62. Another employment of capitals, in advances towards
undertakings of agriculture. Observations on the use, and
indispensable profits of capitals in undertakings of agriculture.
In speaking first of the placing of capitals in manufacturing
enterprizes, I had in view to adduce a more striking example, of
the necessity and effect of large advances, and of the course of
their circulation. But I have reversed the natural order, which
seemed to require that I should rather begin to speak of
enterprizes of agriculture, which also can neither be performed,
nor extended, nor afford any profit, but by means of considerable
advances. It is the proprietors of great capitals, who, in order
to make them productive in undertakings of agriculture, take
leases of lands, and pay to the owners large rents, taking on
themselves the whole burthen of advances. Their case must
necessarily be the same as that of the undertakers of
manufactures. Like them, they are obliged to make the first
advances towards the undertaking, to provide themselves with
cattle, horses, utensils of husbandry, to purchase the first
seeds; like them they must maintain and nourish their carters,
reapers, threshers, servants, and labourers, of every
denomination, who subsist only by their hands, who advance only
their labour, and reap only their salaries. Like them, they ought
to have not only their capital, I mean, all their prior and
annual advances returned, but, 1st, a profit equal to the revenue
they could have acquired with their capital, exclusive of any
fatigue; 2ndly. The salary, and the price of their own trouble,
of their risk, and their industry; 3rdly. An emolument to enable
them to replace the effects employed in their enterprise, and the
loss by waste, cattle dying, and utensils wearing out, etc., all
which ought to be first charged on the products of the earth. The
over-plus will serve the cultivator to pay to the proprietor, for
the permission he has given him to make use of his field in the
accomplishing of his enterprize; that is, the price of the
leasehold, the rent of the proprietor and the clear product: for
all that the land produces, until reimbursement of the advances,
and profits of every kind to him that has made these advances,
cannot be looked upon as a revenue, but only as a reimbursement
of the expences of the cultivation, since if the cultivator could
not obtain them, he would be loath to risk his wealth and trouble
in cultivating the field of another.
