contribute, for some little time, to support its
consumption in adversity. The exportation
of gold and silver is, in this case, not the cause,
but the effect of its declension, and may even,
for some little time, alleviate the misery of
that declension.
The quantity of money, on the contrary,
must in every country naturally increase as
the value of the annual produce increases.
The value of the consumable goods annually
circulated within the society being greater,
will require a greater quantity of money to circulate
them. A part of the increased produce,
therefore, will naturally be employed in purchasing,
wherever it is to be had, the additional
quantity of gold and silver necessary for circulating
the rest. The increase of those metals
will, in this case, be the effect, not the
cause, of the public prosperity. Gold and silver
are purchased everywhere in the same
manner. The food, clothing, and lodging, the
revenue and maintenance, of all those whose
labour or stock is employed in bringing them
from the mine to the market, is the price paid
for them in Peru as well as in England. The
country which has this price to pay, will never
be long without the quantity of those metals
which it has occasion for; and no country
will ever long retain a quantity which it has
no occasion for.
Whatever, therefore, we may imagine the
real wealth and revenue of a country to consist
in, whether in the value of the annual produce
of its land and labour, as plain reason
seems to dictate, or in the quantity of the precious
metals which circulate within it, as vulgar
prejudices suppose; in either view of the matter,
every prodigal appears to be a public enemy,
and every frugal man a public benefactor.
The effects of misconduct are often the
same as those of prodigality. Every injudicious
and unsuccessful project in agriculture,
mines, fisheries, trade, or manufactures, tends
in the same manner to diminish the funds destined
for the maintenance of productive labour.
In every such project, though the capital is
consumed by productive hands only, yet as,
by the injudicious manner in which they are
employed, they do not reproduce the full value
of their consumption, there must always
be some diminution in what would otherwise
have been the productive funds of the society.
It can seldom happen, indeed, that the circumstances
of a great nation can be much affected
either by the prodigality or misconduct
of individuals; the profusion or imprudence
of some being always more than compensated
by the frugality and good conduct of others.
With regard to profusion, the principle
which prompts to expense is the passion for
present enjoyment; which, though sometimes
violent and very difficult to be restrained, is in
general only momentary occasional. But
the principle which prompts to save, is the
desire of bettering our condition; a desire
which, though generally calm and dispassionate,
comes with us from the womb, and never
leaves us till we go into the grave. In the
whole interval which separates those two moments,
there is scarce, perhaps, a single instance,
in which any man is so perfectly and
completely satisfied with his situation, as to be
without any wish of alteration or improvement
of any kind. An augmentation of fortune
is the means by which the greater part
of men propose and wish to better their condition.
It is the means the most vulgar and
the most obvious; and the most likely way of
augmenting their fortune, is to save and accumulate
some part of what they acquire, either
regularly and annually, or upon some extraordinary
occasion. Though the principle of
expense, therefore, prevails in almost all men
upon some occasions, and in some men upon
almost all occasions; yet in the greater part of
men, taking the whole course of their life at
an average, the principle of frugality seems
not only to predominate, but to predominate
very greatly.
With regard to misconduct, the number of
prudent and successful undertakings is everywhere
much greater than that of injudicious
and unsuccessful ones. After all our complaints
of the frequency of bankruptcies, the
unhappy men who fall into this misfortune,
make but a very small part of the whole number
engaged in trade, and all other sorts of
business; not much more, perhaps, than one
in a thousand. Bankruptcy is, perhaps, the
greatest and most humiliating calamity which
can befal an innocent man. The greater part
of men, therefore, are sufficiently careful to
avoid it. Some, indeed, do not avoid it; as
some do not avoid the gallows.
Great nations are never impoverished by
private, though they sometimes are by public
prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or
almost the whole public revenue is, in most
countries, employed in maintaining unproductive
hands. Such are the people who compose
a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical
establishment, great fleets and armies,
who in time of peace produce nothing, and in
time of war acquire nothing which can compensate
the expense of maintaining them, even
while the war lasts. Such people, as they
themselves produce nothing, are all maintained
by the produce of other men's labour.
When multiplied, therefore, to an unnecessary
number, they may in a particular year consume
so great a share of this produce, as not
to leave a sufficiency for maintaining the productive
labourers, who should reproduce it
next year. The next year's produce, therefore,
will be less than that of the foregoing;
and if the same disorder should continue, that
of the third year will be still less than that of
the second. Those unproductive hands who
should be maintained by a part only of the