body's interest to know, who have any thing to do with the funds, or who are going to bequeath property to their de∣scendants to be paid at a future day.
Perhaps it may be asked, that as go∣vernments or ministers proceeded by no ratio in making loans or incurring debts, and as nobody intended any ratio, or thought of any, how does it happen that there is one? I answer, that the ratio is founded in necessity; and I now go to ex∣plain what that necessity is.
It will always happen, that the price of labour, or of the produce of labour, be that produce what it may, will be in pro∣portion to the quantity of money in a country, admitting things to take their natural course. Before the invention of the funding system, there was no other money than gold and silver; and as na∣ture gives out those metals with a sparing hand, and in regular annual quantities from the mines, the several prices of things were proportioned to the quantity of money at that time, and so nearly sta∣tionary as to vary but little in any fifty or sixty years of that period.