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Even though the world in general were improving, yet if, in the

course of its improvements, new mines should be discovered, much

more fertile than any which had been known before, though the

demand for silver would necessarily increase, yet the supply

might increase in so much a greater proportion, that the real

price of that metal might gradually fall; that is, any given

quantity, a pound weight of it, for example, might gradually

purchase or command a smaller and a smaller quantity of labour,

or exchange for a smaller and a smaller quantity of corn, the

principal part of the subsistence of the labourer.

The great market for silver is the commercial and civilized part

of the world.