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But the power of purchasing, or the goods which can successively

be bought with the whole of those money pensions, as they are

successively paid, must always be precisely of the same value

with those pensions; as must likewise be the revenue of the

different persons to whom they are paid. That revenue, therefore,

cannot consist in those metal pieces, of which the amount is so

much inferior to its value, but in the power of purchasing, in

the goods which can successively be bought with them as they

circulate from hand to hand.

Money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great

instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade,

though it makes a part, and a very valuable part, of the capital,

makes no part of the revenue of the society to which it belongs;

and though the metal pieces of which it is composed, in the

course of their annual circulation, distribute to every man the

revenue which properly belongs to him, they make themselves no

part of that revenue.