Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/105

78 one sets a price, and which one compares with other and different values. In a loan on interest, that on which we set a price is the use of a certain quantity of values during a certain time. It is no longer the comparison of a mass of silver with a mass of wheat; it is now a mass of values which is compared with a definite portion of itself, which becomes the price of the use of this mass during a certain time. Whether twenty thousand ounces of silver are on the market the equivalent of twenty thousand measures of wheat or only of ten thousand, the use of these twenty thousand ounces of silver during the year will none the less be worth in the money market the twentieth part of the principal sum, or a thousand ounces of silver, if the interest is at the twentieth penny.

S80
The price of interest depends immediately upon the relation between the demand of the borrowers and the offer of the lenders; & this relation depends chiefly on the quantity of moveable riches accumulated, by the saving of revenues & of annual products, to form capitals withal, whether these capitals exist in money or in any other kind of effects having a value in commerce.

The price of silver in the market is relative only to the quantity of this metal employed in current exchanges; but the rate of interest is relative to the quantity of values accumulated and laid by to form capitals. It is indifferent whether these values are in metal or in other effects,