3.1. CHAPTER I
Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
THE great commerce of every civilised 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 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
have, 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 how 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 this 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 pleasures 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 or 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 further.
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 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, sufficiently
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 in some degree observed. Some of their lands must
have been cultivated before any considerable towns could be
established, and some sort of coarse industry of the
manufacturing kind must have been carried on in those towns,
before they could well think of employing themselves in foreign
commerce.
But though this natural order of things must have taken
place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the
modern states of Europe, been, in many respects, entirely
inverted. The foreign commerce of some of their cities has
introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were fit for
distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together have
given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The
manners and customs which the nature of their original government
introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly
altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and
retrograde order.
