Thoughts on the mechanism of societies

by marquis de Charles Casaux

Were the wheat in England to cost only from 26 to 27s. per quarter, the landed revenue, now called 63 millions, would, in fact, amount to no more than 42; this cannot be controverted: in this case every thing would be paid for in proportion, and certainly no one could gain or lose by it: therefore if we invert the proportion, i. e. if the quarter of wheat rise to 40s. at Rome, instead of 27s. and the other productions of the earth and of industry rise in price in the same proportion, as well as the labour by which they are procured, the revenue of the Ecclesiastical State, which, in the present supposition, would be only 10 millions sterling, would swell suddenly up to 15 millions, without any one being a sufferer.—When the question is, only to take a nominal share in the most dreaded effects of the English taxes, in order to procure such an addition of wealth, and get rid, at the same time, of all fear of scarcity, it would be very wrong to reject the expedient.—Money, it is said, is wanted to carry on the whole circulation at that rate;—but, in England, where, by a single nod, they attract money from every part of the globe, do they not make guineas with paper?—Why should they not, at Rome, make as many paper-crowns as are necessary to facilitate a general circulation of the products there? These products are so wisely raised in price from 27 to 40s. that the number of grains of silver necessary to purchase a pound of wheat, made into a loaf, being now nearly upon an equality in Holland, in France, and at Rome, the national trader, whose business it will be to guard against scarcity, and the foreign merchants who will be invited to concur in remedying the evil, will no longer be able to add to the price of wheat, any more than a reasonable compensation for his advance, trouble, risque, and the quality of the service rendered: a compensation besides, on the extent of which it will be much more difficult to impose upon the Sovereign, or any one else, at least beyond a certain degree: to this advantage let us add that of keeping the needy from the thoughts of destroying that wealth which has been gleaned by former services.

In regard to the confidence necessary to favour that paper money, with the same degree of value as that of England has obtained, I confess that I do not hesitate to suppose, that the paper-money of a Sovereign is never deemed contemptible, but when an opinion prevails that he himself will despise it; and I dare say (were I to be charged with a want of modesty) that the public is too deeply interested in the inferences that may be drawn from my arguments, for their consistency or absurdity not to be very soon demonstrated: now, supposing them to be consistent, I think it would be, then, beyond all possibility, even to imagine a circumstance wherein the interest of a Prince could induce him to dishonour himself. This great truth, generally acknowledged, could not long remain ineffectual.—But this is not the matter in point.

The case in point is, to observe,

First, that, in the same manner as foreign coin is resolved into the quantity and standard of the metals that compose it, in order to know how much of the national coin may be given in exchange, just so all kinds of foreign commodities are resolved into the quantity of labour contained in them, or supposed to be so, that the quantity of national labour, corresponding thereto, may be ascertained:

Secondly, that therefore, labour alone being the standard of value, labour is consequently the only standard that can regulate the exchanges between one nation and another:

Thirdly, that the national prices, or, to speak more properly, money is, in fact, the most proper standard of labour between two manufacturers in the same town; and that nothing but the misconduct and unrestrained cupidity of the one, can prevent him from selling his goods at the price by which the other clears a profit that satisfies him; but in each country the common price of labour being arbitrarily determined by the common price of the materials necessary to set the labourer at work, the common price of wheat is, in fact, the measure of the common price of labour in all nations:

Fourthly, that it is impossible a nation should be willing to barter a greater quantity of its own labour, against a less quantity of the labour of another; and yet it is to such a degree of absurdity, that we must reduce the supposed advantage of the dreaded competition:

Fifthly, that the liberty of exporting corn, even under its present restrictions, makes, as it were, of all Europe, at this day, only one family; that, on the whole, there is constantly as much of that indispensable commodity as is necessary for all the family; but that a man whose folly would be to trace out, describe, and acknowledge, throughout every thing that concerns society in any essential point, the stamp of an universal benevolence, determined to unite all men together by their wants and interests if it is impossible to do it by more disinterested motives, would not prove too inconsistent in a fit of that folly which might induce him to suspect some marks of that stamp, even in the bad seasons, in the storms which successively visit all the parts of the world, make them all sensible of the necessity of such union, and soon bring nearly upon a level, all the different prices of that indispensable commodity, the cultivation of which requires, almost every where, the same labour, or which, by its quantity, always answers, upon an average, to the labour bestowed upon it:

Sixthly and in fine, that hence results the impossibility that there should long subsist, in the prices of any thing, a difference capable of making any competition whatever, formidable to any man who will not be so unjust as to wish and ask beads of gold for beads of glass, or, in other words, to try in bartering, to obtain the labour of 150 in exchange for that of 100 only.