. . .
All things considered, therefore, this land will remain fallow,
because capital that should be put into it would yield no profit
and would be lost. If it were otherwise, all these lands would
be immediately put in cultivation; the savings now disposed of in
another direction would necessarily gravitate in a certain
proportion to the cultivation of land; for capital has no
affections: it has interests, and always seeks that employment
which is surest and most lucrative."
This argument, very well reasoned, amounts to saying that the
time to cultivate its waste lands has not arrived for France,
just as the time for railroads has not arrived for the Kaffres
and the Hottentots. For, as has been said in the second chapter,
society begins by working those sources which yield most easily
and surely the most necessary and least expensive products: it is
only gradually that it arrives at the utilization of things
relatively less productive. Since the human race has been
tossing about on the face of its globe, it has struggled with no
other task; for it the same care is ever recurrent,--that of
assuring its subsistence while going forward in the path of
discovery.
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