for money, with which he can purchase, wherever it is to be had, the
manufactured produce he has occasion for. Land even replaces, in part at
least, the capitals with which fisheries and mines are cultivated. It is the
produce of land which draws the fish from the waters ; and it is the produce
of the surface of the earth which extracts the minerals from its bowels.

The produce of land, mines, and fisheries, when their natural fertility is
equal, is in proportion to the extent and proper application of the capitals
employed about them. When the capitals are equal, and equally well applied,
it is in proportion to their natural fertility.

In all countries where there is a tolerable security, every man of common
understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command, in
procuring either present enjoyment or future profit. If it is employed in
procuring present enjoyment, it is a stock reserved for immediate
consumption. If it is employed in procuring future profit, it must procure
this profit either by staying with him, or by going from him. In the one
case it is a fixed, in the other it is a circulating capital. A man must be
perfectly crazy, who, where there is a tolerable security, does not employ
all the stock which he commands, whether it be his own, or borrowed of other
people, in some one or other of those three ways.

In those unfortunate countries, indeed, where men are continually afraid of
the violence of their superiors, they frequently bury or conceal a great
part of their stock, in order to have it always at hand to carry with them
to some place of safety, in case of their being threatened with any of those
disasters to which they consider themselves at all times exposed. This is
said to be a common practice in Turkey, in Indostan, and, I believe, in most
other governments of Asia. It seems to have been a common practice among our
ancestors during the violence of the feudal government. Treasure-trove was,