Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/103

76 in the same proportion as the first million, so that the man who before had two ounces of silver now has four. The silver considered as a mass of metal will certainly diminish in price, or, what is the same thing, commodities will be paid for more dearly; and, to get the measure of corn which we got before with an ounce of silver, it will be necessary to give a good deal more silver, and perhaps two ounces instead of one. But it by no means will follow from thence that the interest of money falls, if all this money is carried to market and employed in the current expenditure of those who possess it, as by supposition the first million ounces were; for the interest of money falls only when there is more money to lend, in proportion to the wants of borrowers, than there was before. But the money which is carried to market is not to lend; it is the money which is placed in reserve, the accumulated capitals, that are lent; and so far from the increase of money in the market, or the diminution of its price in relation to commodities in ordinary trade, infallibly and by immediate sequence bringing about a decrease of the interest of money, it may on the contrary happen that the very cause which increases the money in the market, and which increases the prices of other commodities by lowering the price of money, is precisely that which increases the hire of money or the rate of interest.

Indeed, suppose for the moment that all the wealthy people in a nation, instead of saving from their revenues or from their annual profits, spend the whole of it; suppose that, not content with spending their revenue, they spend their capital; suppose a man who has a hundred thousand