§. 40. Nor is it so strange as, perhaps, before consideration, it may appear,
that the property of labour should be able to overbalance the community of
land, for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on everything;
and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted
with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land
lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the
improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will
be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth
useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labour. Nay, if we
will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several
expenses about them — what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to
labour — we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are
wholly to be put on the account of labour.
