ABSTRACT
The fact that the early mercantilists kept talking about ‘treasure’ when they already meant ‘capital’ led their successors to be over-critical of them. To understand the mercantilists’ ‘hunger for goods’, we must first evaluate the accusations levelled at them by the Enlightenment thinkers, starting from Hume (on the balance of trade: see below, page 214), to Mirabeau,26 and to Adam Smith. Smith’s were the most organic criticisms, and they had a devastating effect. It was these criticisms that created the enduring aura of discredit around the mercantilists, which in part still exists.
