Political Economy [5]
a second system in political economy, still named the territorial system, or more precisely the system of the economists. He begins by asserting that gold and silver, the signs of wealth, the means of exchange, the price of all commodities, do not themselves constitute the wealth of states; and that no judgment can be formed concerning the prosperity of a nation, from the abundance of its precious metals. He next proceeds to survey the different classes of men, all of whom, occupied in gaining money, and causing wealth to circulate, even when acquiring it for themselves, are not, according to him, occupied with any thing besides exchange. He endeavours to distinguish the classes possessed of a creative power; it is amongst them that wealth must originate, all the transactions of commerce appearing to be nothing else but the transmission of that wealth from hand to hand. The merchant who carries the productions of both hemispheres from one continent to the other, and on returning to the ports of his own country, obtains, at the sale of his cargo, a sum double of that with which he began his voyage, does not, after all, appear, in the eyes of Quesnay, to have performed any thing but an exchange. If, in the colonies, he has sold the manufactures of Europe at a higher price than they cost him, the reason is, they were in fact worth more. Together with their prime cost, he must also be reimbursed for the value of his time, his cares, his subsistence, and that of his sailors and agents during the voyage. He has a like reimbursement to claim on the cotton or sugar he brings back to Europe. If, at the end of his voyage, any profit remains, it is the fruit of his economy and good management. The wages allowed him by consumers, for the trouble he has undergone, are greater than the sum he had expended. It is the nature of wages, however, to be entirely expended by him who earns them; and had this merchant done so, he would have added nothing to the national wealth, by the labour of his whole life; because the produce which he brings back does nothing more than exactly replace the valuE of the produce given for it, added to his own wages, and the wages of all that were engaged with him in the business. Agreeably to this reasoning, the French philosopher gave to transport trade the name of economical trade, which it still retains. This species of commerce, he asserts, is not destined to provide for the wants of the nation that engages in it, but merely to serve the convenience of two foreign nations. The carrying nation acquires from it no other profit than wages, and cannot grow rich except by the saving which economy enables it to make on them. Quesnay, next adverting to manufactures, considers them an exchange, just the same as commerce; but instead of having in view two present values, their primitive contract is, in his opinion, an exchange of the present against the future. The merchandise produced by the labour of the artisan is but the equivalent of his accumulated wages. During his labour, he had consumed the fruits of the earth, and the work produced by him is nothing but their value. The economist next directs his attention to agriculture. The labourer appears to him to be in the same condition as the merchant and the artisan. Like the latter, he makes with the earth an exchange of the present against the future. The crops produced by him represent the accumulated value of his labour; they pay his hire, to which he has the same right as the artisan to his wages, or the merchant to his profit. But when this hire has been deducted, there remains a net revenue, which was not be found in manufactures and commerce; it is what the labourer pays the proprietor for the use of his land. This revenue, Quesnay thinks, is of a nature quite different from any other. It is not wages; it is not the result of an exchange; it is the price of the earth's spontaneous labour, the fruit of nature's beneficence; and since it does not represent pre-existent wealth, it alone must be the source of every kind of wealth. Tracing the