The value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more.
 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776). copy citation

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Author Adam Smith
Source The Wealth of Nations
Topic money value
Date 1776
Language English
Reference An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm

Context

“and, last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince. It can seldom happen that much can be spared from the circulating money of the country; because in that there can seldom be much redundancy. The value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more. Something, however, is generally withdrawn from this channel in the case of foreign war.” source