A Treatise on Political Economy
By Jean-Baptiste Say
A NEW edition of this translation of the popular treatise of M. Say having been called for, the five previous American editions being entirely out of print, the editor has endeavoured to render the work more deserving of the favour it has received, by subjecting every part of it to a careful revision. As the translation of Mr. Prinsep was made in the year 1821, from an earlier edition of the original treatise, namely, the fourth, which had not received the last corrections and improvements of the author, wherever an essential principle had been involved in obscurity, or an error had crept in, which had been subsequently cleared up and removed, the American editor has, in this impression, reconciled the language of the text and notes to the fifth improved edition, published in 1826, the last which M. Say lived to give to the world. It has not, however, been deemed necessary to extend these alterations in the translation any further than to the correction of such discrepancies and errors as are here alluded to; and the editor has not ventured to recast the translation, as given by Mr. Prinsep, merely with a view to accommodate its phraseology, in point of neatness of expression or diction, to the last touches of the author. The translation of Mr. Prinsep, the editor must again be permitted to observe, has been executed with sufficient fidelity, and with considerable spirit and elegance; and in his opinion it could not be much improved by even remoulding it after the last edition. The translation of the introduction, given by the present editor, has received various verbal corrections; and such alterations and additions as were introduced by the author into his fifth edition, will now be found translated. [From the Advertisement to the 6th edition.]
Translator/Editor
C. R. Prinsep, trans. and Clement C. Biddle., ed.
First Pub. Date
1803
Publisher
Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.,
Pub. Date
1855
Comments
First written in French. 6th edition. Based on the 4th-5th editions.
Copyright
The text of this edition is in the public domain. Picture of Jean-Baptiste Say courtesy of The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.
- Advertisement
- Introduction
- Bk.I,Ch.I
- Bk.I,Ch.II
- Bk.I,Ch.III
- Bk.I,Ch.IV
- Bk.I,Ch.V
- Bk.I,Ch.VI
- Bk.I,Ch.VII
- Bk.I,Ch.VIII
- Bk.I,Ch.IX
- Bk.I,Ch.X
- Bk.I,Ch.XI
- Bk.I,Ch.XII
- Bk.I,Ch.XIII
- Bk.I,Ch.XIV
- Bk.I,Ch.XV
- Bk.I,Ch.XVI
- Bk.I,Ch.XVII
- Bk.I,Ch.XVIII
- Bk.I,Ch.XIX
- Bk.I,Ch.XX
- Bk.I,Ch.XXI
- Bk.I,Ch.XXII
- Bk.II,Ch.I
- Bk.II,Ch.II
- Bk.II,Ch.III
- Bk.II,Ch.IV
- Bk.II,Ch.V
- Bk.II,Ch.VI
- Bk.II,Ch.VII
- Bk.II,Ch.VIII
- Bk.II,Ch.IX
- Bk.II,Ch.X
- Bk.II,Ch.XI
- Bk.III,Ch.I
- Bk.III,Ch.II
- Bk.III,Ch.III
- Bk.III,Ch.IV
- Bk.III,Ch.V
- Bk.III,Ch.VI
- Bk.III,Ch.VII
- Bk.III,Ch.VIII
- Bk.III,Ch.IX
THE SOURCES OF REVENUE.
BOOK II, CHAPTER II
It has been shown in Book I., that products are raised by the productive means at the command of mankind, that is to say, by human industry, capital, and natural powers and agents. The products thus raised, form the revenue of those possessed of these means of production, and enable them to procure such of the necessaries and comforts of existence, as are not furnished gratuitously, either by nature, or by their fellow-creatures.
The exclusive right to dispose of revenue is a consequence of the exclusive right, or property, in the means of production; and such of them, as are not the subject of human appropriation, are not either items of productive means, or sources of revenue; they form no part, of human wealth, which implies appropriation and exclusive possession; for there is no such thing as wealth, unless where property is known and established, and where possession is both acknowledged and secured.
The origin or the justice of the right of property, it is unnecessary to investigate, in the study of the nature, and progress of human wealth. Whether the actual owner of the soil, or the person from whom he derived its possession, have obtained it by prior occupancy, by violence, or by fraud, can make no difference whatever in the business of the production and distribution of its product or revenue.
Perhaps it is scarcely necessary to remark, that property in that class of productive means, which has been called human industry, and in that distinguished by the general name of capital, is far more sacred and indisputable, than in the remaining class of natural powers and agents. The industrious faculties of man, his intelligence, muscular strength, and dexterity, are peculiar to himself and inherent in his nature. And capital, or accumulated produce, is the mere result of human frugality and forbearance to exercise the faculty of consuming, which, if fully exerted, would have destroyed products as fast as they were created, and these never could have been the existing property of any one; wherefore, no one else, but he who has practised this self-denial, can claim the result of it with any show of justice. Frugality is next of kin to the actual creation of products, which confers the most unquestionable of all titles to the property in them.
These several sources of production are some of them alienable, as land, implements of arts, &c.; and some inalienable, as personal faculties. Some also are consumable, as are all the items of floating capital; others, inconsumable, as land. Some, too, there are, that are neither alienable nor consumable, yet are capable of destruction, as the human faculties, intellectual and corporeal, which vanish with human existence.
Such as are capable of consumption, as, for instance, the floating values, whereon production expends its energies, may be consumed either in such manner as to occasion a re-production, in which case they will still constitute a part of the means of production; or in such manner as to yield no further production, in which case they cease to form any part of those means, and are devoted to pure destruction, more or less rapid.
Although revenue, as well as the sources of production, is a constituent part of individual wealth, yet no one is reputed to reduce his fortune by the consumption of his revenue only, provided that he does not encroach upon his productive means; because revenue is a regenerating product, whereas the means of production, so long as they continue to exist, are a constant and perpetual source of new products.
The current value of these appropriable sources of production is established on the same principles, as that of all other objects; that is to say, by the conflicting influence of supply and demand. The only remark that need be made upon it is, that the demand does not originate in the enjoyment anticipated from the immediate use of the particular source; for a field or an implement of trade yields to the owner no direct enjoyment, which is capable of estimation; their value has reference to the value of the product they are capable of raising, which itself originates in the utility of that product, or the satisfaction it may be capable of affording.
With regard to those sources, that are inalienable, as are the human faculties of mind and body, they can never be the subject of actual exchange, and their value is a matter of mere mental estimation, grounded upon the value they may be capable of producing Thus the productive means of this description, which yield to an artisan the wages of 1 dollar a day, or of 365 dollars a year, may be reckoned equivalent to a vested capital yielding an equal annual revenue.
And now that we have taken this general and cursory view of the sources of production and of revenue in the abstract, we may enter upon a more minute analysis of their nature, which will lead us into the labyrinth of the science of political economy, and furnish us with a clue to some of its most intricate windings.
The immediate result of these sources is not, strictly speaking, a product, but a productive service that helps us to a product. Products should, therefore, be considered as the result of an interchange of productive service on the one hand, and the actual products on the other, subsequently to which, revenue appears for the first time in the shape of products; and these again may be exchanged for other products, into which latter form the same revenue will then be converted.
The conception of this matter will be rendered clearer by a practical illustration. A piece of arable land yields an annual product, say of 300 bushels of wheat, whereof 200 bushels more or less, may be considered as resulting from the agency of the capital and industry employed in its cultivation, and the remaining 100 bushels as resulting from the natural productive powers of the soil. The revenue, yielded by the land to the proprietor, will have appeared first in the way of concurring productive service afforded by the object of property, the land: which productive service will have been transferred or lent to the cultivator for the sum of 100 bushels of wheat, and this will be the first act of exchange. If these 100 bushels of wheat be converted into specie, either by the proprietor himself or by the cultivator on his behalf, and in consequence of a mutual arrangement, this specie will still be the same identical revenue, though under the secondary form of money.
This analysis will conduct us to a knowledge of the real value of revenue, which falls in with the general definition of value given in the preceding chapter, namely, the amount of other objects obtainable by exchange for the object of intended transfer What, then, is the object of transfer, for which revenue is given in exchange? why, the productive service of those means, that the receiver of revenue may be possessed of. And what is obtained by the primary act of exchange, which we designate production? why, products. Wherefore, the value of revenue is large in proportion, not to the value, but to the quantity of the product obtained, to the sum total of utility created.
Thus we find, that the ratio of national revenue, in the aggregate, is determined by the amount of the product, and not by its value.
*7 It is not so with individual revenue; because a variation in the relative value of different products will operate to swell that of one individual, or class, at the expense of another.
Could each member of society live on the primary products whereof his revenue is composed, the relative degree of revenue would, like that of nations, in the aggregate, depend upon the amount of the product, upon the sum of utility created, and not upon its exchangeable value. But, in a state of society at all elevated above barbarism, this is impossible; each individual consumes a much less quantity of his own peculiar product, than of those of other people, which he buys with his own. The grand point, therefore, of individual importance to the producer, is, the quantity of product not of his own creation, which he may be able to procure with his own productive means, or with the products created by their agency. Suppose, for instance, the land, capital, and personal faculties of a particular individual to be engaged in the cultivation of saffron; as he will probably himself consume little or no saffron, his revenue will consist of such other objects, as his annual crop of saffron can be exchanged for; and the ratio of that revenue will be elevated by a rise in the price of saffron; while that of the consumers of that article will be proportionately reduced to the full extent of the rise of its price. On the contrary, their revenue will be augmented in like manner by a fall of its price, to the prejudice of the revenue of the grower.
Every saving in the charges of production, that is to say, every saving in the productive agency exerted to raise the same product, is an increase of the revenue of the community to an equal extent; as, for example, the contrivance to raise as much upon one acre of land as before upon two, or to effect with two days’ labour, what before required as much as four; for the productive agency thus released may be directed to the increase of production.
*8 And this accession of revenue will accrue to the individual benefit of the contriver, so long as the contrivance can be confined to his own knowledge; but to that of consumers at large, as soon as the notoriety shall have awakened competition, and obliged him to limit his profits to the actual charges of production.
However revenue may be transformed by the various acts of exchange, commencing with the productive agency, which is the primitive exhibition of revenue, it remains the same in substance, until the moment of its ultimate consumption. The revenue yielded by an acre of arable land remains, in reality, the same, both after its primary exchange, by the act of production, into the form of wheat, and after its secondary transformation into silver coin, even although the wheat have been consumed by the purchasers. But, as soon as the revenued individual converts his silver coin into an object of consumption, and that object is simply consumed, the value of his revenue thenceforth ceases to exist, and is destroyed and lost, although the silver coin, whose form it once assumed, continue in existence. It must not be imagined still to exist in the hands of the temporary holder of the coin, although lost to the receiver of revenue; but is equally lost to mankind at large; for the actual holder of the coin must have obtained possession of it by the transfer of other revenue of his own, or of some source of revenue before in his own possession.
When revenue is added to capital, it thenceforth ceases to be revenue, or, as such, to be capable of satisfying the wants of the proprietor; it can only yield an increased revenue, being an item of productive capital, consumable in the manner of capital, that is to say, in such way as to yield a product in exchange and return for the value consumed.
When capital or land, or personal service, is let out to hire, its productive power is transferred to the renter or adventurer in production, in consideration of a given amount of products agreed upon beforehand. It is a sort of speculative bargain, wherein the renter takes the risk of profit and loss, according as the revenue he may realise, or the product obtained by the agency transferred, shall exceed or fall short of the rent or hire he is to pay. Yet one revenue only can be realised; and, though a borrowed capital may yield to the adventurer an annual product of 10 per cent. instead of 5 per cent. which he pays in the shape of interest, yet the revenue of the capital, the productive service it affords, will not be 10 per cent.; for in that gross product is included the recompense of the productive agency, both of the capital and of the industry that has turned it to account.
The actual revenue of each individual is proportionate to the quantity of products at his disposal, being either the immediate fruit of his productive means, or the result of those transformations from its primitive state, which his revenue may have undergone, until it have assumed the shape of the ultimate object of his consumption. The ratio of that quantity, or of utility inherent in it, can only be estimated from its current price in the dealings of mankind. In this sense, the revenue of an individual is equal to the value derived from his productive means; which value, however, is the greater, in respect to the objects of his consumption, in proportion to the cheapness of those objects, which augments his command of other than his own immediate products.
In like manner, the revenue of a nation is the more considerable, in proportion to the intensity of the value whereof it consists,
i. e. of the value of its aggregate productive powers, and to its high relative degree to the value of the objects of external attainment. The value of productive agency must be high, even where that of products is low; for it should be always recollected, that, since the intensity of value depends upon the quantity of objects obtainable in exchange, revenue, or, in other words, the agency of the national sources of production, is large, in proportion to the abundance and cheapness of the products derived from them.
Sismondi and Malthus, that economy of human productive exertion makes the multiplication of unproductive consumers, not only probable, but necessary. But where a poor-law or monastic establishment provides for the subsistence of the human agency thus rendered superfluous, there will probably be no increase of national revenue consequent upon a saving of productive agency; for the surplus labour is thereby released from the necessity of exertion in some other channel. With such institutions, the enlargement of productive power by machinery or otherwise may be very great, without any enlargement of national production, revenue, or wealth. Translator.
Book II, Chapter III