Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/111

84 or the establishment between them of a sort of equilibrium, as between two liquids of unequal gravity which communicate with one another at the bottom of a reversed syphon of which they occupy the two branches; they will not be on a level, but the height of one cannot increase without the other also rising in the opposite branch.

Suppose that all of a sudden a very large number of proprietors of lands wish to sell them. It is evident that the price of lands will fall, and that with a less sum one will acquire a larger revenue: this cannot come to pass without the interest of money rising, for the possessors of money would choose rather to buy estates than to lend at an interest which was no higher than the revenue of the land they could purchase. If, then, the borrowers want to have money, they will be constrained to pay a higher rate of hire for it. If the interest of money becomes higher, people will prefer lending it to making use of it in a more toilsome and hazardous fashion in agricultural, industrial and commercial undertakings; and those undertakings only will be entered upon which will produce, besides the wages of their labour, a profit much greater than the rate of money placed on loan. In a word, as soon as the profits resulting from an employment of money, whatever it may be, increase or diminish, capitals turn in that direction and withdraw from other employments, or withdraw and turn toward other employments; and this necessarily alters in each of these employments the relation between the capital and the annual produce. In general, money invested in landed property brings less than money placed on loan, and money placed on loan brings less than money