50. Personal property, accumulation of money.
This species of possession, resulting from the accumulation
of annual produce, not consumed, is known by the name of personal
property. Household goods, houses, merchandize in store, utensils
of trade, and cattle are under this denomination. It is evident
men must have toiled hard to procure themselves as much as they
could of this kind of wealth, before they became acquainted, but
it is not less evident that, as with the use of money, soon as it
was known, that it was the least liable to alteration of all the
objects of commerce, and the most easy to preserve without
trouble, it would be principally sought after by whoever wished
to accumulate. It was not the proprietors of land only who thus
accumulated their superfluity. Although the profits of industry
are not, like the revenue of lands, a gift of nature; and the
industrious man draws from his labour only the price which is
given him by the persons who pay him his wages; although the
latter is as frugal as he can of his salary, and that a
competition obliges an industrious man to content himself with a
less price than he otherwise would do, it is yet certain that
these competitions have neither been so numerous or strong in any
species of labour, but that a man more expert, more active, and
who practises more oeconomy than others in his personal expences,
has been able, at all times, to gain a little more than
sufficient to support him and his family, and reserve his surplus
to form a little hoard.
