Enlightenment · English
Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches
Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches, by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), a public-domain text from Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty.
Chapters
- 012. The above hypothesis neither has existed nor could continue. The diversity of soils and multiplicity of wants, compelprose
- 023. The productions of the earth require long and difficult preparations, before they are rendered fit to supply the wantprose
- 034. The necessity of these preparations, bring on the exchange of productions for labour.prose
- 045. Pre-eminence of the husbandman who produces, over the artificer who prepares. The husbandman is the first mover in thprose
- 056. The wages of the workman is limited by the competition among those who work for a subsistence. He only gains a liveliprose
- 067. The husbandman is the only one whose industry produces more than the wages of his labour. He, therefore, is the only prose
- 079. In the first ages of society, the proprietors could not be distinguished from the cultivators.prose
- 0812. Inequality in the division of property: causes which render that inevitable.prose
- 0914. Division of the produce between the cultivator and the proprietor. Net Produce, or revenue.prose
- 1015. A new division of society into three classes. Cultivators, Artificers, and Proprietors, or the productive, stipendiaprose
- 1116. Resemblance between the two laborious classes.prose
- 1217. Essential difference between the two laborious classes.prose
- 1320. First method, or cultivation by labourers on wages.prose
- 1421. Second method, cultivation by slavesprose
- 1522. Cultivation by slaves cannot exist in great societies.prose
- 1623. Slavery annexed to the land, succeeds to slavery properly so called.prose
- 1724. Vassalage succeeds to slavery, annexed to the land, and the slave becomes a proprietor. Third method; alienation of prose
- 1825. Fourth Method. Partial colonizationprose
- 1926. Fifth method. Renting, or letting out the landprose
- 2027. The last method is the most advantageous, but it supposes the country already rich.prose
- 2128. Recapitulation of the several methods of making lands productive.prose
- 2231. Rise of Commerce. Principle of the valuation of commercial things.prose
- 2332. How the current value of the exchange of merchandize is established.prose
- 2433. Commerce gives in all merchandize a current value with respect to any other merchanize; from whence it follows that prose
- 2534. Every merchandize may serve as a scale or common measure, by which to compare the value of any other.prose
- 2635. Every species of merchandize does not present a scale equally commodious. It is proper to prefer the use of such as prose
- 2736. For want of an exact correspondence between the value and the number or quantity, it is supplied by a mean valuationprose
- 2837. Example of those mean valuations which become an ideal expression for value.prose
- 2938. All merchandize is a representative pledge of every object of commerce, but more or less commodities for use, as it prose
- 3039. All merchandize has the two essential properties of money, to measure and to represent all value: and in this sense prose
- 3141. Different matters are able to serve and have served for current money.prose
- 3242. Metals, and particularly gold and silver, are the most proper for that purpose, and why.prose
- 3343. Gold and silver are constituted, by the nature of things, money, and universal money, independent of all convention,prose
- 3446. Variations in the value of gold and silver, compared with the other objects of commerce, and with each other.prose
- 3549. Of the excess of annual produce accumulated to form capitals.prose
- 3650. Personal property, accumulation of money.prose
- 3752. Necessity of advances for cultivation.prose
- 3853. First advance furnished by the land although uncultivated.prose
- 3954. Cattle a circulating wealth, even before the cultivation of the earth.prose
- 4056. Personal property has an exchangeable value, even for land itself.prose
- 4157. Valuations of lands by the proportion of their revenue, with the sum of personal property, or the value for which thprose
- 4258. All capital in money, and all amounts of value, are equivalent to land producing a revenue equal to some portion of prose
- 4359. Another employment for money in advances for enterprises of manufacture or industry.prose
- 4460. Explanation of the use of the advances of capitals in enterprises of industry; on their returns and the profits theyprose
- 4562. Another employment of capitals, in advances towards undertakings of agriculture. Observations on the use, and indispprose
- 4664. The default of capitalists, undertakers, limits the cultivation of lands to a small extent.prose
- 4766. Fourth employment of capitals, in advances for enterprises of commerce. Necessity of the interposition of merchants,prose
- 4867. Different orders of merchants. They all have this in common, that they purchase to sell again; and that their traffiprose
- 4968. The true idea of the circulation of money.prose
- 5069. All extensive undertakings, particularly those of manufactures and of commerce, must indispensibly have been very coprose
- 5170. Capitals being as necessary to all undertakings as labour and industry, the industrious man shares voluntarily the pprose
- 5271. Fifth employment of capitals, lending on interest; nature of a loan.prose
- 5372. False ideas on lending upon interest.prose
- 5473. Errors of the schoolmen refuted.prose
- 5574. True foundation of interest of money.prose
- 5675. Answer to an objection.prose
- 5776. The rate of interest ought to be fixed, as the price of every other merchandize, by the course of trade alone.prose
- 5877. Money has in commerce two different valuations. One expresses the quantity of money or silver we give to procure difprose
- 5978. These two valuations are independent of each other, and are governed by quite different principles.prose
- 6079. In comparing the value of money with that of commodities, we consider silver as a metal, which is an object of commeprose
- 6180. The price of interest depends immediately on the proportion of the demand of the borrowers, with the offer of the leprose
- 6282. The lowering of interest proves, that in Europe oeconomy has in general prevailed over luxury.prose
- 6387. Money employed in cultivation, manufactures, or commerce, ought to produce more than the interest of money on loan.prose
- 6488. Meantime the freedom of these various employments are limited by each other, and maintain, notwithstanding their ineprose
- 6589. The current interest of money is the standard by which the abundance or scarcity of capitals may be judged; it is thprose
- 6690. Influence of the rate of interest of money on all lucrative enterprizes.prose
- 6791. The total Riches of a nation consists, 1. in the clear revenue of all the real estates, multiplied by the rate of thprose
- 6892. The sum of lent capitals cannot be understood without a two-fold reckoning.prose
- 6994. The lender of money belongs, as to his persons, to the disposing class.prose
- 7095. The use which the money-lender makes of his interest.prose
- 7196. The interest of the money is not disposable in one sense, viz. so as the state may be authorized to appropriate, witprose
- 7298. Answer to this objection.prose
- 7399. There exists no revenue strictly disposable in a state, but the clear produce of lands.prose
- 74100. the land has also furnished the total of moveable riches, or existing capitals, and which are formed only by a portprose
- 75101. Although money is the direct object in saving, and it is, if we may call it so, the first foundation of capitals, yprose