§ 2 

A Nation is a multitude of people who have joined in order to secure their own prosperity and that of their descendants under the protection of the Government and through its Public Servants. 

Man thrives when he enjoys his needs and comforts, which, according to our ordinary way of speaking, are called goods. Nature produces them, but they can never be of use to us without labour. 

Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature. 

When we exchange these commodities, it is called commerce, and the commodities that are commonly desired and accepted are gold and silver, larger or smaller coined parts of which are called money, which has become the measure of the value of other commodities. 

No commodity exists, but that it cannot be changed into these Metals by commerce, nor can any commodity be obtained in the absence of other commodities desirable to the seller; and the quantity of money that must be paid for the commodity is called its value. 

The value of exported goods in excess of that of imported ones is rightly called the gain of the Nation, and the value of imported goods in excess of that of exported ones will always be its loss. But a loss that is less compared to another one is called relative gain; and in the same way a smaller gain, when a greater can be attained, is called a loss.