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

proprietors of the old vineyards in

France have of the superabundance of wine. By act of assembly, they have

restrained its cultivation to six thousand plants, supposed to yield a

thousand weight of tobacco, for every negro between sixteen and sixty years

of age. Such a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco, can manage,

they reckon, four acres of Indian corn. To prevent the market from being

overstocked, too, they have sometimes, in plentiful years, we are told by Dr

Douglas {Douglas’s Summary,vol. ii. p. 379, 373.} (I suspect he has been ill

informed), burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every negro, in the same

manner as the Dutch are said to do of spices. If such violent methods are

necessary to keep up the present price of tobacco, the superior advantage of

its culture over that of corn, if it still has any, will not probably be of

long continuance.

 

It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land, of which the

produce is human food, regulates the rent of the greater part of other

cultivated land. No particular produce can long afford less, because the

land would immediately be turned to another use; and if any particular

produce commonly affords more, it is because the quantity of land which can

be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand.

 

In Europe, corn is the principal produce of land, which serves immediately

for human food. Except in particular situations, therefore, the rent of corn

land regulates in Europe that of all other cultivated land. Britain need

envy neither the vineyards of France, nor the olive plantations of Italy.

Except in particular situations, the value of these is regulated by that of

corn, in which the fertility of Britain is not much inferior to that of

either of those two countries.

 

If, in any country, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people

should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land, with the same,

or nearly the same culture, produced a much greater quantity than the most

fertile does of corn ; the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of

food which would remain to him, after paying the labour, and replacing the

stock of the farmer, together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily

be much greater. Whatever was the rate at which labour was commonly

maintained in that country, this greater surplus could always maintain a

greater quantity of it, and, consequently, enable the landlord to purchase

or command a greater quantity of it. The real value of his rent, his real

power and authority, his command of the necessaries and conveniencies of

life with which the labour of other people could supply him, would

necessarily be much greater.

 

A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile

corn field. Two crops in the year, from thirty to sixty bushels each, are

said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation,

therefore, requires more labour, a much greater surplus remains after

maintaining all that labour. In those rice countries, therefore, where

rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, and where the

cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a greater share of this greater

surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina,

where the planters, as in other British colonies, are generally both farmers

and landlords, and where rent, consequently, is confounded with profit,

the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn,

though their fields produce only one crop in the year, and though, from the

prevalence of the customs of Europe, rice is not there the common and

favourite vegetable food of the people.

 

A good rice field is a bog at all seasons, and at one season a bog covered

with water. It is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard, or,

indeed, for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men ; and the

lands which are fit for those purposes are not fit for rice. Even in the

rice countries, therefore, the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent

of the other cuitivated land which can never be turned to that produce.

 

The food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that

produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a

field of wheat. Twelve thousand weight of potatoes from an acre of land is

not a greater produce than two thousand weight of wheat. The food or solid

nourishment, indeed, which can be drawn from each of those two plants, is

not altogether in proportion to their weight, on account of the watery

nature of potatoes. Allowing, however, half the weight of this root to go to

water, a very large allowance, such an acre of potatoes will still produce

six thousand weight of solid nourishment, three times the quantity produced

by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expense

than an acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of

wheat, more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture

which is always given to potatoes. Should this root ever become in any part

of Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite

vegetable food of the people, so as to occupy the same proportion of the

lands in tillage, which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at

present, the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater

number of people ; and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes, a

greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock, and maintaining

all the labour employed in cultivation. A greater share of this surplus,

too, would belong to the landlord. Population would increase, and rents

would rise much beyond what they are at present.

 

The land which is fit for potatoes, is fit for almost every other useful

vegetable. If they occupied the same proportion of cultivated land which

corn does at present, they would regulate, in the same manner, the rent of

the greater part of other cultivated land.

 

In some parts of Lancashire, it is pretended, I have been told, that bread

of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring people than wheaten bread, and 1

have frequently heard the same doctrine held in Scotland. I am, however,

somewhat doubtful of the truth of if. The common people in Scotland, who are

fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong nor so handsome as the

same rank of people in England, who are fed with wheaten bread. They neither

work so well, nor look so well; and as there is not the same difference

between the people of fashion in the two countries, experience would seem to

shew, that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to

the human constitution as that of their neighbours of the same rank in

England. But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters,

and coal-heavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by

prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the

British dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the lowest

rank of people in Ireland. who are generally fed with this root. No food can

afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being

peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution.

 

It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to

store them like corn, for two or three years together. The fear of not being

able to sell them before they rot, discourages their cultivation, and is,

perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country,

like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the

people.

 

PART II. - Of the Produce of Land, which sometimes does, and sometimes

does not, afford Rent.

 

Human food seems to be the only produce of land, which always and

necessarily affords some rent to the landlord. Other sorts of produce

sometimes may, and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances.

 

After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wants of mankind.

 

Land, in its original rude state, can afford the materials of clothing and

lodging to a much greater number of people than it can feed. In its improved

state, it can sometimes feed a greater number of people than it can supply

with those materials; at least in the way in which they require them, and

are willing to pay for them. In the one state, therefore, there is always a

superabundance of these materials, which are frequently, upon that account,

of little or no value. In the other, there is often a scarcity, which

necessarily augments their value. In the one state, a great part of them is

thrown away as useless and the price of what is used is considered as equal

only to the labour and expense of fitting it for use, and can, therefore,

afford no rent to the landlord. In the other, they are all made use of, and

there is frequently a demand for more than can be had. Somebody is always

willing to give more for every part of them, than what is sufficient to pay

the expense of bringing them to market. Their price, therefore, can

always afford some rent to the landlord.

 

The skins of the larger animals were the original materials of clothing.

Among nations of hunters and shepherds, therefore, whose food consists

chiefly in the flesh of those animals, everyman, by providing himself with

food, provides himself with the materials of more clothing than he can wear.

If there was no foreign commerce, the greater part of them would be thrown

away as things of no value. This was probably the case among the hunting

nations of North America, before their country was discovered by the

Europeans, with whom they now exchange their surplus peltry, for blankets,

firearms, and brandy, which gives it some value. In the present commercial

state of the known world, the most barbarous nations, I believe, among whom

land property is established, have some foreign commerce of this kind, and

find among their wealthier neighbours such a demand for all the materials of

clothing, which their land produces, and which can neither be wrought up nor

consumed at home, as raises their price above what it costs to send them to

those wealthier neighbours. It affords, therefore, some rent to the

landlord. When the greater part of the Highland cattle were consumed on

their own hills, the exportation of their hides made the most considerable

article of the commerce of that country, and what they were exchanged for

afforded some addition to the rent of the Highland estates. The wool of

England, which in old times, could neither be consumed nor wrought up at

home, found a market in the then wealthier and more industrious country of

Flanders, and its price afforded something to the rent of the land which

produced it. In countries not better cultivated than England was then, or

than the Highlands of Scotland are now, and which had no foreign commerce,

the materials of clothing would evidently be so superabundant, that a great

part of them would be thrown away as useless, and no part could afford any

rent to the landlord.

 

The materials of lodging cannot always be transported to so great a distance

as those of clothing, and do not so readily become an object of foreign

commerce. When they are superabundant in the country which produces them, it

frequently happens, even in the present commercial state of the world, that

they are of no value to