98. Answer to this objection.
I answer first, that in fact, when the capitalist has
purchased an estate, the revenue will be equal as to him, to what
he would have received for his money by lending it; but there is
this essential difference with respect to the state, that the
price which he gives for his land, does not contribute in any
respect to the income it produces. It would not have produced a
less income, if he had not purchased it. This income, as we have
already explained, consists in what the land produces, beyond the
salary of the cultivators, of their profits, and the interest of
their advances. It is not the same with the interest of money; it
is the express condition of the loan, the price of the advance,
without which the revenue or profits, which serve to pay it,
could never exist.
I answer in the second place, that if the lands were charged
separately with the contribution to the public expences, as soon
as that contribution shall be once regulated, the capitalist who
shall purchase these lands will not reckon as interest for his
money, that part of the revenue which is affected by this
contribution. The same as a man who now buys an estate, does not
buy the tythe which the curate or clergy receives, but the
revenue which remains after that tythe is deducted.
