92. The sum of lent capitals cannot be understood without a
two-fold reckoning.
We must not include in the calculation of the riches of a
nation the sum of lent capitals; for the capitals could only be
lent either to proprietors of lands, or to undertakers to enhance
their value in their enterprizes, since there are but these two
kinds of people that can answer for a capital, and discharge the
interest: a sum of money lent to people that have neither estate
nor industry, would be a dead capital, and not an active one. If
the owner of land of 400,000 livres borrows 100,000, his land is
charged with a rent that diminishes his revenue by that sum. If
he should sell it; out of the 400,000 livres he would receive,
100,000 are the property of the creditor. By these means the
capital of the lender would always form, in the calculation of
existing riches, a double estimate. The land is always worth
400,000 l. when the proprietor borrows 100,000 l. that does not
make 500,000 l. it only follows, that in the 400,000 l. one
hundred thousand belongs to the lender, and that there remains no
more than 300,000 l. to the borrower.
The same double estimate would have place in the calculation,
if we should comprehend in the total calculation of capitals, the
money lent to an undertaker to be employed in advance for his
undertaking; it only results, that that sum, and the part of the
profits which represents the interest, belongs to the lender. Let
a merchant employ 10,000 livres of his property in his trade, and
engross the whole profit, or let him have those 10,000 livres
borrowed of another, to whom he pays the interest, and is
satisfied with the overplus of profit, and the salary of his
industry, it still makes only 10,000 livres.
But if we cannot include, without making a double estimate in
the calculation of national riches, the capital of the money lent
on interest, we ought to call in the other kinds of moveables,
which though originally forming an object of expence, and not
carrying any profit, become, however, by their durability, a true
capital, that constantly increases; and which, as it may
occasionally be exchanged for money, is as if it was a stock in
store, which may enter into commerce and make good, when
necessary, the loss of other capitals. Such are the moveables of
every kind; jewels, plates, paintings, statues, ready money shut
up in chests by misers: all those matters have a value, and the
sum of all those values may make a considerable object among
wealthy nations. Yet be it considerable or not, it must always he
added to the price of real estates, and to that of circulating
advances in enterprises of every denomination, in order to form
the total sum of the riches of a nation. As for the rest, it is
superfluous to say, though it is easy to be defined, as we have
just done, in what consists the totality of the riches of a
nation; it is probably impossible to discover to how much they
amount, unless some rule be found out to fix the proportion of
the total commerce of a nation, with the revenue of its land: a
feasible thing, but which has not been executed as yet in such a
manner as to dispel all doubts.
