AN
INQUIRY
INTO
THE NATURE AND CAUSES
OF THE
WEALTH OF NATIONS.
INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK.
The annual labour of every nation is the
fund which originally supplies it with all the
necessaries and conveniencies of life which it
annually consumes, and which consist always
either in the immediate produce of that labour,
or in what is purchased with that produce from
other nations.
According, therefore, as this produce, or
what is purchased with it, bears a greater or
smaller proportion to the number of those who
are to consume it, the nation will be better or
worse supplied with all the necessaries and
conveniencies for which it has occasion.
But this proportion must in every nation
be regulated by two different circumstances:
first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment
with which its labour is generally applied;
and, secondly, by the proportion between the
number of those who are employed in useful
labour, and that of those who are not so employed.
Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent
of territory of any particular nation, the
abundance or scantiness of its annual supply
must, in that particular situation, depend upon
those two circumstances.
The abundance or scantiness of this supply,
too, seems to depend more upon the former of
those two circumstances than upon the latter.
Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers,
every individual who is able to work is
more or less employed in useful labour, and
endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the
necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself,
and such of his family or tribe as are
either too old, or too young, or too infirm, to
go a-hunting and fishing. Such nations, however,
are so miserably poor, that, from mere
want, they are frequently reduced, or at least
think themselves reduced, to the necessity
sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes
of abandoning their infants, their old
people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases,
to perish with hunger, or to be devoured
by wild beasts. Among civilized and thriving
nations, on the contrary, though a great
number of people do not labour at all, many
of whom consume the produce of ten times,
frequently of a hundred times, more labour
than the greater part of those who work; yet
the produce of the whole labour of the society
is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied;
and a workman, even of the lowest and
poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious,
may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries
and conveniencies of life than it is possible for
any savage to acquire.
The causes of this improvement in the productive
powers of labour, and the order according
to which its produce is naturally distributed
among the different ranks and conditions
of men in the society, make the subject
of the first book of this Inquiry.
Whatever be the actual state of the skill,
dexterity, and judgment, with which labour is
applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness
of its annual supply must depend, during
the continuance of that state, upon the
proportion between the number of those who
are annually employed in useful labour, and
that of those who are not so employed. The