Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/134

Rh vator,—which is not always the case; the proprietor employs it to pay all that labour for him. If this is granted, it necessarily follows that that taxation which does not bear directly upon the proprietor, falls either upon the wage-earners who live upon the net produce, or upon those whose labour is paid on the part of the cultivator. If wages have been reduced by competition to their just price, they cannot go up; and as they cannot go up except at the expense of those who pay them, one part falls ultimately upon the proprietor for the expenditure he engages in with his net product, the other part increases the expenditure of the cultivators, who are consequently obliged to give less to the proprietor. It is, therefore, in all cases the proprietor who pays.

You remark that I am supposing that wages increase in proportion to taxes, and that experience proves the falsity of this principle: and you justly observe that it is not taxes, high or low, which determine the price of wages, but simply the relation of supply and demand.

This principle has certainly never been disputed; it is the only principle which fixes at the time the price of all the things which have a value in commerce. But one must distinguish two prices, the current price, which is established by the relation of supply to demand, and the fundamental price, which, in the case of a commodity, is what the thing costs the workman. In the case of the workman's wages, the fundamental price is what his subsistence costs the