flax, hemp, rice, hides, sheep's wool, wax, corn, &c."[1] If those other nations, however, got their money's worth for their money, which no doubt they did, they were quite as well off as the English, who of course got no more than the worth of their produce or manufactures. It might be as great an accommodation to the Venetians, Hollanders, &c. to have the Turks to take off their gold and silver as it was to the English to have the Turks to take off their broad cloths and tin. Of all superfluities a superfluity of the precious metals would be about the most useless; produce, manufactures, goods of any other kind that could not be disposed of abroad might be turned to some account at home; gold and silver would not be so valuable as iron, or lead, or clay, if they could not be employed for purposes of exchange. The English, therefore, in sending to the Turks their broad-cloths and tin, gave away that which if kept at home would have had a value in all circumstances, even if all commercial intercourse between nations had come to a standstill: the "money with which the Dutch and Venetians and Germans paid for their silks and other Turkish merchandise would not in that case have been worth the cost of warehousing it. And, in any circumstances, these nations must have found it more convenient to pay for what they got from the Turks in gold and silver than in other exports, else they would not have done so; the Turks would have taken their cloths and other descriptions of manufactures or produce as willingly as they took those of the English. But they found it more profitable to carry on their dealings of that kind with other customers,—to exchange their goods for the money of the English,—and then, with that money in their hands, to go to make their purchases from the Turks. What would they have made by keeping the money and exporting goods to Turkey
- ↑ Munn's Discourse of Trade from England to East India, p. 17. Munn, who has developed his views more at large in his work, entitled "England's Treasure by Foreign Trade," was one of the ablest as well as earliest systematic defenders of what has since been called the Mercantile Theory of Trade.
