he requires to exchange for various other commodities; money provides him with the machinery by which this can be readily effected. The wheat has simply to be sold for so much money, and with this money a certain amount of the other commodities required can be purchased. But if the use of money did not provide a general medium of exchange, the whole transaction must be conducted by barter; thus, if the individual possessing the wheat required a coat, he would have to discover some one who was willing to exchange the coat he wanted for wheat. Every transaction would under these circumstances be conducted by barter. Commerce thus impeded could never develop, and society never advance beyond its primitive rudeness. But these important functions which money performs, engendered in men's minds the fallacies of the mercantile system. For the value of every commodity being estimated in money, and every commodity also when bought or sold being exchanged for money, men soon began to mistake the symbol for the reality, and nothing was regarded as wealth except money. A nation consequently tested the utility of its commercial transactions with other nations, by ascertaining whether the commerce caused money to flow into the country. The whole commercial policy of a nation was framed with a specific object of encouraging the greatest possible accumulation of the precious metals. No one would now profess adherence to the errors of the mercantile system, but we shall have abundant opportunities of showing that they are still the secret prompters of many a wide-spread fallacy. The consequences of the mercantile system will be further discussed in those chapters which treat of money.
These general remarks upon wealth will enable us at once to proceed to the consideration of the production of wealth, the first great division of political economy.
