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

have risen so high as to render it

profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. In England, the

price of cattle, it has already been observed, seems, in the neighbourhood

of London, to have got to this height about the beginning of the last

century; but it was much later, probably, before it got through the greater

part of the remoter counties, in some of which, perhaps, it may scarce yet

have got to it. Of all the different substances, however, which compose this

second sort of rude produce, cattle is, perhaps, that of which the price, in

the progress of improvement, rises first to this height.

 

Till the price of cattle, indeed, has got to this height, it seems scarce

possible that the greater part, even of those lands which are capable of the

highest cultivation, can be completely cultivated. In all farms too distant

from any town to carry manure from it, that is, in the far greater part of

those of every extensive country, the quantity of well cultivated land must

be in proportion to the quantity of manure which the farm itself produces ;

and this, again, must be in proportion to the stock of cattle which are

maintained upon it. The land is manured, either by pasturing the cattle upon

it, or by feeding them in the stable, and from thence carrying out their

dung to it. But unless the price of the cattle be sufficient to pay both the

rent and profit of cultivated land, the farmer cannot afford to pasture them

upon it ; and he can still less afford to feed them in the stable. It is

with the produce of improved and cultivated land only that cattle can be fed

in the stable; because, to collect the scanty and scattered produce of waste

and unimproved lands, would require too much labour, and be too expensive.

It the price of the cattle, therefore, is not sufficient to pay for the

produce of improved and cuitivated land, when they are allowed to pasture

it, that price will be still less sufficient to pay for that produce, when

it must be collected with a good deal of additional labour, and brought into

the stable to them. In these circumstances, therefore, no more cattle can

with profit be fed in the stable than what are necessary for tillage. But

these can never afford manure enough for keeping constantly in good

condition all the lands which they are capable of cultivating. What they

afford, being insufficient for the whole farm, will naturally be reserved

for the lands to which it can be most advantageously or conveniently

applied; the most fertile, or those, perhaps, in the neighbourhood of the

farm-yard. These, therefore, will be kept constantly in good condition, and

fit for tillage. The rest will, the greater part of them, be allowed to lie

waste, producing scarce any thing but some miserable pasture, just

sufficient to keep alive a few straggling, half-starved cattle; the farm,

though much overstocked in proportion to what would be necessary for its

complete cultivation, being very frequently overstocked in proportion to its

actual produce. A portion of this waste land, however, after having been

pastured in this wretched manner for six or seven years together, may be

ploughed up, when it will yield, perhaps, a poor crop or two of bad oats, or

of some other coarse grain ; and then, being entirely exhausted, it must be

rested and pastured again as before, and another portion ploughed up, to be

in the same manner exhausted and rested again in its turn. Such,

accordingly, was the general system of management all over the low country

of Scotland before the Union. The lands which were kept constantly well

manured and in good condition seldom exceeded a third or fourth part of the

whole farm, and sometimes did not amount to a fifth or a sixth part of it.

The rest were never manured, but a certain portion of them was in its turn,

notwithstanding, regularly cultivated and exhausted. Under this system of

management, it is evident, even that part of the lands of Scotland which is

capable of good cultivation, could produce but little in comparison of what

it may be capable of producing. But how disadvantageous soever this system

may appear, yet, before the Union, the low price of cattle seems to have

rendered it almost unavoidable. If, notwithstanding a great rise in the

price, it still continues to prevail through a considerable part of the

country, it is owing in many places, no doubt, to ignorance and attachment

to old customs, but, in most places, to the unavoidable obstructions which

the natural course of things opposes to the immediate or speedy

establishment of a better system : first, to the poverty of the tenants, to

their not having yet had time to acquire a stock of cattle sufficient to

cultivate their lands more completely, the same rise of price, which would

render it advantageous for them to maintain a greater stock, rendering it

more difficult for them to acquire it; and, secondly, to their not having

yet had time to put their lands in condition to maintain this greater stock

properly, supposing they were capable of acquiring it. The increase of stock

and the improvement of land are two events which must go hand in hand, and

of which the one can nowhere much outrun the other. Without some increase of

stock, there can be scarce any improvement of land, but there can be no

considerable increase of stock, but in consequence of a considerable

improvement of land ; because otherwise the land could not maintain it.

These natural obstructions to the establishment of a better system, cannot

be removed but by a long course of frugality and industry ; and half a

century or a century more, perhaps, must pass away before the old system,

which is wearing out gradually, can be completely abolished through all the

different parts of the country. Of all the commercial advantages, however,

which Scotland has derived from the Union with England, this rise in the

price of cattle is, perhaps, the greatest. It has not only raised the value

of all highland estates, but it has, perhaps, been the principal cause of

the improvement of the low country.

 

In all new colonies, the great quantity of waste land, which can for many

years be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle, soon renders

them extremely abundant ; and in every thing great cheapness is the

necessary consequence of great abundance. Though all the cattle of the

European colonies in America were originally carried from Europe, they soon

multiplied so much there, and became of so little value, that even horses

were allowed to run wild in the woods, without any owner thinking it worth

while to claim them. It must be a long time after the first establishment of

such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the

produce of cultivated land. The same causes, therefore, the want of manure,

and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation and the land

which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of

husbandry, not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many

parts of Scotland. Mr Kalm, the Swedish traveller, when he gives an account

of the husbandry of some of the English colonies in North America, as he

found it in 1749, observes, accordingly, that he can with difficulty

discover there the character of the English nation, so well skilled in all

the different branches of agriculture. They make scarce any manure for their

corn fields, he says ; but when one piece of ground has been exhausted by

continual cropping, they clear and cultivate another piece of fresh land;

and when that is exhausted, proceed to a third. Their cattle are allowed to

wander through the woods and other uncultivated grounds, where they are

half-starved; having long ago extirpated almost all the annual grasses, by

cropping them too early in the spring, before they had time to form their

flowers, or to shed their seeds. {Kalm’s Travels, vol 1, pp. 343, 344.} The

annual grasses were, it seems, the best natural grasses in that part of

North America; and when the Europeans first settled there, they used to grow

very thick, and to rise three or four feet high. A piece of ground which,

when he wrote, could not maintain one cow, would in former times, he was

assured, have maintained four, each of which would have given four times

the quantity of milk which that one was capable of giving. The poorness of

the pasture had, in his opinion, occasioned the degradation of their cattle,

which degenerated sensibly from me generation to another. They were probably

not unlike that stunted breed which was common all over Scotland thirty or

forty years ago, and which is now so much mended through the greater part of

the low country, not so much by a change of the breed, though that expedient

has been employed in some places, as by a more plentiful method of feeding

them.

 

Though it is late, therefore, in the progress of improvement, before cattle

can bring such a price as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the

sake of feeding them; yet of all the different parts which compose this

second sort of rude produce, they are perhaps the first which bring this

price ; because, till they bring it, it seems impossible that improvement

can be brought near even to that degree of perfection to which it has

arrived in many parts of Europe.

 

As cattle are among the first, so perhaps venison is among the last parts of

this sort of rude produce which bring this price. The price of venison in

Great Britain, how extravagant soever it may appear, is not near sufficient

to compensate the expense of a deer park, as is well known to all those who

have had any experience in the feeding of deer. If it was otherwise, the

feeding of deer would soon become an article of common farming, in the same

manner as the feeding of those small birds, called turdi, was among the

ancient Romans. Varro and Columella assure us, that it was a most profitable

article. The fattening of ortolans, birds of passage which arrive lean in

the country, is said to be so in some parts of France. If venison continues

in fashion, and the wealth and luxury of Great Britain increase as they have

done for some time past, its price may very probably rise still higher than

it is at present.

 

Between that period in the progress of improvement, which brings to its

height the price of so necessary an article as cattle, and that which brings

to it the price of such a superfluity as venison, there is a very long

interval, in the course of which many other sorts of rude produce gradually

arrive at their highest price, some sooner and some later, according to

different circumstances.

 

Thus, in every farm, the offals of the barn and stable will maintain a

certain number of poultry. These, as they are fed with what would otherwise

be lost, are a mere save-all ; and as they cost the farmer scarce any thing,

so he can afford to sell them for very little. Almost all that he gets is

pure gain, and their price can scarce be so low as to discourage him from

feeding this number. But in countries ill cultivated, and therefore but

thinly inhabited, the poultry, which are thus raised without expense, are

often fully sufficient to supply the whole demand. In this state of things,

therefore, they are often as cheap as butcher’s meat, or any other sort of

animal food. But the whole quantity of poultry which