Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/89

62 quantity and the price of the things which he can hope to sell in a certain time. The Retailer learns by experience, by the success of limited attempts made with care, what, more or less, is the quantity of the wants of the Consumers he is in a position to supply. The Trader learns by his Correspondents as to the abundance or scarcity and as to the price of merchandise in the different countries to which he extends his Commerce; he directs his speculations accordingly; he sends the commodities from the place where they bear a low price to those where they are sold for a higher; it being understood, of course, that the expense of Carriage enters into the calculation of the advances which have to return to him.

Since Commerce is necessary, and it is impossible to undertake any commerce without advances proportionate to its extent, we see another employment of moveable wealth, a new use that the possessor of a mass of values saved and accumulated, of a sum of money, of a capital in one word, can make of it in order to benefit by it, in order to obtain his subsistence, and to increase, if he can, his riches.

S68
True idea of the circulation of money.

We see, by what has just been said, how that the cultivation of land, manufactures of all kinds, and all branches of commerce depend upon a mass of capitals, or of moveable accumulated riches, which having been at first advanced