ate of interest 5 per cent, the wages of superintendance will
be 5 per cent; and though one borrower employ a capital of 100,000_l_.,
another no more than 100_l_., the labour of both will be rewarded with
the same per centage, though, in the one ease, this symbol will
represent an income of 5_l_., in the other case, of 5000_l_. Yet it
cannot be pretended that the labour of the two borrowers differs in this
proportion. The rule, therefore, that equal quantities of labour of
equal hardness and skill are equally remunerated, does not hold of this
kind of labour. The wages of any other labour are here an inapplicable
criterion.

The wages of superintendance are distinguished from ordinary wages by
another peculiarity, that they are not paid in advance out of capital,
like the wages of all other labourers, but merge in the profit, and are
not realized until the production is completed. This takes them entirely
out of the ordinary law of wages. The wages of labourers who are paid in
advance, are regulated by the number of competitors compared with the
amount of capital; the labourers can consume no more than what has been
previously accumulated. But there is no such limit to the remuneration
of a kind of labour which is not paid for out of wealth previously
accumulated, but out of that produce which it is itself employed in
calling into existence.

When these circumstances are duly weighed, it will be perceived, that
although profit may be correctly analyzed into interest and wages of
superintendance, we ought not to lay it down as the law of interest,
that it is profits _minus_ the wages of superintendance. Of the two
expressions, it would be decidedly the more correct, that the wages of
superintendance are regulated by the rate of interest, or are equal to
profits _minus_ interest. In strict, propriety, neither expression would
be allowable. Interest, and the wages of superintendance, can scarcely
be said to depend upon one another. They are to one another in the same
relation as wages and profits are. They are like two buckets in a well:
when one rises, the other descends, but neither of the two motions is
the cause of the other; both are simultaneous effects of the same cause,
the turning of the windlass.

* * * * *

There are among the capitalists of every country a considerable number
who are habitually, and almost necessarily, lenders; to whom scarcely
any difference between what they