The question frequently discussed, whether it is more advantageous to increase the gross income or the net income[147-1] of a people, may be readily answered with the assistance of our tripartite division. Since economic production has no other object than the satisfaction of human wants, the mere increase of the gross income of a people is a matter of indifference. An increase of the net income puts a people in a condition to increase either their numbers or their enjoyments. (See §§ 163 and 239.) The most desirable condition is where both these results are produced. It is fortunate for a people when the _free_ income of the nation increases by reason of the absolute or relative decrease of the cost of production, which adds nothing to enjoyment. But it is politically and morally to be lamented when it increases at the expense of the satisfaction of man's necessary wants, especially if the majority of the people deny themselves in this respect to produce that end. Sir Thomas More called the sheep of his time, to make place for which so many farm houses were razed to the ground, ravenous beasts, which devoured men and laid waste city and country.[147-2] [Footnote 147-1: The greater number of writers, at bottom, understand by this question only whether greater efforts should be made to increase the wages of the lower classes or the rent and rate of interest on capital paid to the higher. (_Schmoller_, in the Tüb. Zeitschrift, 1863, 22.)] [Footnote 147-2: The difference between gross and net income was introduced into the science principally by the Physiocrates. _Vauban_ (1707) had no conception of it, and thirty years later a French minister, in his instructions concerning the levy of the _vingtièmes_, dimly seeing that the aggregate amount of the harvest was not clear gain, ordered, to obtain the latter, that the cost of reaping and threshing should be deducted. (_Dupont_, Correspondence of _J. B. Say_, 404, éd. Daire.) By _produit net_, _Quesnay_ means the excess of original production over its cost, considered from the personal point of view of the individual landowner. This excess, it is claimed, can alone increase the national wealth and alone support the "steril" class.