then three-quarters?
But I hear no reply." If the master of the French economists had been less blinded by his proprietary prejudices, he would have seen that farm-rent has precisely the same effect.
Take a family of peasants composed of six persons,--father, mother, and four children,--living in the country, and cultivating a small piece of ground.

Let us suppose that by hard labor they manage, as the saying is, to make both ends meet; that, having lodged, warmed, clothed, and fed themselves, they are clear of debt, but have laid up nothing.

Taking the years together, they contrive to live.

If the year is prosperous, the father drinks a little more wine, the daughters buy themselves a dress, the sons a hat; they eat a little cheese, and, occasionally, some meat.
I say that these people are on the road to wreck and ruin.
For, by the third corollary of our axiom, they owe to themselves the interest on their own capital.

Estimating this capital at only eight thousand francs at two and a half per cent., there is an annual interest of two hundred francs to be paid.