ost
necessary rights of a labourer to labour in any honest way he finds most
profitable to himself. #Labour must be free.#

CHAPTER V.

CAPITAL.

#33. What is capital?# We will now endeavour to understand the nature of
#the third requisite of production, called capital, which consists of
wealth used to help us in producing more wealth#. All capital is wealth,
but it is not true that all wealth is capital. If a man has a stock of
food, or a stock of money with which he buys food, and he merely lives
upon this without doing any labour, his stock is not considered to be
capital, because he is not producing wealth in the meantime. But if he
is occupied in building a house, or sinking a well, or making a cart, or
producing anything which will afterwards save labour and give utility,
then his stock is capital.

The great advantage of capital is that it enables us to do work in the
least laborious way. If a man wants to convey water from a well to his
house, and has very little capital, he can only get a bucket and carry
every bucket-full separately; this is very laborious. If he has more
capital, he can get a barrel and wheel it on a barrow, which takes off a
large part of the weight; thus he saves much labour by the labour spent
upon the barrel and barrow. If he has still more capital his best way
will be to make a canal, or channel, or even to lay a metal pipe all the
way from the well to his house; this costs a great deal of labour at the
time, but, when once it is made, the water will perhaps run down by its
own weight, and all the rest of his life he will be saved from the
trouble of carrying water.

#34. Fixed and Circulating Capitals.# Capital is usually said to be
either fixed or circulating capital, and we ought to learn very
thoroughly the difference between these two kinds. #Fixed capital#
consists of factories, machines, tools, ships, railways, docks, carts,
carriages, and other things, which last a long time, and assist work. It
does not include, indeed, all kinds of fixed property. Churches,
monuments, pictures, books, ornamental trees, &c., last a long time, but
they are not fixed capital, because they are not used to help us in
producing new wealth. They may do good, and give pleasure, and they
form a part of the wealth of the kingdom; but they are not capital
according to the usual employment of the name.

#Circulating capital consists of the food, clothes, fuel, and other
things which are req