a return that agriculture or commerce gratuitously furnishes to him who has made the advances; it is the price and condition of that advance, without which the enterprise could not be carried on. If this return is diminished, the capitalist will withdraw his money, and the undertaking will come to an end. This return[1] ought, then, to be inviolable, and enjoy an entire immunity, because it is the price of an advance, made to an undertaking, without which the undertaking could not go on. To touch it, would be to augment the price of advances in all undertakings, and consequently to lessen the undertakings themselves, that is to say, agriculture, industry and commerce.
This should lead us to conclude that when we said that the capitalist who had lent to a proprietor appeared to belong to the proprietary class, this appearance had something equivocal in it which needed to be unravelled. In fact the exact truth is that the interest of his money is no more disposable, that is to say, is no more capable of being encroached upon than is that of the money lent to undertakers of agriculture and commerce. This interest is equally the price of a free agreement, and is equally incapable of being encroached upon without altering the price at which money is lent: for it matters little to whom the loan has been made; if the price of the loan changes and increases for the proprietor, it will change and increase for the husbandman, the manufacturer, and the merchant. In a word, the capitalist lender of money ought to be considered as a dealer in a commodity which is absolutely necessary for the production of wealth, and which cannot
- ↑ Rétribution.
