Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/34

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Pre-eminence of the Husbandman who produces over the Artisan who works up materials The Husbandman is the first mover in the circulation of labours; it is he who causes the land to produce the wages of all the Artisans.

It must however be observed that the Husbandman, furnishing all with the most important and most considerable article of their consumption, (I mean their food and also the materials of almost every industry) has the advantage of a greater independence. His labour, in the sequence of the labours divided among the different members of the society, retains the same primacy, the same pre-eminence, as the labour which provided his own food had among the different kinds of labour which, when he worked alone, he was obliged to devote to his different kinds of wants. We have here neither a primacy of honour nor of dignity; it is one of physical necessity. The Husbandman, we may say in general terms, can get on without the labour of the other workmen, but no workman can labour if the Husbandman does not enable him to live. In this circulation, which, by the reciprocal exchange of wants, renders men necessary to one another and forms the bond of the society, it is, then, the labour of the Husbandman which imparts the first impulse. What his labour causes the land to produce beyond his personal wants is the only fund for the wages which all the other members of the