Page:Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches by Anne Turgot.djvu/69

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REFLECTIONS ON THE FORMATION

S47

The custom of payments in money has given rise to the distinction between the Buyer & the Seller.

In proportion as men have become accustomed to the practice of valuing everything in money, of exchanging all their superfluity for money, and of exchanging money only for the things which are useful or agreeable to them at the moment, they have become accustomed to consider the exchanges of Commerce from a new point of view. They have distinguished two persons in it, the Seller and the Buyer. The Seller was the one who gave the commodity for money, and the Buyer the one who gave money to get the commodity.

S48

The practice of using money has greatly facilitated the separation of different labours among the different Members of Society.

The more money came to stand for everything else, the more possible did it become for each person, by devoting himself entirely to the kind of cultivation or industry he had chosen, to relieve himself of all care for the satisfaction of his other wants, and to think only how he could obtain as much money as possible by the sale of his fruits or his labour, very sure that by means of this money he can get all the rest. It is thus that the employment of money has prodigiously hastened the progress of Society.