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The same superabundance of food, of which they have the disposal,

enables them to give a greater quantity of it for all those

singular and rare productions which nature furnishes but in very

small quantities; such as the precious metals and the precious

stones, the great objects of the competition of the rich. Though

the mines, therefore, which supplied the Indian market, had been

as abundant as those which supplied the European, such

commodities would naturally exchange for a greater quantity of

food in India than in Europe. But the mines which supplied the

Indian market with the precious metals seem to have been a good

deal less abundant, and those which supplied it with the precious

stones a good deal more so, than the mines which supplied the

European. The precious metals, therefore, would naturally

exchange in India for a somewhat greater quantity of the precious

stones, and for a much greater quantity of food than in Europe.