commodities of Spain and Portugal; and in the usual phrase, these nations must pay a ballance upon their trade to all the world. And yet they, as well as the rest of the world, are gainers by trade; they obtain various necessaries and conveniences, which their bullion could not have procured them, whilst they kept it at home; and so long as they keep working the mines, so long probably they will stand in more need of the aid of foreign commerce, than other nations.

A ballance paid in money, doth not necessarily infer a loss by trade: Suppose that last year, Great Britain paid a ballance upon the whole of its foreign trade, of a hundred thousand pounds in specie; but that the national stock of necessaries, in naval stores of various sorts, &c. were increased to double that value: By the usual reckoning, we must have lost the last year, an 100,000l. by our trade; but by mine, we were gainers by it to the net value of that whole sum. But had the above supposed additional stock of foreign commodities, been in wines, brandies, fine linnens, toys, or even jewels, &c. which were to be all consumed at home, I should readily have joined in the common estimation, of our having been losers by our trade. Gold and silver are valuable commodities, because they are neither perishable, nor over bulky; and because the monies of the world are made of these metals, they retain a more even and permanent value, and are more universally coveted than other things. But the Spaniards are an instance, that a nation may be injured, weakened and impoverished, by an over-stock of these metals.

However, any nation having gained upon the whole of its commerce a ballance in bullion, may be truly said to be a gainer for that time of so much as that bullion amounts to; and if it can keep that bullion as a dead stock, either by turning it into plate or by any other method, so as to prevent its getting into trade as money; it may continue to go on increasing in more bullion, which in this case will be a real increase of wealth. For as bullion hath little or no workmanship bestowed upon it, and is every where after it hath once got from the miner’s hands, a kind of dead stock, applied to no use like other commodities; a nation that pays ultimately upon its trade a ballance in bullion, is a loser of so much of its dead stock; and a loser also, if its exports maintained fewer of its own inhabitants, than its imports did of those of foreign nations. Let an increased stock of bullion get out again into trade, and it will soon turn the ballance the other way.