one another. The whole capital employed, therefore, in such a roundabout foreign trade of consumption, will generally give less encouragement and support to the productive labor of the country, than an equal capital employed in a more direct trade of the same kind.
Whatever be the foreign commodity with which the foreign goods for home consumption are purchased, it can occasion no essential difference either in the nature of the trade, or in the encouragement and support which it can give to the productive labor of the country from which it is carried on. If they are purchased with the gold of Brazil, for example, or with the silver of Peru, this gold and silver, like the tobacco of Virginia, must have been purchased with something that either was the produce of the industry of the country, or that had been purchased with something else that was so. So far, therefore, as the productive labor of the country is concerned, the foreign trade of consumption which is carried on by means of gold and silver, has all the advantages and all the inconveniences of any other equally roundabout foreign trade of consumption, and will replace just as fast or just as slow the capital which is immediately employed in supporting that productive labor. It seems even to have one advantage over any other equally roundabout foreign trade. The transportation of those metals from one place to another, on account of their small bulk and great value, is less expensive than that of almost any other foreign goods of equal value. Their freight is much less, and their insurance not greater; and no goods, besides, are less liable to suffer by the carriage. An equal quantity of foreign goods, therefore, may frequently be purchased with a smaller quantity of the produce of domestic industry, by
