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Secondly, as the machines and instruments of trade, etc. which

compose the fixed capital either of an individual or of a

society, make no part either of the gross or of the neat revenue

of either; so money, by means of which the whole revenue of the

society is regularly distributed among all its different members,

makes itself no part of that revenue. The great wheel of

circulation is altogether different from the goods which are

circulated by means of it. The revenue of the society consists

altogether in those goods, and not in the wheel which circulates

them. In computing either the gross or the neat revenue of any

society, we must always, from the whole annual circulation of

money and goods, deduct the whole value of the money, of which

not a single farthing can ever make any part of either.

It is the ambiguity of language only which can make this

proposition appear either doubtful or paradoxical. When properly

explained and understood, it is almost self-evident.