Sec. 6] CAPITAL 61
Nicholson," Hicks, and the “Committee [of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science] on a Common
Measure of Value in Direct Taxation.” ® Professor Mar-
shall says that in earlier years he “invariably thought of
capital as the whole stock of goods, and of interest as the
whole of the usance or benefits derived from the use of that
stock”; * that “when one approaches the problem of dis-
tribution from the mathematical point of view, there is
practically no choice” ® but to do so; and that “wealth in
the form of houses or private carriages helped to give em-
ployment to labour as much as when in the form of hotels
or cabs.” * He expressly concedes what is really the chief
contention of the present writer when he says: “I concur
in his [my] conclusion that whatever we do with the word
capital, we cannot solve problems of capital by classifying
wealth.” ” Yet he concludes, “not without doubt, that it
is best to” ® base his definition of capital on such a classi-
fication, purely out of deference to what he conceives to be
the dominant usage.
§ 6
As to popular and business usage, it may be said that a
careful study of this usage as reflected by lexicographers,
who have sought from time to time to record it,’ reveals
the fact that before the time of Adam Smith capital was
not regarded as a part of the stock of wealth, but as synony-
mous with that stock.’ Sometimes the inclusion of all
! In his Elements, pp. 42, 43.
? Lectures on Economics, Cincinnati, 1901, pp. 91, 244.
® Report of British Association for Advancement of Science, 1878,
Dublin, p. 220.
* “Distribution and Exchange,” Economic Journal, 1898, p. 56.
S$ Ibid. p. 55. ® Ibid. p. 57. .7 Ibid. p. 50. ® Ibid. p. 56.
® See the writer’s “ Precedents for Defining Capital,” loc. cit., where
are presented the results of an examination of seventy-two diction-
aries.
1 Originally.the term “capital” was not a noun, but an adjective.
“‘Capitalis pars debiti ’ indicated the principal part of a debt, i.e. the
“principal ”’ as distinguished from the interest. This virtually repre-
