100. the land has also furnished the total of moveable
riches, or existing capitals, and which are formed only by a
portion of its production reserved every year.
Not only there does not exist, nor can exist, any other
revenue than the clear produce of land, but it is the earth also
that has furnished all capitals, that form the mass of all the
advances of culture and commerce. It has produced, without
culture, the first gross and indispensible advances of the first
labourers; all the rest are the accumulated fruits of the
oeconomy of successive ages, since they have begun to cultivate
the earth. This oeconomy has effect not only on the revenues of
proprietors, but also on the profits of all the members of
laborious classes. It is even generally true, that, though the
proprietors have more overplus, they spare less; for, having more
treasure, they have more desires, and more passions; they think
themselves better ensured of their fortune; and are more desirous
of enjoying it contentedly, than to augment it; luxury is their
pursuit. The stipendiary class, and he chiefly the undertakers of
the other classes, receiving profits proportionate to their
advances, talents, and activity, have, though they are not
possessed of a revenue properly so called, a superfluity beyond
their subsistence; but, absorbed as they generally are, only in
their enterprizes, and anxious to increase their fortune;
restrained by their labour from amusements and expensive
passions; they save their whole superfluity, to re-convert it in
other enterprizes, and augment it. The greater part of the
undertakers in agriculture borrow but little, and they almost all
rest on the capital of their own funds. The undertakers of other
businesses, who wish to render their fortune stable, strive
likewise to attain to the same state. Those that make their
enterprizes on borrowed funds, are greatly in danger of failing.
However, although capitals are formed in part by the saving of
profits in the laborious classes, yet, as those profits spring
always from the earth, they are almost all repaid, either by the
revenue, or in the expences that serve to produce the revenue; it
is evident, that the capitals are derived from the earth as well
as the revenue, or rather that they are but an accumulation of a
part of the riches produced by the earth, which the proprietors
of the revenue, or those that share it, are able to lay by every
year in store, without consuming it on their wants.
