… comes from Charles Holt Carroll (1799-1890) and is shared by Pierre Lemieux in a recent post at EconLog; this quotation first appeared in Carroll’s 1862 essay “Financial Economy,” and can be found on page 247 of the 1972 collection of Carroll’s writings titled Organization of Debt into Currency and Other Papers (original emphasis):
The balance of trade, that has occupied so extensively the thoughts of politicians, is a chimera. The balance of profit is in our favor only when our return cargoes exceed the outward in value; in other words, when our imports exceed our exports.
