So little are we commonly acquainted with this principle that, though all historians agree in relating uniformly so recent an event as the immense treasure amassed by Harry VII. (which they make amount to £1,700,000), we rather reject their concurring testimony than admit of a fact which agrees so ill with our inveterate prejudices. It is indeed probable that that sum might be three-fourths of all the money in England; but where is the difficulty that such a sum might be amassed in twenty years by a cunning, rapacious, frugal, and almost absolute monarch? Nor is it probable that the diminution of circulating money was ever sensibly felt by the people, or ever did them any prejudice. The sinking of the prices of all commodities would immediately replace it, by giving England the advantage in its commerce with all the neighbouring kingdoms.
Have we not an instance in the small republic of Athens with its allies, who in about fifty years between the Median and Peloponnesian Wars amassed a sum greater than that of Harry VII.?[20] for all the Greek historians and orators agree that the Athenians collected in the citadel more than 10,000 talents, which they afterwards dissipated, to their own ruin, in rash and imprudent enterprises. But when this money was set a-running, and began to communicate with the surrounding fluid, what was the consequence? Did it remain in the state? No; for we find by the memorable census mentioned by Demosthenes and Polybius that, in about fifty years afterwards, the whole value of the republic, comprehending lands, houses, commodities, slaves, and money was less than 6000 talents.
What an ambitious, high-spirited people was this, to collect and keep in their treasury, with a view to conquests, a sum which it was every day in the power of the citizens, by a single vote, to distribute among themselves, and which would go near to triple the riches of every individual; for we must observe that the numbers and private riches of the Athenians are said by ancient writers to have been no greater at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War than at the beginning of the Macedonian.
Money was little more plentiful in Greece during the age of Philip and Perseus than in England during that of Harry VII., yet these two monarchs in thirty years collected from the small kingdom of Macedon a much larger treasure than that of the English monarch. Paulus Æmilius brought to Rome about £1,700,000 sterling—Pliny says £2,400,000—and that was but a part of the Macedonian treasure; the rest was dissipated by the resistance and flight of Perseus.
