Page:The wealth of nations, volume 2.djvu/49

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OF DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENT OF CAPITALS
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dispose him to content himself with a smaller revenue from land, than what he might have by lending out his money at interest. These advantages are sufficient to compensate a certain difference of revenue; but they will compensate a certain difference only; and if the rent of land should fall short of the interest of money by a greater difference, nobody would buy land, which would soon reduce its ordinary price. On the contrary, if the advantages should much more than compensate the difference, everybody would buy land, which again would soon raise its ordinary price. When interest was at ten per cent, land was commonly sold for ten and twelve years' purchase. As interest sunk to six, five and four per cent, the price of land rose to twenty, five-and-twenty, and thirty years' purchase. The market rate of interest is higher in France than in England; and the common price of land is lower. In England it commonly sells at thirty, in France at twenty years' purchase.


CHAPTER V

of the different employment of capitals

THOUGH all capitals are destined for the maintenance of productive labor only, yet the quantity of that labor, which equal capitals are capable of putting into motion, varies extremely according to the diversity of their employment; as does likewise the value which that employment adds to the annual produce of the land and labor of the country.

A capital may be employed in four different ways: Either, first, in procuring the rude produce annually re-