money within the sphere of circulation manifests itself only in its quantity, it follows that mere tokens of value, if issued in proportions determined by the value of money, may replace it in circulation, and in fact, “a currency is in its most perfect state when it consists wholly of paper money, but of paper money of an equal value with the gold which it professes to represent.”137 So far Ricardo determines the volume of the circulating medium by the prices of commodities, assuming the value of money to be given; money as a token of value means with him a token of a definite quantity of gold and not a mere worthless representative of commodities as was the case with Hume.
When Ricardo suddenly gets off the straight path of his presentation and takes the very opposite view, he does so to turn his attention to the international circulation of precious metals and thus brings confusion into the problem by introducing considerations that are foreign to the subject. Let us follow his own course of reasoning, and, in order to remove everything that is artificial and incidental, let us assume that the gold and silver mines are located in the interior of the countries in which the precious metals circulate as money. The only inference which follows from Ricardo’s reasoning as so far developed, is that, the value of gold being given, the quantity of money in circulation will be determined by the prices of commodities. Thus, at a given moment, the quantity of gold in circulation in a country is simply determined by the exchange value of the commodities in circulation. Let us suppose now that the sum total of these exchange values has declined either because there are less commodities produced at the old exchange values, or because, in consequence of an increased productivity of labor, the same quantity of commodities has a smaller value. Or, we may assume on the contrary that the sum total of exchange values has increased, either because the quantity of commodities has increased while the cost of their production has remained the same, or because the value of the same or of a smaller quantity of commodities has risen in consequence of a diminished productivity of labor. What becomes in