Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/75

48 and exchange. Those who had many of them employed them not only for the cultivation of lands, but also for different works of industry. The ease with which these two kinds of riches could be accumulated almost without limit, and made use of, even independently of the lands, made it possible to value the lands themselves and compare their value to that of moveable riches.

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Moveable riches have a value exchangeable against the land itself. A man who happened to have a good many pieces of land but no cattle or slaves would certainly have made an advantageous bargain if he surrendered part of his land to a man who gave him in exchange cattle and slaves to cultivate the rest. It is in this way chiefly that estates of land themselves entered into Commerce and had a value comparable with that of all other commodities. If four bushels of corn, the net produce of an acre of land, were worth six sheep, the acre itself which produced them could be transferred at a certain value, larger of course but always easily determined in the same manner as the price of all other commodities; that is to say, first by chaffering between the two parties to the contract, and afterwards in accordance with the current price established by the competition of those who wished to exchange lands for cattle and of those who wished to part with cattle in order to get lands. It is in accordance with this current price that lands are valued