Section XCVIII.. How Goods Are Paid for.—the Rent for Goods.

How Goods Are Paid For.—The Rent For Goods.

Payment for goods (§ 1 ff.) of any kind can be made only in other goods.(587)(588) Hence, the greater, more varied, and the better adapted to satisfy wants, production is, the more readily does any product find a remunerative market; more readily in England, for instance, in spite, or rather, because of, the great competition there, than in Greenland or Madagascar. From this it follows that, as a rule, a person is in a better condition to purchase more goods in proportion as he has produced more himself. According to official accounts, the average value of a harvest of wheat and potatoes in Prussia was formerly 332,500,000 thalers. In the year 1850, however, it was only 262,000,000 thalers. As a matter of course, the country people in that year could not purchase from the cities as much as in ordinary years, by a difference of 70,000,000 thalers. This illustrates how every class of people, who live by finding a free market for their products, are interested in the prosperity of all other classes. As Bastiat says: “All legitimate interests are harmonious.” The more flourishing a city, the better off are the towns around it, which furnish it with provisions; and the richer these towns, the more flourishing is the industry of the city which ministers to their wants.(589) It is important that this fact should be borne steadily in mind, especially in times of advanced civilization, when the feeling that we all have interests in common, is too apt to grow dormant. Nothing can better serve to awaken it again when it has become so. A nation, says Louis Blanc, in which one portion of the people is oppressed by another, is like a man wounded in the leg. The healthy limb is prevented by the sick one from performing its functions.(590)