POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



61 



Political the capitalist lends to the merchant to profit by ; it is 

 "> all that the merchant will purchase with this money, 



*'""' ' immediately afterwards ; for so long as the merchant 

 keeps itin the original shape, he can draw no advantage 

 from il, and his capital will not begin its course of 

 production till the money is out of his hands. By an 

 abuse of language, which has caused much error and 

 confusion, the words money and capital have be- 

 come almost synonymous: money indeed represents all 

 other capital, but it is itself the capital of no man ; it id 

 always barren by nature, and wealth does not begin 

 to increase, till after money has left the hands of its 

 possessor. 



Money is not only the sign of wealth, it is also the 

 pledge of it. It not only represents wealth, it contains 

 the worth of it. Like wealth, it has been produced by 

 a labour which it wholly compensates. In work and 

 advances of all sorts employed in extracting it from 

 the mine, it has cost a value equal to what it passes for 

 in the world. It furnishes to trade a commodity which is 

 expensive; because, purchased like every other, it is the 

 sole kind of wealth which is not increased by circulation 

 or dissipated by enjoyment. It issues, still without alter- 

 ation, from the hands of him who employs it usefully, 

 and of him who squanders it upon his pleasures. But 

 the high price at which society acquires money, though 

 at first view it appears an inconvenience, is precisely 

 what gives it the merit of being an imperishable pledge 

 for its possessors. As its value was not given by arbi- 

 trary convention, arbitrary convention cannot take its 

 value away. It may be more or less sought after ac- 

 cording as it occurs more or less abundantly in the 

 market ; but its price can never deviate very far from 

 what would be required to extract an equal quantity 



I from the mine. 



Money, in the last place, is a common measure of 

 values. Before the invention of money, it must have 

 been very difficult to compare the value of a bag of 

 corn with that of a yard of cloth. Dress was equally 

 necessary with food ; but the processes, by which men 

 procured them, seemed scarcely susceptible of being 

 compared. Money has furnished a common and inva- 

 riable unity to which every thing can be referred. Na- 

 tions, who are not acquainted with the use of metals, 

 have, nevertheless, so felt the advantages of this com- 

 mon measure that they have formed an ideal unity to 

 which they refer every kind of value. 



The important part which money performs in poli- 

 tical economy, and the various properties by which it 

 animates exchanges, and protects and serves to measure 

 them, explain the illusion which has misled, not only 

 the vulgar, but even the greater part of statesmen, and 

 exhibited this commodity in their eyes as the efficient 

 cause of labour, and the creator of all wealth. It is essen- 

 tial for us, however, to pause here, that we may both 

 display those errors in a clear point of view, and firmly 

 demonstrate the principles which follow. In the 

 epoch of civilization, at which we are arrived, no labour 

 can be accomplished without a capital to set it in mo- 

 tion ; but this capital, though almost constantly repre- 

 sented by money, is yet quite a different thing. An 

 increase of the national capital is the most powerful 

 encouragement to labour ; but an increase in the cir- 

 culating medium has not of necessity the same effect. 

 Capitals co-operate powerfully in the annual reproduc- 

 tion of wealth, giving rise to an annual revenue ; but 

 money continues barren, and gives rise to no revenue. 

 Indeed, the competition between those capitals which 

 are offered to accomplish the annual labour of the na- 

 tion, forms the basis for the interest of money; but the 



Kn -ater or lew abundance of the circulating medium Political 

 has no influence in the fixing of thin int. Economy. 



Painful experience has shown all the inhabiUntiof Eu- '^t^ 1 ' 

 rope what a dearth was, and a period of general penury 

 among a civilized people. At thehe mournful epoch*, 

 every one has heard it a hundred times observed, that 

 it was not corn or food which was wanting, but money. 

 Indeed, vast magazines of corn have often remained 

 full till the next Harvest; those provisions, if proper- 

 tionably shared among the people, would have al- 

 most always been sufficient for their support ; but 

 the poor, having no money to offer, were not able to 

 buy them; they could not. in exchange for their labour, 

 obtain money, or at least enough of it, to subsist. 

 Money was wanting, natural wealth superabundant. 

 What phenomenon could appear more proper to con- 

 firm the universal prejudice which looks for wealth in 

 money, not in consumable capital ? 



But the money, which is wanting in a time of scar- 

 city, is the wage offered to the workman to make him 

 labour; the wag*, by means of which, he would have 

 purchased a subsistence. The workmen never labour, 

 except when some of those who have accumulated ca- 

 pitals, or in other words, the fruit of preceding labours, 

 can profit from those capitals, by furnishing on one 

 hand, the raw material, on the other, a subsistence for 

 the artisan. Labour cannot be carried on so as to pro* 

 duce any material fruit, any fruit capable of becoming 

 wealth, without raw materials on which to operate; 

 the workman cannot labour without food to support 

 him ; and, therefore, every kind of labour is impossible 

 without a capital previously existing in objects of con- 

 sumption to furnish his materials and his wages; and, 

 if the workman himself lay out these advances, it is 

 because he combines for this little object the two char- 

 acters of capitalist and artisan. 



As the workman requires a capitalist, so the capital- 

 ist requires workmen ; because his capital will be un- 

 productive, if it continue idle; and the revenue which 

 he expects and has to live upon, springs from the labour 

 which he causes to be executed. Hence, whenever he is 

 occupied in a productive enterprise, he employs all his 

 capital in causing labour, and leaves no part of it in 

 idleness. If he is a cloth-maker, and has devoted ten 

 thousand pounds to his manufacture, he does not stop 

 till his ten thousand pounds are done, and he no longer 

 has new sums to employ in the operation. If it be 

 then asked why he stops, he will answer, like the work- 

 man, that money is wanting, that money does not cir- 

 culate. 



It is not, however, money which is then wanting 

 any more than in the former case; it is consumption or 

 the consumer's revenue. On commencing his manu- 

 facture, the capitalist studied to adjust it to the demand; 

 and he reckoned that as soon as his cloths should be 

 ready, they would be purchased by consumers, whose 

 money, the sign of their revenue, would replace 

 his capital, and become the sign of subsistence to 

 new workmen, to whom he would pay new wages. 

 It is not money which the consumer is in want of, but 

 revenue. Some have had inferior harvests this year ; 

 some have gained a smaller interest on their capitals, a 

 smaller share on the annual reproduction of the fruits 

 of industry ; others, who have no income but what 

 arises from their labour, have not found employment ; or 

 else the whole three classes are not poorer than they 

 were, but the manufacturer had imagined them to be 

 richer, and regulated his production according to an 

 income which does not exist. 



Income, of which we have seen all the different 



