صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

quantity to its vent as it was, is it not evident, that half an ounce of silver will still exchange for 15lb. of lead, though it will exchange but for one-tenth of a bushel of wheat? and he that has use of lead will as soon take 15lb. weight of lead as half an ounce of silver, for one-tenth of a bushel of wheat, and no more. So that if you say, that money now is nine-tenths less worth than it was the former year, you must say so of lead too, and all other things, that keep the same proportion to money which they had before. The variation, indeed, is first and most taken notice of in money: because that is the universal measure by which people reckon, and used by every body in the valuing of all things. For calling that half an ounce of silver half a crown, they speak properly, and are readily understood, when they say, half a crown, or two shillings and sixpence, will now buy one-tenth of a bushel of wheat, but do not say, that 15lb. of lead will now buy onetenth of a bushel of wheat, because it is not generally used to this sort of reckoning: nor do they say, lead is less worth than it was, though, in respect of wheat, lead be nine-tenths worse than it was, as well as silver; only by the tale of shillings we are better enabled to judge of it because these are measures, whose ideas by constant use are settled in every Englishman's mind."

This, I suppose, is the true value of money, when it passes from one to another, in buying and selling; where it runs the same changes of higher, or lower, as any other commodity doth: for one equal quantity whereof you shall receive in exchange more or less of another commodity, at one time, than you do at another. For a farmer that carries a bushel of wheat to market, and a labourer that carries half a crown, shall find that the money of one, as well as corn of the other, shall at some times purchase him more or less leather, or salt, according as they are in greater plenty, and scarcity, one to another. So that in exchanging coined silver for any other commodity, (which is buying and selling) the same measure governs the proportion you receive, as if you exchanged lead, or wheat, or any other commodity. That which regulates the price,

i. e. the quantity given for money (which is called buy ing and selling) for another commodity, (which is called bartering) is nothing else but their quantity in proportion to their vent. If then lowering of use makes not your silver more in specie, or your wheat or other commodities less, it will not have any influence at all to make it exchange for less of wheat or any other commodity, than it will have on lead, to make it exchange for less wheat, or any other commodity.

Money therefore, in buying and selling, being perfectly in the same condition with other commodities, and subject to all the same laws of value, let us next see how it comes to be of the same nature with land, by yielding a certain yearly income, which we call use, or interest. For land produces naturally something new and profitable, and of value to mankind; but money is a barren thing, and produces nothing; but by compact transfers that profit, that was the reward of one man's labour, into another man's pocket. That which occasions this is the unequal distribution of money; which inequality has the same effect too upon land that it has upon money. For my having more money in my hand than I can or am disposed to use in buying and selling, makes me able to lend: and another's want of so much money as he could employ in trade makes him willing to borrow. But why then, and for what consideration, doth he pay use? For the same reason, and upon as good consideration, as the tenant pays rent for your land. For as the unequal distribution of land, (you having more than you can or will manure, and another less) brings you a tenant for your land; and the same unequal distribution of money, (I having more than I can or will employ, and another less) brings me a tenant for my money: so my money is apt in trade, by the industry of the borrower, to produce more than six per cent. to the borrower, as well as your land, by the labour of the tenant, is apt to produce more fruits than his rent comes to; and therefore deserves to be paid for, as well as land, by a yearly rent. For though the usurer's money would bring him in no yearly profit, if he did not lend it,

(supposing he employs it not himself) and so his six per cent. may seem to be the fruit of another man's labour, yet he shares not near so much of the profit of another man's labour as he that lets land to a tenant. For, without the tenant's industry, (supposing, as before, the owner would not manage it himself) his land would yield him little or no profit. So that the rent he receives is a greater portion of the fruit of his tenant's labour than the use is at six per cent. For generally, he that borrows one thousand pounds at six per cent., and so pays sixty pounds per annum use, gets more above his use in one year, by his industry, than he that rents a farm of sixty pounds per annum gets in two, above his rent, though his labour be harder.

It being evident therefore, that he that has skill in traffic, but has not money enough to exercise it, has not only reason to borrow money, to drive his trade. and get a livelihood; but as much reason to pay use for that money as he, who having skill in husbandry, but no land of his own to employ it in, has not only reason to rent land, but to pay money for the use of it: it follows, that borrowing money upon use is not only, by the necessity of affairs, and the constitution of human society, unavoidable to some men; but that also to receive profit from the loan of money is as equitable and lawful as receiving rent for land, and more tolerable to the borrower, notwithstanding the opinion of some over-scrupulous men.

This being so, one would expect, that the rate of interest should be the measure of the value of land in number of years' purchase for which the fee is sold; for 100l. per annum being equal to 100l. per annum, and so to perpetuity; and 100l. per annum being the product of 1000l. when interest is at 10 per cent., of 1250l. when interest is at 8 per cent., of 16667. or thereabouts, when interest is at 6 per cent., of 2000l. when money is at 5 per cent., of 2500l. when money is at 4 per cent. One would conclude, I say, that land should sell in proportion to use, according to these following rates, viz.

[blocks in formation]

But experience tells us, that neither in queen Elizabeth nor king James the First's reigns, when interest was at ten per cent. was land sold for ten; or when it was at eight per cent. for twelve and a half years' purchase, or any thing near the low rate that high use required (if it were true, that the rate of interest governed the price of land) any more than land now yields twentyfive years' purchase, because a great part of the monied men will now let their money, upon good security, at four per cent. cent. Thus we see in fact how little this rule has held at home: and he that will look into Holland will find, that the purchase of land was raised there when their interest fell. This is certain, and past doubt, that the legal interest can never regulate the price of land, since it is plain, that the price of land has never changed with it, in the several changes have been made in the rate of interest by law: nor now that the rate of interest is by law the same through all England, is the price of land every where the same, it being in some parts constantly sold for four or five years' purchase more than in others. Whether you, or I, can tell the reason of this, it matters not to the question in hand: but it being really so, this is plain demonstration against those who pretend to advance and regulate the price of land by a law concerning the interest of money.

But yet I will give you some of my guesses, why the price of land is not regulated (as, at first sight, it seems it should be) by the interest of money. Why it is not regulated by the legal use is manifest, because the rate of money does not follow the standard of the law, but the price of the market: and men, not observing the legal and forced, but the natural and current interest of money, regulate their affairs by that. But why the rate of land does not follow the current interest of money, requires a farther consideration.

All things that are bought and sold raise and fall their price, in proportion as there are more buyers or sellers. Where there are a great many sellers to a few buyers, there, use what art you will, the thing to be sold will be cheap. On the other side, turn the tables, and raise up a great many buyers for a few sellers, and the same thing will immediately grow dear. This rule holds in land as well as all other commodities, and is the reason why in England, at the same time that land in some places is at seventeen or eighteen years' purchase, it is about others, where there are profitable manufactures, at two or three-andtwenty years' purchase; because there (men thriving and getting money, by their industry, and willing to leave their estates to their children in land, as the surest and most lasting provision, and not so liable to casualties as money in untrading or unskilful hands) are many buyers ready always to purchase, but few sellers. For, the land thereabout being already possessed by that sort of industrious and thriving men, they have neither need, nor will, to sell. In such places of manufacture, the riches of the one not arising from the squandering and waste of another, (as it doth in other places, where men live lazily upon the product of the land) the industry of the people, bringing in increase of wealth from remote parts, makes plenty of money there, without the impoverishing of their neighbours. And, when the thriving tradesman has got more than he can well employ in trade, his next thoughts are to look out for a purchase; but it must be a purchase in the neighbourhood, where the estate may be under his eye, and within convenient distance, that the care and pleasure of his farm may not take him off from the engagements of his calling, nor remove his children too far from him, or the trade he breeds them up in. This seems to be the reason, why in places wherein thriving manufactures have erected themselves, land has been observed to sell quicker, and for more years' purchase, than in other places, as about Halifax in the north, Taunton and Exeter in the west.

« السابقةمتابعة »