Chapter I. Of Value.

risen if each person who so buys on credit had bought with money. All the effects, therefore, must be similar. As a consequence of high prices, exportation is checked and importation stimulated; though in fact the increase of importation seldom waits for the rise of prices which is the consequence of speculation, inasmuch as some of the great articles of import are usually among the things in which speculative overtrading first shows itself. There is, therefore, in such periods, usually a great excess of imports over exports; and, when the time comes at which these must be paid for, the exchanges become unfavorable and gold flows out of the [pg 439] country. This efflux of gold takes effect on prices [by withdrawing gold from the reserves of the banks, and so by stopping loans and the use of credit, or purchasing power]: its effect is to make them recoil downward. The recoil once begun, generally becomes a total rout, and the unusual extension of credit is rapidly