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

of the present century. In all the

great countries of Europe, however, much good land still remains

uncultivated ; and the greater part of what is cultivated, is far from being

improved to the degree of which it is capable. Agriculture, therefore, is

almost everywhere capable of absorbing a much greater capital than has ever

yet been employed in it. What circumstances in the policy of Europe have

given the trades which are carried on in towns so great an advantage over

that which is carried on in the country, that private persons frequently

find it more for their advantage to employ their capitals in the most

distant carrying trades of Asia and America. than in the improvement and

cultivation of the most fertile fields in their own neighbourhood, I shall

endeavour to explain at full length in the two following books.

 

BOOK III.

 

OF THE DIFFERENT PROGRESS OF OPULENCE IN DIFFERENT NATIONS

 

CHAPTER I.

 

OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE.

 

The great commerce of every civilized society is that carried on between the

inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists in the

exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the

intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money. The

country supplies the town with the means of subsistence and the materials of

manufacture. The town repays this supply, by sending back a part of the

manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The town, in which

there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances, may very

properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from the country.

We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town

is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and

the division of labour is in this, as in all other cases, advantageous to all

the different persons employed in the various occupations into which it is

subdivided. The inhabitants of the country purchase of the town a greater

quantity of manufactured goods with the produce of a much smaller quantity

of their own labour, than they must have employed had they attempted to

prepare them themselves. The town affords a market for the surplus produce

of the country, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators

; and it is there that the inhabitants of the country exchange it for

something else which is in demand among them. The greater the number and

revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market

which it affords to those of the country ; and the more extensive that

market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. The corn which

grows within a mile of the town, sells there for the same price with that

which comes from twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must,

generally, not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market,

but afford, too, the ordinary profits of agriculture to the farmer. The

proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the

neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of

agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the

carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts ; and

they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what

they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any

considerable town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it,

and you will easily satisfy yourself bow much the country is benefited by

the commerce of the town. Among all the absurd speculations that have been

propagated concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that

either the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that

with the country which maintains it.

 

As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and luxury,

so the industry which procures the former, must necessarily be prior to that

which ministers to the latter. The cultivation and improvement of the

country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must, necessarily, be prior

to the increase of the town, which furnishes only the means of conveniency

and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the country only, or what is over

and above the maintenance of the cultivators, that constitutes the

subsistence of the town, which can therefore increase only with the increase

of the surplus produce. The town, indeed, may not always derive its whole

subsistence from the country in its neighbourhood, or even from the

territory to which it belongs, but from very distant countries; and this,

though it forms no exception from the general rule, has occasioned

considerable variations in the progress of opulence in different ages and

nations.

 

That order of things which necessity imposes, in general, though not in

every particular country, is in every particular country promoted by the

natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted those

natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the

improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated

could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was

completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal profits,

most men will choose to employ their capitals, rather in the improvement and

cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. The

man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command

; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader,

who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves,

but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving

great credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and

situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the

landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land,

seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The

beauty of the country, besides, the pleasure of a country life, the

tranquillity of mind which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human

laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have

charms that, more or less, attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground

was the original destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he

seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment.

 

Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land

cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual

interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and

bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose service the

farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand occasionally

in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not,

like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they

naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small

town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker, soon join them,

together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for

supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to

augment the town. The inhabitants of the town, and those of the country, are

mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or

market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange

their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the

inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work, and the

means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they

sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity

of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor

subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation

of the demand from the country for finished work ; and this demand can

augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation.

Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of

things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every

political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement

and cultivation of the territory of country.

 

In our North American colonies, where uncultivated land is still to be had

upon easy terms, no manufactures for distant sale have ever yet been

established in any of their towns. When an artificer has acquired a little

more stock than is necessary for carrying on his own business in supplying

the neighbouring country, he does not, in North America, attempt to

establish with it a manufacture for more distant sale, but employs it in the

purchase and improvement of uncultivated land. From artificer he becomes

planter ; and neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence which that

country affords to artificers, can bribe him rather to work for other people

than for himself. He feels that an artificer is the servant of his

customers, from whom he derives his subsistence; but that a planter who

cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence from the

labour of his own family, is really a master, and independent of all the

world.

 

In countries, on the contrary, where there is either no uncultivated land,

or none that can be had upon easy terms, every artificer who has acquired

more stock than he can employ in the occasional jobs of the neighbourhood,

endeavours to prepare work for more distant sale. The smith erects some sort

of iron, the weaver some sort of linen or woollen manufactory. Those

different manufactures come, in process of time, to be gradually subdivided,

and thereby improved and refined in a great variety of ways, which may

easily be conceived, and which it is therefore unnecessary to explain any

farther.

 

In seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or

nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same

reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the

capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the

manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more

within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign

merchant. In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both

of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand

at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for

which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital which carries

this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or a domestic one, is of very

little importance. If the society has not acquired sufficient capital, both

to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the completest manner the

whole of its rude produce, there is even a considerable advantage that the

rude produce should be exported by a foreign capital, in order that the

whole stock of the society may be employed in more useful purposes. The:

wealth of ancient Egypt, that of China and Indostan, sufficient1y

demonstrate that a nation may attain a very high degree of opulence, though

the greater part of its exportation trade be carried on by foreigners. The

progress of our North American and West Indian colonies, would have been

much less rapid, had no capital but what belonged to themselves been

employed in exporting their surplus produce.

 

According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of

the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture,

afterwards to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce. This

order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any

territory, it has always, I believe, been