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Show SIS OF THE PROFITS OF CAPITAL. [cH. v. and incontrovertible. Some of them have been stated in the preceding section, and their number might easily be increased. I will only. add however one n1ore, '" hich is so strong an 1nstance as to be alone aln1ost decisive of the question, and havin()' happened in our own country, it is con1- b • . . pletely open to the most minute exatntnatlon. Fron1 the accession of George II. in 1727 to the com1nencen1ent of the \Var in 1739, the interest of money 'vas little more than 3 per cent. The public securiti-es 'vhich had been reduced to 4 per cent. rose considerably after the reduction. According to Chalmers, the natural rate of interest ran steadily at 3 per cent.;* and it appears by a speech of Sir John Barnard's that the 3 per cent. stocks sold at a pren1iu1n upon Change. In 1750, after the termination of the war, the 4 per cent. stocks were reduced to 3-}, for seven years, and from that time to 3 per cent. permanently.i- Excluding then the interval of war, \tVe have here a period of twenty-two years, during \vhich the general rate of interest was between 3-t and 3 per cent. The temporary variations in the value of govern· tnent securities \vill not certainly at all times be a correct criterion of the rate of profits or even of the rate of interest; but when they remain nearly steady for some time together, they tnust be con. sidered as a fair approximation to a correct tnea- • Estimate of the Strength of Great Britain, c. vii. p. 11 5. t Id. ch. vii. p. 120. sEC. I II. J OF TH£ PROFITS OF CAPITAL. 319 sure of interest; and when the publi.c cred~tors of a crovernment consent to a great falltn the Jntercst lo. ]1 they had before received, rather than be w uc . d'ffi pa1.c ] off', it is a n1ost d, ecisive p. roof o.f a great bI l - culty in the n1eans of employt~1~· capt tal profita y, and consequently a most decisive proof of a lo'v rate of profits. After an interval of nearly seventy years from the con1menc.einent of the period here noticed, and forty years from the en~ of it, during which a great acctunulation of capital had taken place, and an unusual quantity of new land had been brought into cultivation we find a period of twenty years suc~eed in whi~h the average market rate of interest was rather above than below 5 per cent.; and we have certainly every reason to think, from the extraordinary rapidity with which capital \Vas recovered after it had been destroyed, that the rate of profits in general was quite in ptoportion to this ·high rate of interest. . The clifficul ty of borrowing on mortgage dunng a considerable part of the time is perfectly \Ve.n kno,\rn; and though the pressure of the pubhc debt mi()'ht naturally be supposed to create some alarm and incline the owners of disposable funds to give a preference to landed security; yet it appears frotn the surveys of Arthur Young, that the ntnnber of years purchase given for land was in 1811, 29-h and forty years before, 32 or 32t,~:-the • Annals of Agriculture, No. 270. pp. 96. and 97. and No. 271. p. 215. Mr. Young expresses considerable surprize at these results, and Qoes not seem sufficiently aware, that the number of |
