CHAPTER IV.
OF CAPITAL.
Definition of capital.WE have already explained that capital is as indispensable a requisite of production as either labour or appropriate natural agents. A very little consideration will render it evident that labourers, whilst engaged in any particular industry, cannot live upon the commodity which their labour is assisting to produce. The ploughman who tills the soil from which, in the following autumn, the harvest will be gathered, is fed with the wealth which his master has saved; or, in other words, the master pays his labourer's wages from the wealth which he has previously saved. The production of wealth, therefore, cannot proceed unless some of the wealth previously produced has been set aside from immediate consumption. The wealth which has been accumulated with the object of assisting production, is termed capital; and, therefore, the capital of the country is the wealth which is not immediately consumed unproductively, and which may, consequently, be devoted to assist the further production of wealth. This is a wide definition, but it is correct and sufficiently definite until the subject has been more fully elucidated.
