Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/74

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Cattle, moveable wealth even before the cultivation of the lands.

In a time when there was still a large quantity of uncultivated lands which belonged to no one, one might possess cattle without being a Proprietor of lands. It is even probable that mankind has almost everywhere begun to collect flocks and live on their produce before it gave itself up to the more toilsome labour of agriculture. It would seem that the Nations which cultivated the earth in the most ancient times are those which have found in their Country kinds of animals more susceptible of being tamed, and that have been led in this way from the wandering and restless life of the Peoples who live by the chase and fishing to the more tranquil life of Pastoral Peoples. Pastoral life necessitates dwelling for a longer time in the same place; it affords more leisure; more opportunities to study the difference of soils, to observe the march of nature in the production of those plants which serve for the support of cattle. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Asiatic Nations have been the first to cultivate the earth, and that the Peoples of America have remained so long in the state of Savages.

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Another kind of moveable wealth & of advances of agriculture: the slaves.

The slaves were another kind of moveable riches, procured at first by violence and afterwards by way of