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.
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