An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

of which every, the smallest

violation, necessarily occasioned some degree of disease or

disorder proportionate to the degree of the violation.

Experience, however, would seem to shew, that the human body

frequently preserves, to all appearance at least, the most

perfect state of health under a vast variety of different

regimens; even under some which are generally believed to be very

far from being perfectly wholesome. But the healthful state of

the human body, it would seem, contains in itself some unknown

principle of preservation, capable either of preventing or of

correcting, in many respects, the bad effects even of a very

faulty regimen. Mr Quesnai, who was himself a physician, and a

very speculative physician, seems to have entertained a notion of

the same kind concerning the political body, and to have imagined

that it would thrive and prosper only under a certain precise

regimen, the exact regimen of perfect liberty and perfect

justice. He seems not to have considered, that in the political

body, the natural effort which every man is continually making to

better his own condition, is a principle of preservation capable

of preventing and correcting, in many respects, the bad effects

of a political economy, in some degree both partial and

oppressive. Such a political economy, though it no doubt retards

more or less, is not always capable of stopping altogether, the

natural progress of a nation towards wealth and prosperity, and

still less of making it go backwards. If a nation could not

prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect

justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have

prospered. In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature

has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the

bad effects of the folly and injustice of man ; it the same

manner as it has done in the natural body, for remedying those of

his sloth and intemperance.

 

The capital error of this system, however, seems to lie in its

representing the class of artificers, manufacturers, and

merchants, as altogether barren and unproductive. The following

observations may serve to shew the impropriety of this

representation : �

 

First, this class, it is acknowledged, reproduces annually the

value of its own annual consmnption, and continues, at least, the

existence of the stock or capital which maintains and employs it.

But, upon this account alone, the denomination of barren or

unproductive should seem to be very improperly applied to it. We

should not call a marriage barren or unproductive, though it

produced only a son and a daughter, to replace the father and

mother, and though it did not increase the number of the human

species, but only continued it as it was before. Farmers and

country labourers, indeed, over and above the stock which

maintains and employs them, reproduce annually a neat produce, a

free rent to the landlord. As a marriage which affords three

children is certainly more productive than one which affords only

two, so the labour of farmers and country labourers is certainly

more productive than that of merchants, artificers, and

manufacturers. The superior produce of the one class, however,

does not, render the other barren or unproductive.

 

Secondly, it seems, on this account, altogether improper to

consider artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, in the same

light as menial servants. The labour of menial servants does not

continue the existence of the fund which maintains and employs

them. Their maintenance and employment is altogether at the

expense of their masters, and the work which they perform is not

of a nature to repay that expense. That work consists in services

which perish generally in the very instant of their performance,

and does not fix or realize itself in any vendible commodity,

which can replace the value of their wages and maintenance. The

labour, on the contrary, of artificers, manufacturers, and

merchants, naturally does fix and realize itself in some such

vendible commodity. It is upon this account that, in the chapter

in which I treat of productive and unproductive labour, I have

classed artificers, manufacturers, and merchants among the

productive labourers, and menial servants among the barren or

unproductive.

 

Thirdly, it seems, upon every supposition, improper to say,

that the labour of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, does

not increase the real revenue of the society. Though we should

suppose, for example, as it seems to be supposed in this system,

that the value of the daily, monthly, and yearly consumption of

this class was exactly equal to that of its daily, monthly, and

yearly production; yet it would not from thence follow, that its

labour added nothing to the real revenue, to the real value of

the annual produce of the land and labour of the society. An

artificer, for example, who, in the first six months after

harvest, executes ten pounds worth of work, though he should, in

the same time, consume ten pounds worth of corn and other

necessaries, yet really adds the value of ten pounds to the

annual produce of the land and labour of the society. While he

has been consuming a halfyearly revenue of ten pounds worth of

corn and other necessaries, he has produced an equal value of

work, capable of purchasing, either to himself, or to some other

person, an equal halfyearly revenue. The value, therefore, of

what has been consumed and produced during these six months, is

equal, not to ten, but to twenty pounds. It is possible, indeed,

that no more than ten pounds worth of this value may ever have

existed at any one moment of time. But if the ten pounds worth of

corn and other necessaries which were consumed by the artificer,

had been consumed by a soldier, or by a menial servant, the value

of that part of the annual produce which existed at the end of

the six months, would have been ten pounds less than it actually

is in consequence of the labour of the artificer. Though the

value of what the artificer produces, therefore, should not, at

any one moment of time, be supposed greater than the value he

consumes, yet, at every moment of time, the actually existing

value of goods in the market is, in consequence of what he

produces, greater than it otherwise would be.

 

When the patrons of this system assert, that the consumption of

artificers, manufacturer’s, and merchants, is equal to the value

of what they produce, they probably mean no more than that their

revenue, or the fund destined for their consumption, is equal to

it. But if they had expressed themselves more accurately, and

only asserted, that the revenue of this class was equal to the

value of what they produced, it might readily have occurred to

the reader, that what would naturally be saved out of this

revenue, must necessarily increase more or less the real wealth

of the society. In order, therefore, to make out something like

an argument, it was necessary that they should express themselves

as they have done ; and this argument, even supposing things

actually were as it seems to presume them to be, turns out to be

a very inconclusive one.

 

Fourthly, farmers and country labourers can no more augment,

without parsimony, the real revenue, the annual produce of the

land and labour of their society, than artificers, manufacturers,

and merchants. The annual produce of the land and labour of any

society can be augmented only in two ways ; either, first, by

some improvement in the productive powers of the useful labour

actually maintained within it; or, secondly, by some increase in

the quantity of that labour.

 

The improvement in the productive powers of useful labour

depends, first, upon the improvement in the ability of the

workman; and, secondly, upon that of the machinery with which be

works. But the labour of artificers and manufacturers, as it is

capable of being more subdivided, and the labour of each workman

reduced to a greater simplicity of operation, than that of

farmers and country labourers; so it is likewise capable of both

these sorts of improvement in a much higher degree {See book i

chap. 1.} In this respect, therefore, the class of cultivators

can have no sort of advantage over that of artificers and

manufacturers.

 

The increase in the quantity of useful labour actually employed

within any society must depend altogether upon the increase of

the capital which employs it ; and the increase of that capital,

again, must be exactly equal to the anount of the savings from

the revenue, either of the particular persons who manage and

direct the employment of that capital, or of some other persons,

who lend it to them. If merchants, artificers, and manufacturers

are, as this system seems to suppose, naturally more inclined to

parsimony and saving than proprietors and cultivators, they are,

so far, more likely to augment the quantity of useful labour

employed within their society, and consequently to increase its

real revenue, the annual produce of its land and labour.

 

Fifthly and lastly, though the revenue of the inhabitants of

every country was supposed to consist altogether, as this system

seems to suppose, in the quantity of subsistence which their

industry could procure to them; yet, even upon this supposition,

the revenue of a trading and manufacturing country must, other

things being equal, always be much greater than that of one

without trade or manufactures. By means of trade and

manufactures, a greater quantity of subsistence can be annually

imported into a particular country, than what its own lands, in

the actual state of their cultivation, could afford. The

inhabitants of a town, though they frequently possess no lands of

their own, yet draw to themselves, by their industry, such a

quantity of the rude produce of the lands of other people, as

supplies them, not only with the materials of their work, but

with the fund of their subsistence. What a town always is with

regard to the country in its neighbourhood, one independent state

or country may frequently be with regard to other independent

states or countries. It is thus that Holland draws a great part

of its subsistence from other countries; live cattle from

Holstein and Jutland, and corn from almost all the different

countries of Europe. A small quantity of manufactured produce,

purchases a great quantity of rude produce. A trading and

manufacturing country, therefore, naturally purchases, with a

small part of its manufactured produce, a great part of the rude

produce of other countries; while, on the contrary, a country

without trade and manufactures is generally obliged to purchase,

at the expense of a great part of its rude produce, a very small

part of the manufactured produce of other countries. The one

exports what can subsist and accommodate but a very few, and

imports the subsistence and accommodation of a great number. The

other exports the accommodation and subsistence of a great

number, and imports that of a very few only. The inhabitants of

the one must always enjoy a much greater quantity of subsistence

than what their own lands, in the actual state of their

cultivation, could afford. The inhabitants of the other must

always enjoy a much smaller quantity.

 

This system, however, with all its imperfections, is perhaps the

nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published

upon the subject of political economy ; and is upon that account,

well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine

with attention the principles of that very important science.

Though in representing the labour which is employed upon land as

the only productive labour, the notions which it inculcates are,

perhaps, too narrow and confined ; yet in representing the wealth

of nations as consisting, not in the unconsumable riches of

money, but in the consumable goods annually reproduced by the

labour of the society, and in representing perfect liberty as the

only effectual expedient