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

of one, but of a hundred or a thousand

different customers. Though in some measure obliged to them all, therefore,

he is not absolutely dependent upon any one of them.

 

The personal expense of the great proprietors having in this manner

gradually increased, it was impossible that the number of their retainers

should not as gradually diminish, till they were at last dismissed

altogether. The same cause gradually led them to dismiss the unnecessary

part of their tenants. Farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, not.

withstanding the complaints of depopulation, reduced to the number necessary

for cultivating it, according to the imperfect state of cultivation and

improvement in those times. By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by

exacting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or,

what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the

proprietor, which the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a

method of spending upon his own person, in the same manner as he had done

the rest. The cause continuing to operate, he was desirous to raise his

rents above what his lands, in the actual state of their improvement, could

afford. His tenants could agree to this upon one condition only, that they

should be secured in their possession for such a term of years as might give

them time to recover, with profit, whatever they should lay not in the

further improvement of the land. The expensive vanity of the landlord made

him willing to accept of this condition ; and hence the origin of long

leases.

 

Even a tenant at will, who pays the full value of the land, is not

altogether dependent upon the landlord. The pecuniary advantages which they

receive from one another are mutual and equal, and such a tenant will expose

neither his life nor his fortune in the service of the proprietor. But if he

has a lease for along term of years, he is altogether independent; and his

landlord must not expect from him even the most trifling service, beyond

what is either expressly stipulated in the lease, or imposed upon him by the

common and known law of the country.

 

The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers

being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of

interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of

the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess of

pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty,

for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the

serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial

burgher or tradesmen in a city. A regular government was established in the

country as well as in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb

its operations in the one, any more than in the other.

 

It does not, perhaps, relate to the present subject, but I cannot help

remarking it, that very old families, such as have possessed some

considerable estate from father to son for many successive generations, are

very rare in commercial countries. In countries which have little commerce,

on the contrary, such as Wales, or the Highlands of Scotland, they are very

common. The Arabian histories seem to be all full of genealogies; and there

is a history written by a Tartar Khan, which has been translated into

several European languages, and which contains scarce any thing else; a

proof that ancient families are very common among those nations. In

countries where a rich man can spend his revenue in no other way than by

maintaining as many people as it can maintain, he is apt to run out, and his

benevolence, it seems, is seldom so violent as to attempt to maintain more

than he can afford. But where he can spend the greatest revenue upon his own

person, he frequently has no bounds to his expense, because he frequently

has no bounds to his vanity, or to his affection for his own person. In

commercial countries, therefore, riches, in spite of the most violent

regulations of law to prevent their dissipation, very seldom remain long in

the same family. Among simple nations, on the contrary, they frequently do,

without any regulations of law ; for among nations of shepherds, such as the

Tartars and Arabs, the consumable nature of their property necessarily

renders all such regulations impossible.

 

A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness, was in this

manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not the

least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish vanity was

the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and artificers, much

less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in

pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny

was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that

great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other,

was gradually bringing about.

 

It was thus, that, through the greater part of Europe, the commerce and

manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and

occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.

 

This order, however, being contrary to the natural course of things, is

necessarily both slow and uncertain. Compare the slow progress of those

European countries of which the wealth depends very much upon their commerce

and manufactures, with the rapid advances of our North American colonies, of

which the wealth is founded altogether in agriculture. Through the greater

part of Europe, the number of inhabitants is not supposed to double in less

than five hundred years. In several of our North American colonies, it is

found to double in twenty or five-and-twenty years. In Europe, the law of

primogeniture, and perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of

great estates, and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A

small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory,

views it with all the affection which property, especially small property,

naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure, not only in

cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most

industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. The same

regulations, besides, keep so much land out of the market, that there are

always more capitals to buy than there is land to sell, so that what is sold

always sells at a monopoly price. The rent never pays the interest of the

purchase-money, and is, besides, burdened with repairs and other occasional

charges, to which the interest of money is not liable. To purchase land, is,

everywhere in Europe, a most unprofitable employment of a small capital. For

the sake of the superior security, indeed, a man of moderate circumstances,

when he retires from business, will sometimes choose to lay out his little

capital in land. A man of profession, too whose revenue is derived from

another source often loves to secure his savings in the same way. But a

young man, who, instead of applying to trade or to some profession, should

employ a capital of two or three thousand pounds in the purchase and

cultivation of a small piece of land, might indeed expect to live very

happily and very independently, but must bid adieu for ever to all hope of

either great fortune or great illustration, which, by a different employment

of his stock, he might have had the same chance of acquiring with other

people. Such a person, too, though he cannot aspire at being a proprietor,

will often disdain to be a farmer. The small quantity of land, therefore,

which is brought to market, and the high price of what is brought thither,

prevents a great number of capitals from being employed in its cultivation

and improvement, which would otherwise have taken that direction. In North

America, on the contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often found a sufficient

stock to begin a plantation with. The purchase and improvement of

uncultivated land is there the most profitable employment of the smallest as

well as of the greatest capitals, and the most direct road to all the

fortune and illustration which can be required in that country. Such land,

indeed, is in North America to be had almost for nothing, or at a price much

below the value of the natural produce; a thing impossible in Europe, or

indeed in any country where all lands have long been private property. If

landed estates, however, were divided equally among all the children, upon

the death of any proprietor who left a numerous family, the estate would

generally be sold. So much land would come to market, that it could no

longer sell at a monopoly price. The free rent of the land would go no

nearer to pay the interest of the purchase-money, and a small capital might

be employed in purchasing land as profitable as in any other way.

 

England, on account of the natural fertility of the soil, of the great

extent of the sea-coast in proportion to that of the whole country, and of

the many navigable rivers which run through it, and afford the conveniency

of water carriage to some of the most inland parts of it, is perhaps as well

fitted by nature as any large country in Europe to be the seat of foreign

commerce, of manufactures for distant sale, and of all the improvements

which these can occasion. From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, too,

the English legislature has been peculiarly attentive to the interest of

commerce and manufactures, and in reality there is no country in Europe,

Holland itself not excepted, of which the law is, upon the whole, more

favourable to this sort of industry. Commerce and manufactures have

accordingly been continually advancing during all this period. The

cultivation and improvement of the country has, no doubt, been gradually

advancing too; but it seems to have followed slowly, and at a distance, the

more rapid progress of commerce and manufactures. The greater part of the

country must probably have been cultivated before the reign of Elizabeth;

and a very great part of it still remains uncultivated, and the

cultivation of the far greater part much inferior to what it might be, The

law of England, however, favours agriculture, not only indirectly, by the

protection of commerce, but by several direct encouragements. Except in

times of scarcity, the exportation of corn is not only free, but encouraged

by a bounty. In times of moderate plenty, the importation of foreign corn is

loaded with duties that amount to a prohibition. The importation of live

cattle, except from Ireland, is prohibited at all times ; and it is but of

late that it was permitted from thence. Those who cultivate the land,

therefore, have a monopoly against their countrymen for the two greatest and

most important articles of land produce, bread and butcher’s meat. These

encouragements, although at bottom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour to show

hereafter, altogether illusory, sufficiently demonstrate at least the good

intention of the legislature to favour agriculture. But what is of much more

importance than all of them, the yeomanry of England are rendered as secure

, as independent, and as respectable, as law can make them. No country,

therefore, which the right of primogeniture takes place, which pays tithes,

and where perpetuities, though contrary to the spirit of the law, are

admitted in some cases, can give more encouragement to agriculture than

England. Such, however, notwithstanding, is the state of its cultivation.

What would it have been, had the law given no direct encouragement to

agriculture besides what arises indirectly from the progress of commerce,

and had left the yeomanry in the same condition as in most