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

their cattle. It is not more than a century ago, that in

many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, butcher’s meat was as cheap or

cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal The Union opened the market of

England to the Highland cattle. Their ordinary price, at present, is about

three times greater than at the beginning of the century, and the rents of

many Highland estates have been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. In

almost every part of Great Britain, a pound of the best butcher’s meat is,

in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white

bread ; and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds.

 

It is thus that, in the progress of improvement, the rent and profit of

unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and

profit of what is improved, and these again by the rent and profit of corn.

Corn is an annual crop ; butcher’s meat, a crop which requires four or five

years to grow. As an acre of land, therefore, will produce a much smaller

quantity of the one species of food than of the other, the inferiority of

the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. If it was

more than compensated, more corn-land would be turned into pasture ; and if

it was not compensated, part of what was in pasture would be brought back

into corn.

 

This equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of

corn ; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of

that of which the immediate produce is food for men, must be understood to

take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great

country. In some particular local situations it is quite otherwise, and the

rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn.

 

Thus, in the neighbourhood of a great town, the demand for milk, and for

forage to horses, frequently contribute, together with the high price of

butcher’s meat, to raise the value of grass above what may be called its

natural proportion to that of corn. This local advantage, it is evident,

cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance.

 

Particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous,

that the whole territory, like the lands in the neighbourhood of a great

town, has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn

necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Their lands, therefore,

have been principally employed in the production of grass, the more bulky

commodity, and which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance; and

corn, the food of the great body of the people, has been chiefly imported

from foreign countries. Holland is at present in this situation; and a

considerable part of ancient Italy seems to have been so during the

prosperity of the Romans. To feed well, old Cato said, as we are told by

Cicero, was the first and most profitable thing in the management of a

private estate ; to feed tolerably well, the second ; and to feed ill, the

third. To plough, he ranked only in the fourth place of profit and

advantage. Tillage, indeed, in that part of ancient Italy which lay in the

neighbour hood of Rome, must have been very much discouraged by the

distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either

gratuitously, or at a very low price. This corn was brought from the

conquered provinces, of which several, instead of taxes, were obliged to

furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price, about sixpence

a-peck, to the republic. The low price at which this corn was distributed to

the people, must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to

the Roman market from Latium, or the ancient territory of Rome, and must

have discouraged its cultivation in that country.

 

In an open country, too, of which the principal produce is corn, a

well-inclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn field

in its neighbourhood. It is convenient for the maintenance of the cattle

employed in the cultivation of the corn; and its high rent is, in this case,

not so properly paid from the value of its own produce, as from that of the

corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is likely to fall, if

ever the neighbouring lands are completely inclosed. The present high rent

of inclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the scarcity of inclosure, and

will probably last no longer than that scarcity. The advantage of inclosure

is greater for pasture than for corn. It saves the labour of guarding the

cattle, which feed better, too, when they are not liable to be disturbed by

their keeper or his dog.

 

But where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of

corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people, must

naturally regulate upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and

profit of pasture.

 

The use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the

other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of

land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural grass, should

somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an

improved country, the price of butcher’s meat naturally has over that of

bread. It seems accordingly to have done so ; and there is some reason for

believing that, at least in the London market, the price of butcher’s meat,

in proportion to the price of bread, is a good deal lower in the present

times than it was in the beginning of the last century.

 

In the Appendix to the life of Prince Henry, Doctor Birch has given us an

account of the prices of butcher’s meat as commonly paid by that prince. It

is there said, that the four quarters of an ox, weighing six hundred pounds,

usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or thereabouts; that is

thirty-one shillings and eightpence per hundred pounds weight. Prince Henry

died on the 6th of November 1612, in the nineteenth year of his age.

 

In March 1764, there was a parliamentary inquiry into the causes of the high

price of provisions at that time. It was then, among other proof to the same

purpose, given in evidence by a Virginia merchant, that in March 1763, he

had victualled his ships for twentyfour or twentyfive shillings the hundred

weight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary price; whereas, in that

dear year, he had paid twentyseven shillings for the same weight and sort.

This high price in 1764 is, however, four shillings and eightpence cheaper

than the ordinary price paid by Prince Henry ; and it is the best beef only,

it must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those distant voyages.

 

The price paid by Prince Henry amounts to 3d. 4/5ths per pound weight of the

whole carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken together ; and at that rate

the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than 4�d. or

5d. the pound.

 

In the parliamentary inquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the

choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and 4�d. the

pound; and the coarse pieces in general to be from seven farthings to 2�d.

and 2�d.; and this, they said, was in general one halfpenny dearer than the

same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of March. But even

this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose

the ordinary retail price to have been in the time of Prince Henry.

 

During the first twelve years of the last century, the average price of the

best wheat at the Windsor market was � 1:18:3�d. the quarter of nine

Winchester bushels.

 

But in the twelve years preceding 1764 including that year, the average

price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market was �

2:1:9�d.

 

In the first twelve years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to

have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher’s meat a good deal dearer, than

in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year.

 

In all great countries, the greater part of the cultivated lands are

employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. The rent and

profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other cultivated land.

If any particular produce afforded less, the land would soon be turned into

corn or pasture; and if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or

pasture would soon be turned to that produce.

 

Those productions, indeed, which require either a greater original expense

of improvement, or a greater annual expense of cultivation in order to fit

the land for them, appear commonly to afford, the one a greater rent, the

other a greater profit, than corn or pasture. This superiority, however,

will seldom be found to amount to more than a reasonable interest or

compensation for this superior expense.

 

In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the

landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in acorn

or grass field. But to bring the ground into this condition requires more

expense. Hence a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. It requires, too,

a more attentive and skilful management. Hence a greater profit becomes due

to the farmer. The crop, too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, is more

precarious. Its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional

losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. The

circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always moderate, may satisfy

us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over-recompensed. Their

delightful art is practised by so many rich people for amusement, that

little advantage is to be made by those who practise it for profit; because

the persons who should naturally be their best customers, supply themselves

with all their most precious productions.

 

The advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements, seems at no

time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the

original expense of making them. In the ancient husbandry, after the

vineyard, a well-watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the

farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. But Democritus,

who wrote upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was regarded

by the ancients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act

wisely who inclosed a kitchen garden. The profit, he said, would not

compensate the expense of a stone-wall: and bricks (he meant, I suppose,

bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with the rain and the winter-storm, and

required continual repairs. Columella, who reports this judgment of

Democritus, does not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of

inclosing with a hedge of brambles and briars, which he says he had found by

experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence ; but which, it

seems, was not commonly known in the time of Democritus. Palladius adopts

the opinion of Columella, which had before been recommended by Varro. In the

judgment of those ancient improvers. the produce of a kitchen garden had, it

seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and

the expense of watering ; for in countries so near the sun, it was thought

proper, in those times as in the present, to have the