they are in general industrious, sober,
and thriving; as in many English, and in
most Dutch towns. In those towns which are
principally supported by the constant or occasional
residence of a court, and in which the
inferior ranks of people are chiefly maintained
by the spending of revenue, they are in general
idle, dissolute, and poor; as at Rome,
Versailles, Compeigne, and Fontainbleau. If
you except Rouen and Bourdeaux, there is
little trade or industry in any of the parliament
towns of France; and the inferior ranks
of people, being chiefly maintained by the expense
of the members of the courts of justice,
and of those who come to plead before them,
are in general idle and poor. The great
trade of Rouen and Bourdeaux seems to be
altogether the effect of their situation. Rouen
is necessarily the entrepot of almost all the
goods which are brought either from foreign
countries, or from the maritime provinces of
France, for the consumption of the great city
of Paris. Bourdeaux is, in the same manner,
the entrepot of the wines which grow upon
the banks of the Garronne, and of the rivers
which run into it, one of the richest wine
countries in the world, and which seems to
produce the wine fittest for exportation, or best
suited to the taste of foreign nations. Such
advantageous situations necessarily attract a
great capital by the great employment which
they afford it; and the employment of this capital
is the cause of the industry of those two
cities. In the other parliament towns of
France, very little more capital seems to be
employed than what is necessary for supplying
their own consumption; that is, little
more than the smallest capital which can be
employed in them. The same thing may be
said of Paris, Madrid, and Vienna. Of those
three cities, Paris is by far the most industrious,
but Paris itself is the principal market of
all the manufactures established at Paris, and
its own consumption is the principal object of
all the trade which it carries on. London,
Lisbon, and Copenhagen, are, perhaps, the
only three cities in Europe, which are both
the constant residence of a court, and can at
the same time be considered as trading cities,
or as cities which trade not only for their own
consumption, but for that of other cities and
countries. The situation of all the three is
extremely advantageous, and naturally fits
them to be the entrepots of a great part of the
goods destined for the consumption of distant
places. In a city where a great revenue is
spent, to employ with advantage a capital for
any other purpose than for supplying the consumption
of that city, is probably more difficult
than in one in which the inferior ranks of
people have no other maintenance but what
they derive from the employment of such a
capital. The idleness of the greater part of
the people who are maintained by the expense
of revenue, corrupts, it is probable, the industry
of those who ought to be maintained by
the employment of capital, and renders it less
advantageous to employ a capital there than in
other places. There was little trade or industry
in Edinburgh before the Union. When
the Scotch parliament was no longer to be assembled
in it, when it ceased to be the necessary
residence of the principal nobility and
gentry of Scotland, it became a city of some
trade and industry. It still continues, however,
to be the residence of the principal
courts of justice in Scotland, of the boards of
customs and excise, &c. A considerable revenue,
therefore, still continues to be spent in
it. In trade and industry, it is much inferior
to Glasgow, of which the inhabitants are
chiefly maintained by the employment of capital.
The inhabitants of a large village, it
has sometimes been observed, after having
made considerable progress in manufactures,
have become idle and poor, in consequence of
a great lord's having taken up his residence in
their neighbourhood.
The proportion between capital and revenue,
therefore, seems everywhere to regulate
the proportion between industry and idleness.
Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails;
wherever revenue, idleness. Every increase
or diminution of capital, therefore, naturally
tends to increase or diminish the real
quantity of industry, the number of productive
hands, and consequently the exchangeable
value of the annual produce of the land and
labour of the country, the real wealth and revenue
of all its inhabitants.
Capitals are increased by parsimony, and
diminished by prodigality and misconduct.
Whatever a person saves from his revenue he
adds to his capital, and either employs it himself
in maintaining an additional number of
productive hands, or enables some other person
to do so, by lending it to him for an interest,
that is, for a share of the profits. As the
capital of an individual can be increased only
by what he saves from his annual revenue or
his annual gains, so the capital of a society,
which is the same with that of all the individuals
who compose it, can be increased only
in the same manner.
Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate
cause of the increase of capital. Industry,
indeed, provides the subject which parsimony
accumulates; but whatever industry
might acquire, if parsimony did not save and
store up, the capital would never be the
greater.
Parsimony, by increasing the fund which is
destined for the maintenance of productive
hands, tends to increase the number of those
hands whose labour adds to the value of the
subject upon which it is bestowed. It tends,
therefore, to increase the exchangeable value
of the annual produce of the land and labour