12.That I may not be accused of having perverted the estimable Professor's meaning,by endeavouring to compress it and render it clearer,I have thought it right to annex an exact translation of his words in a note.
"If commodities were only to be compared and exchanged one with another,it would then be true that if they increased in convenient proportions,they might,whatever was their increase preserve the same relative value.
But if we compare them as we ought,with the number and wants of consumers,a great increase of production with a stationary number of consumers,and wants reduced by parsimony,would of necessity occasion a great fall in the value of the productions estimated in labor,so that the same production which costs the same labor as heretofore could no longer purchase the same quantity of it."Page 355.
"It is said that an effective demand is nothing more than the effective supply which is produced of one ccmmodity in exchange for another.But is this all that is really necessary to an effective demand?
"Although each of the commodities may have cost in producing it,the same portion of labor and capital,and that the one is equivalent to the other,still they may both be so abundant as not to he capable of purchasing more labor than they cost,or at least but very little more than they cost.
In this case would the demand be effective?Certainly not."ibid.
13.Agreeably to the English expression,When they do not command the same quantity of labor as before.
14.This demonstration by the bye completely ruins an assertion of Mr.Malthus that a low price is always at the expence of profit ,(page 370)and consequently ruins all the reasoning rounded upon that basis.The same demonstration is equally fatal to all that part of Mr.Ricardo's doctrine in which he flatters himself to have established,that the cost of production,and not the proportion of the supply to the demand,regulates the price of productions.He identifies the cost of productions with the productions,whilst they are opposite,and the former are the less in proportion as the latter are more abundant.
15.Some persons imagine that,when a capital is employed in an enterprise,that portion of it which is devoted to the purchase of the first materials is not employed in the purchase of productive services.
This is an error.The first materials themselves are a produce which have no other value which has previously been spread by the productive services which have made a produce and a value of them.When the first materials are of no value they employ no part of the capital.When they must be paid for,this payment is no other than the reimbursement of the productive services which have given them their value.
16.The profits which an enterpriser makes of his enterprise,are the salary of the labor and talents he has employed in it.He carries on this enterprise no longer than this salary is such that he could not hope for a better in another enterprise.He is one of the necessary producers,and his profits are part of the necessary expenses of production.
17.This case is much more frequent in France than in England,where the rate of the profits of industry and the interest of capital are too low in the ordinary occupations of industry for the former to maintain a family,that has no capital.
18.What an accumulation of productions.What a prodigious vent according to Mr.Say,says Mr.Malthus,would such an event open.The learned professor totally mistakes in this case the meaning of the word accumulation;an accumulation is not a non-consumption it is the substitution of a reproductive for an unproductive consumption.Besides I did not say that a produce saved was a vent opened.I said that a produce created was a vent opened for another produce,and that is true whether the value of it is spent unproductively,or added to the savings,that is,to the reproductive expences which are proposed to be made.
19.It must be admitted that produce saved yearly is as regularly consumed as that which is expended yearly,but that it is consumed by other persons.Mr.Malthus's Principles of Economy .
page 31.
20."When there are more capitals in a country than are wanted,to recommend saving,is contrary to every principle of Political Economy.It is like recommending marriages to a people dying of hunger."Principles d Political Economy ,page 495.
21.The principal obstacles to agricultural improvements in France,are in the first place the residence of rich proprietors and large capitalists in the towns and particularly in an immense capital:
they cannot take account of amendments in which they might employ their lands:and they cannot inspect the employment of them so that it may be followed with a corresponding increase of income.In the second place,it would be in vain that any canton in the heart of the country should double its productions,for it ear scarcely get rid of what it already produces,for want of good roads in the neighbourhood and for want of industrious towns within reach.Industrious towns consume rural productions,and manufacture in exchange manufactural productions,which containing greater value in less compass,can be transmitted to a greater distance.This is the chief obstacle to the increase of French agriculture.Small and numerous navigation canals,roads in good condition,would increase the value of rural productions.
