Letters to Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce
Jean Baptiste Say (1821)
SIR,
I think I have proved in my first letter that Produce can only be bought with Produce. I still see no cause to abandon this doctrine, that it is production which opens a market for production. It is true that I have taken as produce, all the services which proceed from our personal capacities, from our capitals, and our property in land, which has put me under the necessity of sketching afresh, and in other terms, the Doctrine of Production, which Smith evidently has neither understood, nor entirely described.
However, Sir, on reading again the 3rd section of your chapter 7, (10) I feel that there is still one point in which you do not agree with me. You will perhaps confess that produce is bought only with other produce, but you persist in maintaining that men can, putting all productions together, produce a quantity more than equal to their wants, and consequently — thief there will be no employ for a part of these productions — that there may be a superabundance and glut of all kinds at the same time. For the purpose of presenting your objection in all its force, I will transform it into a figure, and will say, M. Malthus readily admits that one hundred sacks of wheat will purchase a hundred pieces of cloth, in a partnership which has occasion for this quantity of cloth and wheat to clothe and feed themselves, but that if the same company should produce two hundred sacks of wheat and two hundred pieces of cloth, it would be in vain that these two commodities could be exchanged the one for the other: he will maintain that a part of them would find no buyers. I must therefore, Sir, prove in the first place, that whatever be the quantity produced, and the consequent depreciation of its price, a quantity produced of one kind is always sufficient to enable the producer to acquire the quantity produced of another kind; and after having proved that the possibility of acquiring exists, I must enquire how those productions which superabound give rise to wants to consume them.
The farmer who produces wheat, after having bought the productive services of the land, of the capital he employs, and of his servants, and having added his own labour to it, has consumed all these values to convert them into sacks of wheat, and each sack, including his own labour, that is to say his profit, we will suppose returns him 30 francs. On the other hand the manufacturer who produces flaxen, woollen, or cotton cloth, no matter which, — the manufacturer in fact after having in the same manner consumed the services of his capital, his own services, and those of his men, has manufactured pieces of cloth, each of which also returns him 30 francs. If you will allow me to come at once to the main point of the question, I will confess to you that my cloth-merchant represents in my mind the producers of all manufactured produce, and my wheat-merchant the producers of all the provisions of life and raw materials. The question is, whether the whole of their two productions, to whatever extent they may be multiplied, and whatever may be the consequent depression in their price, can be bought by their producers, who are at the same time their consumers, and how the want continually increases in proportion to the quantity produced.
We will first examine what takes place in the hypothesis of a perfect liberty, which allows the indefinite multiplication of all productions, and afterwards we will examine into the obstacles which the nature of things or the imperfections of society oppose to this indefinite liberty of production. But you will say that the hypothesis of an indefinite production is more favourable to your cause, because it is more difficult to dispose of an unlimited than of a circumscribed production, and that the hypothesis of a circumscribed production, sometimes from one cause sometimes another, is more favourable to mine, which establishes, that it is these very restrictions which, by preventing certain productions, injure the purchase that might be made of those productions which can only be indefinitely multiplied.
In the hypothesis of perfect liberty, the producer of wheat arrives at market with a sack which yields him, including his profit, 30 francs; and the producer of cloth with a piece which brings him the same price: and consequently with two productions which exchange equally:(11) that which sells above its cost of production, will induce a part of the producers of the other commodity to turn to the production of this until the productive services are equally paid by both. This is an effect generally admitted.
It is right to observe that in this hypothesis the producers of the piece of cloth altogether have gained sufficient to buy in the whole piece or any other production of equal value. — If it amounts for example to 30 francs, including every thing even the manufacturer's profit at the rate at which competition has fixed it, this sum is found distributed amongst the producers of the piece of cloth, but in unequal parts, according to the kind and quantity of services rendered to produce it.
If the piece contains ten ells, he who has gained 6 francs can buy two ells of it, he who has gained 30 sons can only buy half an ell, but it is still clear that all of them together can buy the whole piece. That, if instead of buying cloth they wish to buy wheat, they can also buy the whole quantity, because like the cloth it is only worth 30 francs, the same as they can buy indifferently according to their wants, either a portion of the piece of cloth or an equivalent part of the sack of wheat.
He who has gained by either of these productions six francs, may employ three francs in a tenth of the piece of cloth, and three francs in a tenth of the wheat, still it is true that all the producers together can acquire the. whole of the productions.
It is here, Sir, that you ground your objections. — If productions increase, you say, or wants diminish, the productions will fall to too low a price to pay for the labour necessary to their production.(12) Before I reply to you, Sir, I inform you that, if out of politeness I make use of your word labour, which, according to the explanation given in my preceding letter, is incomplete,
I shall comprise under that term, not only the productive service of a workman and his master, but also the productive services rendered by the capital and the land, services which have their 'price, as well as personal labor, and so real a price that the capitalist and the landholder live upon it.
This point being understood, I reply, in the first place, that productions by diminishing in price do not disenable the producers to purchase the labor which has created them, or any other equivalent labor. In our hypothesis the producers of corn, by a more skilful process, will produce a double quantity of corn, and the producers of cloth a double quantity of cloth, and the corn as well as the cloth will be diminished one half, in price. What does this mean? The producers of corn will have two sacks for their services, which together will be worth what a single sack was worth, and the producers of cloth will have two pieces, which together will be worth what one was worth. In the exchange called production the same services will have obtained, each in their place, a double quantity of production, but these two double quantities may be obtained one by the other as heretofore, and as easily so, that without laying out more in productive services, a nation in which this productive power begins to unfold itself, will have double the quantity of articles to consume, either wheat, or cloth, or any thing else, since we have agreed to represent by wheat and cloth every thing the human species may want for its support. The productions in such an exchange are opposed in value to productive services. Now, as in every exchange one of the two articles is of greater value, in proportion to the quantity it obtains of the other, it follows, that productive services are the more valuable in proportion as productions are multiplied, and at lower price.(13)
This is the reason why the diminution in the price of productions, by augmenting the value of the productive funds of a nation, and the revenues resulting therefrom, increases the national wealth. This demonstration, which is detailed in the 3rd Chapter of the 2d. Book of my Treatise on Political Economy (4th edition), has I think rendered some service to the science by explaining that which up to that period had been felt but not explained. Which is, that although wealth is a changeable value, general wealth has accrued by the low price of commodities and every kind of production.(14)
Never perhaps has an increase of double in the productive power of labor taken place all at once, and in all productions at the same time, but it is indisputable that it has taken place gradually in many productions, and in very varied proportions. A purple cloak amongst the ancients, of the same quality and size, of the same solidity and beauty of colour, cost no doubt double what it costs now. And I have no doubt that wheat, paid in labor, is diminished one half at least since the unknown epocha of the invention of the plough. All these productions costing less labor, have been, in consequence of competition, given for what they cost, without any one being a loser by it, and all the world has gained in revenue.
But we must return to the first part of your objection. The producers of wheat and the producers of cloth will then produce more wheat and cloth than either the one or the other can consume. Ah! Sir, after having proved that notwithstanding a reduction of more than half the value of the productions the same labor could buy the whole of them, and thereby procure double the means of existence and enjoyment, shall I be reduced to the necessity of proving to the justly celebrated author of the Essay on Population that everything that can be produced may find consumers, and that amongst the enjoyments which the quantity of productions of which mankind can dispose, procure, the comforts of home and the increase of children are not the least? After having written three justly admired volumes to prove that the population always rises to the level of the means of existence, can you admit the case of a great increase of productions, with a stationary number of consumers, and wants reduced by parsimony? (page 355.)
Either the Author of the Essay on Population or the author of the Principles of Political Economy must be wrong. But every thing proves to us that it is not the author of the Essay on Population who is wrong. Experience as well as reason shows that a production, a thing necessary or agreeable to man, is only despised when one has not the means of buying it. These means of buying it are precisely what establish the demand for the production, which set a price to it. Not to want a useful thing is not to have wherewith to pay for it. And how is it we have not wherewith to pay for it? It is because we are deprived of that which constitutes wealth, deprived of either industry, land, or capital.
When men are once provided with the means of producing, they appropriate their productions to their wants, for the production itself is an exchange in which the productive means are supplied, and in which the article we most want is demanded in return. To create a thing, the want of which does not exist, is to create a thing without value: this would not be production. Now from the moment it has a value, the producer can find means to exchange it for those articles he wants.
This power of exchange, peculiar to man amongst all the animals, appropriates all productions to all wants, and allows him to calculate for his existence not on the species of production (he will exchange it as soon as he likes if it has a value but on the value.
The difficulty, you will say, is to create articles which are worth the expences of their production; in my next letter you will see what I think on this subject. But in the hypothesis in which we still are, of the liberty of industry, you will allow me to observe that there is no difficulty experienced in creating articles which are worth the expences of their production, except the high demands of suppliers of productive services. Now the high price of productive services denotes that what we seek for exists, that is to say, that there is a mode of employing them so as to make the produce sufficient to repay what they cost.
You reproach those who subscribe to my opinion with "having no regard to the influence so general and so important of man's disposition to indolence and laziness" (page 358). You suppose a case, in which men after having produced wherewith to satisfy their most necessary wants would prefer to do nothing more, the love of ease being predominant in their minds over that of pleasure. This supposition, allow me to say, proves in my favour and against you. What more shall I say than that we only sell to those who produce? Why are not articles of luxury sold to a farmer who likes to lead a rustic life? Because he had rather be idle than produce wherewith to purchase them. Whatever be the cause that circumscribes production, whether the want of capital, of population, of diligence, or liberty, the effect in my mind is the same: the articles which are offered on the one hand are not sold because too few are produced on the other.
You look upon indolence that will not produce as directly against a vent, and I am entirely of your opinion. But then, how can you consider as you do (ch. 7 sec. 9) the indolence of what you call unproductive consumers as favourable to this same vent. It is absolutely necessary you say (page 463) that a country which has great means of production should posses a numerous body of unproductive consumers. How can it be that that indolence which refuses to produce, should overate against a vent in the first ease, and be favourable to it in the second.
If I must speak plain, this indolence is against it in both eases. Who do you mean by this numerous body of unproductive consumers so necessary in your opinion to producers? Are they the proprietors of land and capitals? Doubtless they do not produce directly, but their property produces for them. They consume the value, to the creation of which their lands and capitals have contributed. They contribute therefore to the production, and can only purchase what they do, in consequence of that contribution. If they further contribute by their labor, and join to their profit as proprietors and capitalists other profit as laborers, thereby producing more, they can consume more, but it is not in their character of non-producers that they augment the vent of producers.
Do you mean public functionaries, soldiers, and state pensioners? Neither is it in their character of non-producers that they favour a vent. I am far from contesting the legitimacy of the emoluments they receive, but I cannot think that those who pay taxes would be at a loss what to do with their money if the collector did not come to their assistance either their wants would be more amply satisfied, or they would employ the same money in a reproductive manner. In either ease, the money would be spent and would favour the vent of some productions equal in value to what is now purchased by those you call unproductive consumers. Confess therefore, Sir, that it is not by unproductive consumers that the vent is favoured, but rather by those who help to keep them, and that in ease the unproductive consumers should happen to disappear, which God forbid, the vent would not be injured the value of a single halfpenny.
I know no better on what principle you decide (page 856) that production cannot go on if the value of commodities only pays a little more than the labor they have cost. It is by no means necessary that the produce should yield more than the cost of production, to enable the producers to go on. When an enterprise begins with a capital of a hundred thousand francs, it is sufficient if it yield a produce or a hundred thousand francs, to enable it to recommence its operation. And where, you ask, are the producer's profits? The whole capital has served to pay them.(15) And it is the price that has been paid for it which forms the revenue of all the producers. If the produce resulting from it is worth only a hundred thousand francs, the same capital is re-established and all the producers are paid.(16)
I am therefore not afraid of making your objection stronger than you have done by expressing it thus: "Although each commodity may have cost in its production the same quantity of labor and capital, and the one may be equivalent to the other, still they may both be so abundant, as not to purchase more labor than they cost. In this case, can production go on? certainly not." No? why not, I beseech you? Why cannot the farmers and manufacturers, who make together 60 francs worth of wheat and cloth, who I have shown would be in a situation to purchase this entire quantity of commodity, sufficient for their wants, why can they not after having bought and consumed it, begin again? They would have the same land, the same capital, the stone industry as before, they would be precisely where they were when they began, and they would have lived, and supported themselves upon their income from the sale of their productive services. What more is necessary for the preservation of society ? This great phenomenon Production being analysed and shewn in its true colours explains every thing.
After the apprehension you are under, Sir, that the productions of society should outstep in quantity what it can and will consume, it is natural you should behold these capitals increased by parsimony, with terror, for the capitals which seek employment, occasion an increase of production and fresh means of accumulation, from whence arise productions: in fact you seem to me to be afraid that we shall be stifled under a mass of wealth, which fear I confess to you by no means troubles me.
Was it for you, Sir, to stir up popular prejudices against those who do not spend their income in articles of luxury? You admit (page 351) that no permanent increase of wealth can take place without a previous augmentation of capital! you admit (page 352) that those who work are consumers as well as those who are idle, and still you fear that if we are always accumulating we cannot consume the quantity (continually increasing) of commodities produced by these new laborers. (page 353.)
Your vain fears must be destroyed, but first of all allow me to make a reflexion on the object of modern Political Economy, of a nature to direct us in our course.
What is it that distinguishes us from the Economists of the school of Quesnay? It is the pains we take to observe the connexion of the facts which regard wealth, the rigorous exactitude we impose upon ourselves in the description of them. Now to comprehend well, and describe well, we must as much as possible remain passive spectators. Not that we cannot nor ought sometimes to sigh at those gross operations, of the unhappy consequences of which we are often the sorrowful and helpless witnesses. Is the philanthropic historian interdicted from those sorrowful reflexions which the iniquities of policy sometimes draw from him? But a reproach, a thought, an advice are not history, and I am bold to say, are not Political Economy. What we owe to the public is to tell them how and why such a fact is the consequence of such other fact; whether they court or dread the consequence, that is sufficient for them, they know what they have to do, but no exhortations.
It consequently appears to me that I ought no more to preach, saving after the example of Adam Smith, than you ought to cry up dissipation after that of my Lord Lauderdale. Let us therefore confine ourselves to the observing how things follow and are linked together in the accumulation of capital.
In the first place I remark the major part of accumulations are necessarily slow. All the world, whatever income they may have, must live before they accumulate, and what I here call life is in general more expensive in proportion as we are rich. In most trades and professions, the maintenance and establishment of a family require the whole of the income and oftentimes the capital, and although something yearly may be saved, it is generally very disproportionate to the capital actually employed. An enterpriser who has a hundred thousand francs and industry, gains in ordinary eases and in a moderate time from twelve to fifteen thousand francs. Now with such a capital, and industry which is worth as much, that is to say a fortune of two hundred thousand francs, he is economical if he spends only ten thousand, in which ease he would only save yearly five thousand francs or the twentieth part of his capital.
If you divide this fortune as is often the ease between persons, one of whom furnishes the industry, the other the capital, the saving is then much less, because in that ease two families instead of one have to be maintained from the united profits of the capital and industry.(17) At all events it is only very great fortunes that can make great savings, and very large fortunes are rare in all countries. Capitals cannot therefore increase with a rapidity capable of producing the overthrow of industry.
I cannot subscribe to the fears which make you express, in page 357, "That a country is always more exposed to the rapid increase of the funds destined for the support of the laboring class than of the laboring class itself." Nor am I frightened at the enormous increase of production which may result from an augmentation (so slow in its nature) of capital. I see on the contrary these new capitals and the incomes they produce distribute themselves in the most favourable manner amongst producers. In the first place the capitalist in augmenting his capital sees his income increase, which induces greater enjoyments. A capital increased one year buys the following year a little more industrious service. These services being more in demand are paid a little better. A greater number of industrious persons find employ and the reward of their faculties. They work and unproductively consume the produce of their labor, so that if there are more productions created in consequence of this increase of capital there arc also more productions consumed. Now what is this but an increase of prosperity?
You say (pages 352 and 360) that if the savings have no other object than the increase of capital, "if the capitalists do not increase their enjoyments with their income, they have not a sufficient motive for saving: for men do not save for a philanthropy sake, and merely to make industry prosper." That is true. But what conclusion will you draw from it? If they save, I say they encourage industry and production, and this increase of production distributes itself in a manner very advantageous to the public. If they do not save I know not what to say. But you cannot conclude from that, that producers will be benefitted by it, for what the capitalists would have saved, would still have been spent. By spending it unproductively, the expenditure is not made greater. As to sums accumulated without being productively consumed, for instance, those hoarded up in the miser's coffer, neither Smith, myself, nor any one undertakes to defend this, but they alarm us but little in the first place, because they are very inconsiderable in comparison to the productive capitals of a Nation, and in the second place because their consumption is no more than suspended. There are no treasures that have not some time or other been spent either productively or unproductively.
I do not know upon what principle you consider reproductive expences, such as for digging canals, agricultural buildings, constructing machines, and paying artists and artisans, as more favourable to producers than improductive expenses such as those which are only for the personal gratification of the prodigal. "So long," you say (page 363,) "as cultivators are disposed to consume the articles of luxury created by the manufacturers, and the manufacturers the articles of luxury created by the cultivators, all is well. But if either class were disposed to economise with a view of bettering their condition and of providing for the establishment of their families, the case would be quite different," (that is to say apparently, that everything would go ill).
"The farmer instead of allowing his wife ribbons, laces, and velvets, would be content with plainer clothing for her, but his economy would take away from the manufacturer the power of purchasing so great a quantity of his produce, and he would no longer find a vent for the produce of land upon which nothing had been spared in labor and amendment. If the manufacturer on his part instead of gratifying his desires by the consumption of sugar, plumbs, and tobacco, wishes to lay up for the future, he cannot succeed, thanks to the parsimony of the farmer, and to the want of demand for the productions of manufacture.
And a little further on (page 365) "The population necessary to furnish clothing for such a society by the help of machines would be reduced to a trifling number, and would absorb but a small part of the excess of a rich and well cultivated territory. There would evidently be a general falling off in the demand, either for productions or population. And whilst it is certain that a proper passion for consumption (unproductive) would preserve a just proportion between the supply and demand, whatever may be the power of production, it: does not appear less clear that an inclination to save must inevitably lead to a production of commodities exceeding what the organisation and habits of such a society would permit them to consume."
You go so far as to ask what would become of the commodities, if every kind of consumption, bread and water excepted, were suspended only for six months(18) and, it is to me in the first instance that you address this question.
In this and the preceding passage you implicitly rest upon the fact, that a produce saved is withdrawn from every kind of consumption, whilst in all the discussions in all the works you attack, in those of Adam Smith, Mr. Ricardo, mine, and even your own,(19) it is established that a produce saved is a value withdrawn from an unproductive consumption to add it to the capital, that is, to that value which we consume, or cause to be consumed reproductively. What would become of the commodities, if every kind, of consumption, bread and water excepted, were suspended for six months? why, Sir, they would sell for the stone amount, for at length what would thereby be added to the amount of the capitals would buy meat, beer, clothes, shirts, shoes and furniture for that class of producers which the sums saved would set to work. But if we lived on bread and water and did not employ our savings? That is, you suppose we should impose upon ourselves generally an extravagant fast for pleasure and without an object.
What answer, Sir, would you give to him who amongst the number of strange events which may happen in society, should include the ease of the moon's falling upon the earth. A ease not physically impossible. Her rencontre with a suspended comet, or the-mere stoppage of this star in its orbit would be sufficient. Nevertheless I suspect you will think this question rather impertinent, and I confess to you that you will not be altogether wrong.
I admit that this is a method which philosophy does not disown, to push principles to the greatest possible extremity for the purpose of exaggerating them and discovering their errors, but this exaggeration itself is an error when the nature of things alone presents obstacles continually increasing to the excess we imagine, thereby rendering the supposition inadmissible. You oppose to all those who think with Adam Smith that saving is a good, the inconvenience of an excessive saving; but here the excess carries its remedy along with it. Where the capitals become too abundant, the interest which the capitalists derive from them become too low to balance the privations they impose upon themselves by their savings. Safe employment for capital will be difficult to be found; capitals are employed abroad. The common course of nature puts a stop to many accumulations. A great part of those which take place in families in easy circumstances, cease the moment it becomes necessary to provide for the settlement of the children. The income of the fathers, being reduced by this circumstance, they lose the means of accumulation, at the same time that they lose a part of the motives they had for accumulating. Many savings are stopped by death. A property is divided between heirs, and legatees, whose situation in no way resembles that of the deceased, and who frequently dissipate a part of the property instead of increasing it; that part which goes to government is most undoubtedly dissipated, for the state does not employ it reproductively.
The prodigality and ignorance of many persons who lose a part of their capital in ill-conceived enterprizes must necessarily be set against the savings of many others. Every thing serves to convince us that in what relates to accumulations as well as all the rest there is much less danger in letting things take their natural course than to endeavour to give them a forced direction.
You say (page 495) that in certain cases it is contrary to the principles of a sound Political Economy, to recommend saving. Ah Sir! A good Political Economy recommends little, it shews what a capital judiciously employed adds to the power of industry, the same as a good agriculture teaches what irrigation well directed adds to the power of the soil; for the rest it gives to mankind the truths it unfolds, it is for them to make use of them according to their intelligence and capacity.
All that is required, Sir, of so enlightened a man as yourself, is not to propagate the popular error, that prodigality any more than saving is beneficial to producers.(20)
We are too much inclined to sacrifice the future for the present. The principle of every amendment is on the contrary the sacrifice of the temptations of the moment for the future good. This is the ground-work of all virtue, and of all wealth. The man who loses his reputation by violating a deposit, he who ruins his health because he will not resist his inclinations, and he who spends to-day his means of getting to-morrow, all equally fail in economy, and this is what has given rise to the saying that vice is after all nothing more than a bad calculation.
How is it Mr. Malthus does not see that marriage produces children and consequently fresh wants, whilst capitals have no wants, but on the contrary carry with them the means of satisfying them?
10. Malthus's Principles of Political Economy, page 351.
11. A farmer who sells a sack of wheat for 30 francs, and buys a piece of calico for 30 francs, does he not exchange his wheat for the cloth? and the manufacturer who buys a sack of wheat for 30 francs, the price of his piece of cloth, does he not exchange his cloth for a sack of wheat?
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 of Political Economy, page 495.