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ferent, if the application of excellent machinery in the one case, and very indifferent machinery in the other mines of the same natural fertility, were to produce the same difference in the state of the supply of silver compared with the demand, and the same purchasing power arising from intrinsic causes as in the former case. In the country of machinery, not only the labour of the miner, but all labour would be high in money price; and in comparing the two countries together, the natural and useful language would be, that while the value of the labour was the same in both countries, the value of silver was most essentially different. The same sacrifice of physical force, supposing the profits and other circumstances in both countries to have been the same, had probably produced in one country double the quantity of silver which it had produced in the other.
From all the accounts we have of the Chinese settlers in different parts of the East, it appears that the labouring classes in China, are remarkable for their industry and energy, and even for their skill in making those domestic articles where superior machinery is not required. We cannot therefore justly say that Chinese labour, independent of machinery, or other particular advantages, is not as effective as our own. Yet we well know that the money price of labour is extremely low in China, and this is obviously owing to the small amount of exports compared with the population, and the prodigious extent of territory, including a large part of Tartary, over which the precious metals which are imported into China will be necessarily spread, so as to throw the greatest imaginable obstacles in the way of a fall in their value; the consequence of which naturally is, that they have fallen comparatively but little in value since the discovery of the American mines; and the elementary cost of producing a pound of silver, the quantity of Chinese labour, profits, rent, &c. which must be worked up in the commodities exported to purchase it, are very much greater than in Europe. Under these circum-