THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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in order to spend will soon be ruined, and lie who lends tohim will generally have occasion to repent of his folly. Toborrow or to lend for such a purpose, therefore, is in all cases,where gross usury is out of the question, contrary to the in-terest of both parties; and though it no doubt happens some-times that people do both the one and the other; yet, fromthe regard that all men have for their own interest, wc maybe assured that it cannot happen so very frequently as weare sometimes apt to imagine. Ask any rich man of commonprudence, to which of the two sorts of people he has lent thegreater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employit profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he willlaugh at you for proposing the question. Even among bor-rowers, therefore, not the people in the world most famousfor frugality, the number of the frugal and industrious sur-passes considerably that of the prodigal and idle.

The only people to whom stock is commonly lent, withouttheir being- expected to make any very profitable use of it,are country gentlemen who borrow upon mortgage. Eventhey scarce ever borrow merely to spend. What they bor-row, one may say, is commonly spent before they borrow it.They have generally consumed so great a quantity of goodsadvanced to them upon credit by shopkeepers and trades-men, that they find it necessary to borrow at interest in orderto pay the debt. The capital borrowed replaces the capitalsof those shopkeepers and tradesmen, which the country gen-tlemen could not have replaced from the rents of their estates.It is not properly borrowed in order to be spent, but in orderto replace a capital which had been spent before.

Almost all loans at interest are made in money, either ofpaper, or of gold and silver. But what the borrower reallywants, and what the lender really supplies him with, is notthe money, but the money’s worth, or the goods which it canpurchase. If he wants it as a stock for immediate consump-tion, it is those goods only which he can place in that stock.II he wants it as a capital for employing industry, it is fromthose goods only that the industrious can be furnished withthe tools, materials, and maintenance, necessary for carrying-on their work. By means of the loan, the lender, as it were,assigns to the borrower his right to a certain portion of theannual produce of the land and labour of the country, to beemployed as the borrower pleases.

The quantity of stock, therefore, or, as it is commonly ex-