partial over-supply. An overstocked state of the market is always
temporary, and is generally followed by a more than common briskness of
demand.

In order to render the argument for the impossibility of an excess of
all commodities applicable to the case in which a circulating medium is
employed, money must itself be considered as a commodity. It must,
undoubtedly, be admitted that there cannot be an excess of all other
commodities, and an excess of money at the same time.

But those who have, at periods such as we have described, affirmed that
there was an excess of all commodities, never pretended that money was
one of these commodities; they held that there was not an excess, but
a deficiency of the circulating medium. What they called a general
superabundance, was not a superabundance of commodities relatively to
commodities, but a superabundance of all commodities relatively to
money. What it amounted to was, that persons in general, at that
particular time, from a general expectation of being called upon to meet
sudden demands, liked better to possess money than any other commodity.
Money, consequently, was in request, and all other commodities were in
comparative disrepute. In extreme cases, money is collected in masses,
and hoarded; in the milder cases, people merely defer parting with their
money, or coming under any new engagements to part with it. But the
result is, that all commodities fall in price, or become unsaleable.
When this happens to one single commodity, there is said to be a
superabundance of that commodity; and if that be a proper expression,
there would seem to be in the nature of the case no particular
impropriety in saying that there is a superabundance of all or most
commodities, when all or most of them are in this same predicament.