Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/113

86 itself excluded, but, moreover, as its manufacturers and merchants can content themselves with a lower profit, they will place their commodities on all the markets at a much lower price, and will draw to themselves the almost exclusive trade in all those commodities whereof the trade is not retained for the commerce of the Nation, where money is worth five per cent., by exceptional conditions or by the excessive expense of carriage.

S90
Influence of the rate of interest of money on all gainful undertakings.

The price of interest may be looked upon as a kind of level beneath which all labour, all agriculture, all industry, all commerce come to an end. It is like a sea spread over a vast area: the summits of the mountains rise above the waters, and form fertile and cultivated islands. If this sea happens to roll back, in proportion as it descends, first the slopes of the hills, then the plains and the valleys, appear, and are covered with every kind of produce. It is enough that the water should rise or fall a foot to inundate immense tracts, or throw them open to agriculture. It is the abundance of capitals which animates all undertakings; and the low interest of money is at once the effect and the indication of the abundance of capitals.

S91
The total wealth of a nation is composed: 1st, of the net revenue of all the estates in land, multiplied by the rate at which