Yes, directly. When legislators, after having ruined men by war and
taxes, persevere in their idea, they say to themselves, "If the people
suffer, it is because there is not money enough. We must make some." And
as it is not easy to multiply the precious metals, especially when the
pretended resources of prohibition have been exhausted, they add, "We
will make fictitious money, nothing is more easy, and then every citizen
will have his pocket-book full of it, and they will all be rich."
B. In fact, this proceeding is more expeditious than the other, and
then it does not lead to foreign war.
F. No, but it leads to civil war.
B. You are a grumbler. Make haste and dive to the bottom of the
question. I am quite impatient, for the first time, to know if money (or
its sign) is wealth.
F. You will grant that men do not satisfy any of their wants
immediately with crown pieces. If they are hungry, they want bread; if
naked, clothing; if they are ill, they must have remedies; if they are
cold, they want shelter and fuel; if they would learn, they must have
books; if they would travel, they must have conveyances--and so on. The
riches of a country consist in the abundance and proper distribution of
all these things. Hence you may perceive and rejoice at the falseness of
this gloomy maxim of Bacon's, "_What one people gains, another
necessarily loses_:" a maxim expressed in a still more discouraging
manner by Montaigne, in these words: "_The profit of one is the loss of
another.
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