24 Aug. 1801

Polit. Economy

Method

III. Non Agenda

1 Money

2

6

{individuals, each to double his money in the same time: neither the aggregate of

real wealth, nor any man's share in it would thereby receive any encrease. Every

encrease of money by paper money, produces a correspondent depretiation in the

value of the pre-existing mass of money, and operates thereby as an indirect tax

upon pecuniary income; a tax the benefit of which is reaped by the issuer, and

the burthen borne by the possessors of what is called fixed income. If in

issuing it, he employs it in a non-commercial way, i:e: pays it away as a man

not in trade pays away the money by the spending of which he is said to spend

his income -ploy'd in expenditure of pecuniary income, the profit is all his

own, and it adds nothing to the mass of real wealth: if in issuing it, he

employs it in a commercial way,: viz. as money is employ'd in the shape of

capital, i:e: in making those purchases of things and labour of which real

productive capital is composed, the profit in this case too is all his own, he

adds to the national stock of present wealth (real wealth) to the amount of that

capital, and to growing wealth to the amount of the current rate of gross profit

upon stock or capital: if in issuing it he lends it to another who employs it

/by whom it is employ'd/ in the shape of capital as above, the borrower gets

profit upon stock deducting interest, and the lender interest, and the addition

to real wealth is as before.

In Britain the whole mass of pecuniary income may be about three times the mass

of money in existence, of which a part only, though the greater part, by passing

in the course of the year through a number of hands, greater by some number, but

not a great number, than those, constitutes the above mass of pecuniary income.

If then each added mass}