Pagina 731 de 2651

To maintain and augment the stock which may be reserved for

immediate consumption, is the sole end and purpose both of the

fixed and circulating capitals. It is this stock which feeds,

clothes, and lodges the people. Their riches or poverty depend

upon the abundant or sparing supplies which those two capitals

can afford to the stock reserved for immediate consumption.

So great a part of the circulating capital being continually

withdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other two

branches of the general stock of the society, it must in its turn

require continual supplies without which it would soon cease to

exist. These supplies are principally drawn from three sources;

the produce of land, of mines, and of fisheries. These afford

continual supplies of provisions and materials, of which part is

afterwards wrought up into finished work and by which are

replaced the provisions, materials, and finished work,

continually withdrawn from the circulating capital. From mines,

too, is drawn what is necessary for maintaining and augmenting

that part of it which consists in money.