We have now to investigate the meaning of wealth in modern times, and I must ask you to pretend to forget all that I have already said, because it was totally unknown until I brought it to light

For many centuries money was held to be the only wealth. Men saw that money could purchase everything - that while most other things decayed away and perished money remained. Every nation held it to be of the greatest importance to accumulate as much money as possible. For centuries the legislation of every country in Europe was moulded to encourage the importation and to prevent the exportation of money as much as possible.

From the doctrine that only money is wealth, it naturally followed that what one side gained the other lost. And this idea was held by the wisest statesmen, and was the cause of innumerable commercial wars for centuries.

At last, however, somewhere about the end of the 17th century, men began to see the folly of holding money to be the only wealth, and the word was extended to mean all the material products of the earth which conduce to the comfort and welfare of mankind.

During all this time there were a few farsighted spirits who saw through the fallacy of the whole thing, and advocated freedom of trade between countries, but they were solitary lights shining in darkness, and the darkness apprehended them not But in this brief outline I must pass over their names, because though they advocated freedom of trade as a good thing, none of them ever perceived that there is such a thing as a definite positive science of economics.