Political Economy [13]
some acquire a new right in it every year by a new labour, others have previously acquired a permanent right by a primitive labour, which has rendered the annual labour more advantageous. No one obtains a share of the national revenue, except in virtue of what he himself or his representatives have accomplished to produce it; unless, as we shall soon see, he receives it at second hand, from its primitive proprietors, by way of compensation for services done to them. Now, whoever consumes without fulfilling the condition which alone gives him right to the revenue; whoever consumes without having a revenue, or beyond what he has; whoever consumes his capital in place of revenue, is advancing to ruin; and a nation composed of such consumers is advancing to ruin likewise. Revenue, indeed, is that quantity by which the national wealth is increased every year, and which accordingly may be destroyed, without the nation's becoming poorer; but the nation which, without re-production, destroys a quantity of wealth, superior in this annual increase, destroys the very means by which it would have acquired an equal re-production in subsequent years. By a circular concatenation, in which every effect becomes a cause in its turn, production gives revenue, revenue furnishes and regulates a consumable fund, which fund again causes production and measures it. The national wealth continues to augment, and the state to prosper, so long as these three quantities, which are proportional to each other, continue to augment in a gradual manner, but whenever the proportion among them is broken, the state decays. A derangement of the mutual proportion subsisting among production, revenue, and consumption, becomes equally prejudicial to the nation, whether the production give a revenue smaller than usual, in which case a part of the capital must pass to the fund of consumption; or whether, on the contrary, this consumption diminish, and no longer call for a fresh production. To cause distress in the state, it is enough that the equilibrium be broken. Production may diminish when habits of idleness gain footing among the labouring classes; capital may diminish when prodigality and luxury become fashionable; and lastly, consumption may diminish from causes of poverty, unconnected with the diminution of labour, and yet, as it will not offer employment for future re-production, it must diminish labour in its turn. Thus nations incur dangers that seem incompatible: they fall into ruin equally by spending too much, and by spending too little. A nation spends too much whenever it exceeds its revenue, because it cannot do so except by encroaching on its capital, and thus diminishing future production; it then does what the solitary cultivator would do if he should eat the corn which ought to be secured for seed. A nation spends too little, whenever, being destitute of foreign commerce, it does not consume its own production; or when, enjoying foreign commerce, it does not consume the excess of its production above its exportation; for, if so, it soon comes into the condition of the solitary cultivator, who having filled all his granaries far beyond the probability of consumption, would be obliged, that he might not work in vain, partly to abandon his cultivation of the ground. The nation does not indeed spend all that it consumes; the name expenditure, in such a case, can properly be given to that consumption only which produces nothing; while that part of the consumption which represents the wages of productive workmen, is an employment of funds, not an expenditure. Thus, the nation, when it forms manufacturing establishments, does not diminish its consumption; it consumes, in a productive manner, what it formerly consumed unproductively. Still, however, this employment of the national produce in giving movement to new labour, though it does not destroy the balance between production and consumption, renders it much more complex. The new produce thus obtained must, at last, find a consumer; and though it may be generally affirmed, that to increase