Adam Smith
The Wealth of
Nations
(1776)
Of the
Causes of Improvement in the productive Powers of Labor, and of the Order
according to which its Produce is naturally distributed among the different
Ranks of the People
Book I,
Chapter I: Of the Division of Labor
THE greatest
improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the
skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied,
seem to have been the effects of the division of labor....To take an example,
therefore, the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business,
nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it, could scarce,
perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could
not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not
only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of
branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws
out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a
fifth grinds it at the top for receiving, the head; to make the head requires
two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to
whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the
paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided
into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some factories, are all
performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes
perform two or three of them.
I have seen a
small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some
of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though
they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary
machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about
twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand
pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them
upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a
tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four
thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately
and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this
peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty,
perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and
fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are
at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and
combination of their different operations....
The division of
labor, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a
proportionable increase of the productive powers of labor. The separation of
different trades and employments from one another seems to have taken place in
consequence of this advantage. This separation, too, is generally called
furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement;
what is the work of one man in a rude state of society being generally that of
several in an improved one.....This great increase of the quantity of work
which, in consequence of the division of labor, the same number of people are
capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the
increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of
the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another;
and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and
abridge labor, and enable one man to do the work of many....
It is the great
multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of
the division of labor, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that
universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.
Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he
himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation,
he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great
quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity
of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and
they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general
plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society....
Book I,
Chapter 2: Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labor
THIS division of
labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect
of any human wisdom, which
foresees and intends that universal opulence to which it gives occasion. It is
the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity
in human nature
which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter,
and exchange one thing for another..... Man has almost constant occasion for
the help of his
brethren, and it
is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more
likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor, and show
them that it is for their
own advantage to
do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any
kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this
which you
want, is the
meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one
another the far greater art of those good offices which we stand in need of. It
is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
As it is by
treaty, by barter, and by purchase that we obtain from one another the greater
part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is this same
trucking
disposition
which originally gives occasion to the division of labor. In a tribe of hunters
or shepherds a particular person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more
readiness and
dexterity than
any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison with his
companions; and he finds at last that he can in this manner get more cattle and
venison than if he
himself went to
the field to catch them. From a regard to his own interest, therefore, the
making of bows and arrows grows to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort
of armorer,etc......
Book I,
Chapter III: That the Division of Labor is Limited by the Extent of the
Market
AS IT IS the
power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labor, so the extent
of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in
other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no
person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one
employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the
produce of his own labor, which is over and above his own consumption, for such
parts of the produce of other men's labor as he has occasion for.
There are some
sorts of industry, even of the lowest kind, which can be carried on no where
but in a great town. A porter, for example, can find employment and subsistence
in no other place. A village is by much too narrow a sphere for him; even an
ordinary market town is scarce large enough to afford him constant occupation.
In the lone houses and very small villages which are scattered about in so
desert a country as the Highlands of Scotland, every farmer must be butcher,
baker and brewer for his own family. In such situations we can scarce expect to
find even a smith, a carpenter, or a mason, within less than twenty miles of
another of the same trade. The scattered families that live at eight or ten
miles distance from the nearest of them, must learn to perform themselves a
great number of little pieces of work, for which, in more populous countries,
they would call in the assistance of those workmen. Country workmen are almost
every where obliged to apply themselves to all the different branches of
industry that have so much affinity to one another as to be employed about the
same sort of materials. A country carpenter deals in every sort of work that is
made of wood: a country smith in every sort of work that is made of iron. The
former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet maker, and even a
carver in wood, as well as a wheelwright, a ploughwright, a cart and wagon
maker. The employments of the latter are still more various. It is impossible
there should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland
parts of the Highlands of Scotland. Such a workman at the rate of a thousand
nails a day, and three hundred working days in the year, will make three
hundred thousand nails in the year. But in such a situation it would be
impossible to dispose of one thousand, that is, of one day's work in the year.
As by means of
water-carriage a more extensive market is opened to every sort of industry than
what land-carriage alone can afford it, so it is upon the sea-coast, and along
the banks of navigable rivers, that industry of every kind naturally begins to
subdivide and improve itself, and it is frequently not till a long time after
that those improvements extend themselves to the inland parts of the country. A
broad-wheeled wagon, attended by two men, and drawn by eight horses, in about
six weeks time carries and brings back between London and Edinburgh near four
ton weight of goods. In about the same time a ship navigated by six or eight
men, and sailing between the ports of London and Leith, frequently carries and
brings back two hundred ton weight of goods. Six or eight men, therefore, by
the help of water-carriage, can carry and bring back in the same time the same
quantity of goods between London and Edinburgh, as fifty broad-wheeled wagons,
attended by a hundred men, and drawn by four hundred horsesÉ.
Since such, therefore, are the
advantages of water-carriage, it is natural that the first improvements of art
and industry should be made where this convenience opens the whole world for a
market to the produce of every sort of labor, and that they should always be
much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country. The
inland parts of the country can for a long time have no other market for the
greater part of their goods, but the country which lies round about them, and
separates them from the sea-coast, and the great navigable rivers. The extent
of their market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches
and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must
always be posterior to the improvement of that country. In our North American
colonies the plantations have constantly followed either the sea-coast or the
banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce any where extended themselves to
any considerable distance from both.
The nations
that, according to the best authenticated history, appear to have been first
civilized, were those that dwelt round the coast of the Mediterranean sea. That
sea, by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides, nor
consequently any waves except such as are caused by the wind only, was, by the
smoothness of its surface, as well as by the multitude of its islands, and the
proximity of its neighboring shores, extremely favorable to the infant
navigation of the world; when, from their ignorance of the compass, men were
afraid to quit the view of the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of
ship-building, to abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean. To
pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, that is, to sail out of the Straights of
Gibraltar, was, in the ancient world, long considered as a most wonderful and
dangerous exploit of navigation. It was late before even the Phoenicians and
Carthaginians, the most skilful navigators and ship-builders of those old
times, attempted it, and they were for a long time the only nations that did
attempt it.
Of all the
countries on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, Egypt seems to have been the
first in which either agriculture or manufactures were cultivated and improved
to any considerable degree. Upper Egypt extends itself nowhere above a few
miles from the Nile and in Lower Egypt that great river breaks itself into many
different canals, which, with the assistance of a little art, seem to have
afforded a communication by water-carriage, not only between all the great
towns,
but between all
the considerable villages, and even to many farm-houses in the country; nearly
in the same manner as the Rhine and the Mosel do in Holland at present. The
extent and easiness of this inland navigation was probably one of the principal
causes of the early improvement of Egypt.
The improvements
in agriculture and manufactures seem likewise to have been of very great
antiquity in the provinces of Bengal in the East Indies, and in some of the
eastern provinces of China; though the great extent of this antiquity is not
authenticated by any histories of whose authority we, in this part of the
world, are well assured. In Bengal the Ganges and several other great rivers
form a great number of navigable canals in the same manner as the Nile does in
Egypt. In the Eastern provinces of China too, several great rivers form, by
their different branches, a multitude of canals, and by communicating with one
another afford an inland navigation much more extensive than that either of the
Nile or the Ganges, or perhaps than both of them put together. It is remarkable
that neither the ancient Egyptians, nor the Indians, nor the Chinese,
encouraged foreign commerce, but seem all to have derived their great opulence
from this inland navigation.
All the inland
parts of Africa, and all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way
north of the Euxine and Caspian seas, the ancient Scythia, the modern Tartary
and Siberia, seem in all ages of the world to have been in the same barbarous
and uncivilized state in which we find them at present. The sea of Tartary is
the frozen ocean which admits of no navigation, and though some of the greatest
rivers in the world run through that country, they are at too great a distance
from one another to carry commerce and communication through the greater part
of it. There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and
Adriatic seas in Europe, the Mediterranean and Euxine seas in both Europe and
Asia, and the gulphs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia, to
carry maritime commerce into the interior parts of that great continent: and
the great rivers of Africa are at too great a distance from one another to give
occasion to any considerable inland navigation. The commerce besides which any
nation can carry on by means of a river which does not break itself into any great
number of branches or canals, and which runs into another territory before it
reaches the sea, can never be very considerable; because it is always in the
power of the nations who possess that other territory to
obstruct the
communication between the upper country and the sea. The navigation of the
Danube is of very little use to the different states of Bavaria, Austria and
Hungary, in comparison of what it would be if any of them possessed the whole
of its course till it falls into the Black Sea.
Book I,
Chapter 7: Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities:
THERE is in
every society or neighborhood an ordinary or average rate both of wages and
profit in every different employment of labor and stock. This rate is naturally
regulated, as I shall show hereafter, partly by the general circumstances of
the society, their riches or poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining
condition; and partly by the particular nature of each employment. There is
likewise in every society or neighborhood an ordinary or average rate of rent,
which is regulated too, as I shall show hereafter, partly by the general
circumstances of the society or neighborhood in which the land is situated, and
partly by the natural or improved fertility of the land. These ordinary or
average rates may be called the natural rates of wages, profit, and rent, at
the time and place in which they commonly prevail. When the price of any
commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent of
the land, the wages of the labor, and the profits of the stock employed in
raising, preparing, and bringing it to market, according to their natural
rates, the commodity is then sold for what may be called its natural price.
Though the price, therefore, which leaves him this profit is not always the
lowest at which a dealer may sometimes sell his goods, it is the lowest at
which he is likely to sell them for any considerable time; at least where there
is perfect liberty, or where he may change his trade as often as he pleases.
The actual price
at which any commodity is commonly sold is called its market price. It may
either be above, or below, or exactly the same with its natural price. The
market price of
every particular
commodity is regulated by the proportion between the quantity which is actually
brought to market, and the demand of those who are willing to pay the natural
price of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, labor, and profit,
which must be paid in order to bring it thither. When the quantity of any commodity
which is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, all those who
are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must
be paid in order to bring it thither, cannot be supplied with the quantity
which they want. Rather than want it altogether, some of them will be willing
to give more. A competition will immediately begin among them, and the market
price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the
greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the
competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition.
When the
quantity brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold
to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit,
which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Some part must be sold to
those who are willing to pay less, and the low price which they give for it
must reduce the price of the whole. The market price will sink more or less
below the natural price, according as the greatness of the excess increases
more or less the competition of the sellers, or according as it happens to be
more or less important to them to get immediately rid of the commodity. When
the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual
demand, and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either exactly, or
as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price. The whole
quantity upon hand can be disposed of for this price, and cannot be disposed of
for more. The competition of the different dealers obliges them all to accept
of this price, but does not oblige them to accept of less.
Such
fluctuations affect both the value and the rate either of wages or of profit,
according as the market happens to be either overstocked or under-stocked with
commodities or with labor; with work done, or with work to be done. But though
the market price of every particular commodity is in this manner continually
gravitating, if one may say so, towards the natural price, yet sometimes
particular accidents, sometimes natural causes, and sometimes particular
regulations of police, may, in many commodities, keep up the market price, for
a long time together, a good deal above the natural price.
When by an increase
in the effectual demand, the market price of some particular commodity happens
to rise a good deal above the natural price, those who employ their stocks in
supplying that market are generally careful to conceal this change. If it was
commonly known, their great profit would tempt so many new rivals to employ
their stocks in the same way that, the effectual demand being fully supplied,
the market price would soon be reduced to the natural price, and perhaps for
some time even below it. If the market is at a great distance from the
residence of those who supply it, they may sometimes be able to keep the secret
for several years together, and may so long enjoy their extraordinary profits
without any new rivals. Secrets of this kind, however, it must be acknowledged,
can seldom be long kept; and the extraordinary profit can last very little
longer than they are kept.
A monopoly
granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as
a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market
constantly under-stocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell
their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments,
whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. The price
of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. The natural
price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which
can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerable time
together. The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out
of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other
is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same
time continue their business.
The exclusive
privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws
which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number
than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less
degree. They are a sort of enlarged monopolies, and may frequently, for ages
together, and in whole classes of employments, keep up the market price of
particular commodities above the natural price, and maintain both the wages of
the labor and the profits of the stock employed about them somewhat above their
natural rate. Such enhancements of the market price may last as long as the
regulations of police which give occasion to them....
Of the different Progress of Opulence
in Different Nations
Book III,
Chapter IV: How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of
the Country
THE increase and
riches of commercial and manufacturing towns contributed to the improvement and
cultivation of the countries to which they belonged in three different ways.
First, by
affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country, they
gave encouragement to its cultivation and further improvement. This benefit was
not even confined to the countries in which they were situated, but extended
more or less to all those with which they had any dealings. To all of them they
afforded a market for some part either of their rude or manufactured produce,
and consequently gave some encouragement to the industry and improvement of
all. Their own country, however, on account of its neighborhood, necessarily
derived the greatest benefit from this market. Its rude produce being charged
with less carriage, the traders could pay the growers a better price for it,
and yet afford it as cheap to the consumers as that of more distant countries.
Secondly, the wealth acquired by the inhabitants of cities was
frequently employed in purchasing such lands as were to be sold, of which a
great part would frequently be uncultivated. Merchants are commonly ambitious
of becoming country gentlemen, and when they do, they are generally the best of
all improvers. A merchant is accustomed to employ his money chiefly in
profitable projects, whereas a mere country gentleman is accustomed to employ
it chiefly in expense. The one often sees his money go from him and return to
him again with a profit; the other, when once he parts with it, very seldom
expects to see any more of it. Those different habits naturally affect their
temper and disposition in every sort of business. A merchant is commonly a
bold, a country gentleman a timid undertaker. The one is not afraid to lay out
at once a large capital upon the improvement of his land when he has a probable
prospect of raising the value of it in proportion to the expense. The other, if
he has any capital, which is not always the case, seldom ventures to employ it
in this manner. If he improves at all, it is commonly not with a capital, but
with what he can save out of his annual revenue. Whoever has had the fortune to
live in a mercantile town situated in an unimproved country must have
frequently observed how much more spirited the operations of merchants were in
this way than those of mere country gentlemen. The habits, besides, of order,
economy, and attention, to which mercantile business naturally forms a
merchant, render him much fitter to execute, with profit and success, any
project of improvement.
Thirdly, and
lastly, commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good
government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the
inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of
war with their neighbors and of servile dependency upon their superiors. This,
though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all
their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto
taken notice of it.
In a country
which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great
proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the
produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the
cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. If this surplus
produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred
or a thousand
men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a
thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of
retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in return for their
maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same
reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them. Before the extension
of commerce and manufacture in Europe, the hospitality of the rich, and the
great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded everything which
in the present times we can easily form a notion of. É
The occupiers of
land were in every respect as dependent upon the great proprietor as his
retainersÉ. A crown, half a crown, a sheep, a lamb, was some years ago in the
highlands of Scotland a common rent for lands which maintained a family. In
some places it is so at this day; nor will money at present purchase a greater
quantity of commodities there than in other places. In a country where the
surplus produce of a large estate must be consumed upon the estate itself, it
will frequently be more convenient for the proprietor that part of it be
consumed at a distance from his own house provided they who consume it are as
dependent upon him as either his retainers or his menial servants. He is
thereby saved from the embarrassment of either too large a company or too large
a family. A tenant at will, who possesses land sufficient to maintain his
family for little more than a quit-rent, is as dependent upon the proprietor as
any servant or retainer whatever and must obey him with as little reserve. Such
a proprietor, as he feeds his servants and retainers at his own house, so he
feeds his tenants at their houses. The subsistence of both is derived from his
bounty, and its continuance depends upon his good pleasure.
Upon the
authority which the great proprietor necessarily had in such a state of things
over their tenants and retainers was founded the power of the ancient barons.
They necessarily became the judges in peace, and the leaders in war, of all who
dwelt upon their estates. They could maintain order and execute the law within
their respective demesnes, because each of them could there turn the whole
force of all the inhabitants against the injustice of any one. No other persons
had
sufficient
authority to do this. The king in particular had not. In those ancient times he
was little more than the greatest proprietor in his dominions, to whom, for the
sake of common defense against their common enemies, the other great
proprietors paid certain respects. É He was, therefore, obliged to abandon the
administration of justice through the greater part of the country to those who
were capable of administering it; and for the same reason to leave the command
of the country militia to those whom that militia would obeyÉ.
The introduction
of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded as an attempt to
moderate the authority of the great allodial lords. It established a regular
subordination, accompanied with a long train of services and duties, from the
king down to the smallest proprietor. During the minority of the proprietor,
the rent, together with the management of his lands, fell into the hands of his
immediate superior, and, consequently, those of all great proprietors into the
hands of the king, who was charged with the maintenance and education of the
pupil, and who, from his authority as guardian, was supposed to have a right of
disposing of him in marriage, provided it was in a manner not unsuitable to his
rank. But though this institution necessarily tended to strengthen the
authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great proprietors, it could
not do either sufficiently for establishing order and good government among the
inhabitants of the country, because it could not alter sufficiently that state
of property and manners from which the disorders arose. The authority of
government still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head and too
strong in the inferior members, and the excessive strength of the inferior
members was the cause of the weakness of the head. After the institution of
feudal subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of
the great lords as before. They still continued to make war according to their
own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon
the king; and the open country still continued to be a scene of violence, rapine,
and disorder.
But what all the
violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and
insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought
about. These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which
they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they
could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers.
All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the
world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon,
therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their
rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.
For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or for something as frivolous and
useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price
of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight
and authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be all
their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas
in the more ancient method of expense they must have shared with at least a
thousand people. With the judges that were to determine the preference this
difference was perfectly decisive; and thus, for the gratification of the most
childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually
bartered their whole power and authority.
In a country
where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a man of
ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other way than in
maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all of them necessarily at
his command. In the present state of Europe, a man of ten thousand a year can
spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so, without directly maintaining
twenty people, or being able to command more than ten footmen not worth the
commanding. Indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great or even a greater number
of people than he could have done by the ancient method of expense. For though
the quantity of precious productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue
be very small, the number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it
must necessarily have been very great. Its great price generally arises from
the wages of their labor, and the profits of all their immediate employers.
By paying that
price he indirectly pays all those wages and profits and thus indirectly
contributes to the maintenance of all the workmen and their employers. He
generally contributes, however, but a very small proportion to that of each, to
very few perhaps a tenth, to many not a hundredth, and to some not a
thousandth, nor even a ten-thousandth part of their whole annual maintenance.
Though he contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all
more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained
without himÉ.
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, notwithstanding 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 same 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 out 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 leasesÉ.
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 tradesman 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. É 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 not 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
peddler 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 is 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 countryÉ.
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 convenience 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 interests 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 favorable 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. É
France seems to
have had a considerable share of foreign commerce near a century before England
was distinguished as a commercial country. The marine of France was
considerable, according to the notions of the times, before the expedition of
Charles VIII to Naples. The cultivation and improvement of France, however, is,
upon the whole, inferior to that of England. The law of the country has never
given the same direct encouragement to agriculture.
The foreign
commerce of Spain and Portugal to the other parts of Europe, though chiefly
carried on in foreign ships, is very considerable. That to their colonies is
carried on in their own, and is much greater, on account of the great riches
and extent of those colonies. But it has never introduced any considerable
manufactures for distant sale into either of those countries, and the greater
part of both still remains uncultivated. É