88. Meantime the freedom of these various employments are
limited by each other, and maintain, notwithstanding their
inequality, a species of equilibrium.
The different uses of the capitals produce very unequal
profits; but this inequality does not prevent them from having a
reciprocal influence on each other, nor from establishing a
species of equilibrium among themselves, like that between two
liquors of unequal gravity, and which communicate with each other
by means of a reversed syphon, the two branches of which they
fill; there can be no height to which the one can rise or fall,
but the liquor in the other branch will be affected in the same
manner.
I will suppose, that on a sudden, a great number of
proprietors of lands are desirous of setting them. It is evident
that the price of lands will fall, and that with a less sum we
may acquire a larger revenue; this cannot come to pass without
the interest of money rising, for the possessors of money would
chuse rather to buy lands, than to lend at a lower interest than
the revenue of the lands they could purchase. If, then, the
borrowers want to have money, they will be constrained to pay a
greater rate. If the interest of the money increases, they will
prefer lending it, to setting out in a hazardous manner on
enterprizes of agriculture, industry, and commerce: and they will
be aware of any enterprizes but those that produce, besides the
retribution for their trouble, an emolument by far greater than
the rate of the lender's produce. In a word, if the profits,
springing from an use of money, augment or diminish, the capitals
are converted by withdrawing them from other employings, or are
withdrawn by converting them to other ends, which necessarily
alters, in each of those employments, the proportion of profits
on the capital to the annual product. Generally, money converted
into property in land, does not bring in so much as money on
interest; and money on interest brings less than money used in
laborious enterprises: but the produce of money laid out in any
way whatever, cannot augment or decree without implying a
proportionate augmentation, or decrease in other employments of
money.
