“Poor Richard” on Money: Benjamin Franklin in Monetary History

The Mercantilists recognized at an early date that a nation on a gold or silver money standard and without domestic mines necessarily had to have, as a prime objective, the achievement of a favorable balance of international trade. That is to say, they recognized that for the nation to be prosperous a necessary (not sufficient) condition was a steadily growing aggregate demand and that a prerequisite for growing aggregate demand was a steadily growing circulating medium. One might say the Mercantilists "sensed" these relationships rather than that they fully understood them, and, in fact, they never expressed them in this terminology.