Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/73

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First advances furnished by the land while still uncultivated.

It is the earth which is always the first and only source of all wealth; it is that which as the result of cultivation produces all the revenue; it is that also which has provided the first fund of advances prior to all cultivation. The first Cultivator has taken the seed he has sown from plants which the earth had of itself produced; while waiting for the harvest he has lived by hunting and fishing, and upon wild fruits: his tools have been branches of trees, torn down in the forests, shaped with stones sharpened against other stones; he has himself captured in the chase animals wandering in the woods or caught them in his traps; he has brought them into subjection and trained them; he has made use of them first for food and afterwards to help him in his labour. This first fund has grown little by little; the cattle, especially, were of all moveable wealth that which was most sought after in those early times and that which was most easy to accumulate: they died, but they reproduced themselves, and the wealth which consists in them is in a way imperishable:  this fund, moreover, grows by the mere process of generation, and gives an annual produce, either in milk, or in fleeces, in hides and other materials, which, with the wood obtained in the forests, have formed the first fund for the works of industry.