text:  The shrewd Scotsman knew what apparently the economist had forgotten that the piece of gold exhibited by the latter was in itself but a representative and not the reality of property; that the gold to be acquired _must be bought_; that all representation of wealth within a country must be conventional in order to have any value; and further that however fragile the despised paper might appear that it was by convention and by law the representative of things more weighty and more solid than metal--of the manufactures of the country of its agricultural produce and finally OF THE LAND ITSELF; all which were mortgaged for its redemption