Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/119

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§. XCV.
The interest drawn by the lender of money is disposable, so far as concerns the use he can make of it.

The interest, it is true, which he draws from that capital seems to be disposable, since the undertaker and the undertaking can do without it; and it seems also that we may conclude from this that in the profits of the two working classes, whether they are employed in agriculture or in industry, there is a portion that is disposable, to wit, that which corresponds to the interest of the advances calculated at the current rate of interest on money placed on loan; and it appears, moreover, that this conclusion is in conflict with what we have before said, that only the class of proprietors had a revenue properly so called, a disposable revenue, and that all the members of the two other classes had only wages or profits. This deserves some explanation. When one looks at the thousand crowns drawn every year by a man who has lent sixty thousand francs to a merchant, and considers the use he can make of them, we cannot doubt that they are absolutely disposable, since the undertaking can do without them.

§. XCVI.
The interest of money is not disposable in this sense, that the State can without harm appropriate part of it for its wants.

But it does not follow that they are disposable in the sense that the State can with impunity appropriate part of them for the public wants. These thousand crowns are not