has fallen. They therefore benefit as consumers of cloth, not merely to
the extent to which cloth has fallen, but also to the extent to which
other prices have risen. Suppose that this is one-tenth. The same
proportion of their money incomes as before, will suffice to supply
their other wants, and the remainder, being increased one-tenth in
amount, will enable them to purchase one-tenth more cloth than before,
even though cloth had not fallen. But it has fallen: so that they are
doubly gainers. If they do not choose to increase their consumption of
cloth, this does not prevent them from being gainers. They purchase the
same quantity with less money, and have more to expend upon their other
wants.

In England, on the contrary, general money-prices have fallen. Linen,
however, has fallen more than the rest; having been lowered in price, by
importation from a country where it was cheaper, whereas the others have
fallen only from the consequent efflux of money. Notwithstanding,
therefore, the general fall of money-prices, the English producers will
be exactly as they were in all other respects, while they will gain as
purchasers of linen.

The greater the efflux of money required to restore the equilibrium, the
greater will be the gain of Germany; both by the fall of cloth, and by
the rise of her general prices. The less the efflux of money requisite,
the greater will be the gain of England; because the price of linen will
continue lower, and her general prices will not be reduced so much. It
must not, however, be imagined that high money-prices are a good, and
low money-prices an evil, in themselves. But the higher the general
money-prices in any country, the greater will be that country's means
of purchasing those commodities which, being imported from abroad, are
independent of the causes which keep prices high at home.