POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



I'olitical sources in the second chapter, is a material and con- 

 Economy., sumable thing; it springs from labour; it is destined 

 X """"V" ' for enjoyment ; it is exactly of the same nature with 

 the advances in wages and raw material, laid out by the 

 manufacturer ; and money is but the sign and the mea- 

 sure of it. The capital it should replace is also com- 

 posed of material objects, destined for consumption, 

 and incessantly renewed. Money serves but to repre- 

 sent it, and always forms the smallest part of each mer- 

 chant's funds. We have supposed the cloth-maker to 

 possess L.I 00, 000; but, if half this sum is employ- 

 ed in fixed capitals, it will be sufficient, if his sale 

 amount weekly to L.I 200, to give him in the shape of 

 interest and profit 20 per cent, on his circulating ca- 

 pital, and to allow L.IOOO weekly in money to main- 

 tain an annual production of L.6'0,000 ; so that he ne- 

 ver possesses in cash more than the fiftieth part of his 

 circulating capital. 



An increase of the national capitals is the most 

 powerful encouragement of labour ; either because this 

 augmentation presupposes an augmentation of income, 

 and, consequently, of means of consumption ; or be- 

 cause these capitals, not being profitable to their pro- 

 prietor, except as they are employed, each capitalist in- 

 cessantly endeavours to create a new production by 

 their means. In distributing them to his workmen, he 

 gives to those workmen a revenue which enables them 

 to purchase and consume the preceding year's produc- 

 tion ; and he sees those capitals return increased by the 

 revenue, which he is to expect from them in the follow- 

 ing year's production. But though he distributes and 

 afterwards recovers them, by means of the circulating 

 medium which serves for all exchanges, it is not the 

 circulating medium which forms the essential requisite in 

 his operation. The same cloth-maker, labouring each 

 year on an equal quantity, sends 24-00 pieces of cloth 

 to the market, which have been valued at L.60,000, or 

 L.25 a-piece. He exchanges 400 pieces for such objects 

 of consumption as are needed to supply the wants, the 

 enjoyments, the luxuries of himself and family. He ex- 

 changes 2000 pieces for the raw materials, and the la- 

 hour which, within the year, are to reproduce an equal 

 quantity; and thus next year, and every following year, 

 he will have, as before, 2400 pieces to exchange on 

 the same conditions. His capital, equally with his re- 

 venue, is actually in cloths, not in money; and the 

 perpetual result of his commerce is to exchange cloth 

 against cloth. 



If the consumption of cloth is increased, if by this 

 means his trade, in place of comprehending 2400 

 pieces annually, comprehends 3000, more labour will, 

 no doubt, be ordered by him and executed by his 

 workmen ; but if the money alone is increased, and 

 not the consumption or the income which determines 

 it, labour and production cannot increase. Let us take 

 separately each one of his customers, as he calls them. 

 There is not one of them who does not levy a greater 

 or a smaller portion of his income in kind, but all may 

 arrange matters so as to receive the whole of it in 

 money. They are not. however, more rich on this ac- 

 count ; they will not be at more expence; they will 

 not buy more cloth from him, and his trade will expe- 

 rience no kind of augmentation. What happens to in. 

 dividuals may equally happen to nations. The reve- 

 nue of a country, or the sum total of profits arising 

 from the different kinds of labour amounted, we .shall 

 say, last year, and this year to fifty millions ; but last 

 year the country levied all its profit in goods, in mer- 

 chandise destined for its consumption ; this year, from 



some mercantile circumstance, some arrangement of Political 

 exchanges, it has levied the fourth, the third part, in Economy, 

 money imported through the frontiers. It is neither ^ " < ~'"" 1 "^ 

 richer nor poorer, for this alteration ; its consumption 

 will, as formerly, be fifty millions ; and with regard to 

 the money imported, apparently its industry required 

 this money, otherwise it will be again exported. To 

 increase the circulating medium of a country, without 

 increasing its capital, without increasing its revenue, 

 without increasing its consumption, is to do nothing for 

 its prosperity, nothing for the encouragement of labour. 

 Since no labour can be accomplished without a capi- 

 tal to set it in motion; since no reproduction of wealth 

 can take place without raw materials for the work, and 

 subsistence for the workmen, it follows that the fur- 

 nisher of those wages and materials has taken the most 

 intimate share in the reproduction ; he is in a great de- 

 gree the author of its profits, and has the most evident 

 right to participate in them. But he who lends a 

 capital lends nothing else but those wages and raw ma- 

 terials represented by money. He lends a thing emi- 

 nently productive, or rather the only one which is 

 productive ; for since all wealth proceeds from labour, 

 and all labour is put in motion by its wage, he lends 

 labour itself, or the first cause of production in all kinds 

 of wealth. Hence, whenever an odious sense has 

 been attached to the word usury, meaning by it 

 any kind of interest paid for the use of a sum of 

 money, under pretext that as money produced no 

 fruit, there could be no lawful share of profit, where 

 there was no profit ; in this case, an absurd distinction 

 has been formed. There was just as much reason to 

 prohibit the renting of land, or the wages of labour, 

 because without a capital to put land and labour in 

 exercise, both would remain unfruitful. 



Theologians, however, were right in saying that 

 gold and silver were barren by nature : they are barren 

 so long as kept in their own shape; they cease to be bar- 

 ren, the instant they become the sign of another kind of 

 wealth, which is emphatically productive. Theolo- 

 gians, if they determined to abide by the single principle 

 on which their prohibition was founded, should have 

 been contented with declaring usury criminal, every 

 time the lender obliged the borrower to keep the de- 

 posit in its primary form, locked up in a strong box, 

 from the moment of borrowing to that of payment. For 

 it is quite certain that money, whilst locked up, pro- 

 duces no fruit; and neither borrower nor lender can get 

 good of it except by parting with it. 



But, if money is of itself barren ; if it produces no 

 fruit but in so far as it is the sign of other values, then 

 it is evident that no good can be done by multiplying 

 the sign and not the thing. It is true, if you multiply 

 the sign in a single country, you give this country the 

 means of commanding the thing, provided that thing be 

 found in any other country ; but when you multiply the 

 sign in all countries at once, you do nothing for any. 

 At present, there exists such a proportion between the 

 sign and the thing, that a pound sterling is worth a 

 bag of corn ; but if, by the stroke of a magic rod, you 

 should instantly double all the money in the world, 

 since every thing to be obtained in exchange would 

 continue the same, two pounds in place of one would 

 be required to represent a bag of corn. The quantity 

 of corn consumed by a workman in food would not be 

 altered, consequently his wage must be doubled. With 

 twice as many guineas, exactly the same work would 

 be done, and nothing would be changed but names and 

 numbers. 



