Section CXLI.. Effect of an Enhancement of the Price of the Precious Metals.

Effect Of An Enhancement Of The Price Of The Precious Metals.

A great enhancement of the precious metals would naturally and necessarily produce a revolution in prices in a direction(888) opposite to the one just described, and one which would be much more injurious to a nation’s economy. Such a revolution would weigh most heavily on the most sensitive, and the momentarily most productive classes of the people, inasmuch as the price of the ready product as compared with advances made for the purposes of production would be a declining one; and it would benefit those classes who live in leisure on the fruits of previous labor. There would, at the same time, be a perceptible growth of consumption in certain departments, useful, no doubt, in themselves, but apt to degenerate into excess, and which are, therefore, most easily cared for. (§ 212, seq.) To this extent, the gold discoveries of the nineteenth century, without which an enhancement of the price of money would undoubtedly have taken place, have warded off a great economic malady from the nations. Moreover, this inverted revolution in prices may be moderated by governmental measures, such as a diminution of taxes, emissions of paper money etc.(889)