spare revenue of the people, may consume so
great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby
oblige so great a number to encroach upon
their capitals, upon the funds destined for the
maintenance of productive labour, that all the
frugality and good conduct of individuals may
not be able to compensate the waste and degradation
of produce occasioned by this violent
and forced encroachment.
This frugality and good conduct, however,
is upon most occasions, it appears from experience,
sufficient to compensate, not only the
private prodigality and misconduct of individuals,
but the public extravagance of government.
The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted
effort of every man to better his condition,
the principle from which public and national,
as well as private opulence is originally
derived, is frequently powerful enough to
maintain the natural progress of things towards
improvement, in spite both of the extravagance
of government, and of the greatest
errors of administration. Like the unknown
principle of animal life, it frequently restores
health and vigour to the constitution, in spite
not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions
of the doctor.
The annual produce of the land and labour
of any nation can be increasing in its value by
no other means, but by increasing either the
number of its productive labourers, or the
productive powers of those labourers who had
before been employed. The number of its
productive labourers, it is evident, can never
be much increased, but in consequence of an
increase of capital, or of the funds destined for
maintaining them. The productive powers
of the same number of labourers cannot be increased,
but in consequence either of some
addition and improvement to those machines
and instruments which facilitate and abridge
labour, or of more proper division and distribution
of employment. In either case, an additional
capital is almost always required. It
is by means of an additional capital only, that
the undertaker of any work can either provide
his workmen with better machinery, or make
a more proper distribution of employment
among them. When the work to be done
consists of a number of parts, to keep every
man constantly employed in one way, requires
a much greater capital than where every man
is occasionally employed in every different
part of the work. When we compare, therefore,
the state of a nation at two different periods,
and find that the annual produce of its
land and labour is evidently greater at the latter
than at the former, that its lands are better
cultivated, its manufactures more numerous
and more flourishing, and its trade more extensive;
we may be assured that its capital
must have increased during the interval between
those two periods, and that more must
have been added to it by the good conduct of
some, than had been taken from it either by
the private misconduct of others, or by the
public extravagance of government. But we
shall find this to have been the case of almost
all nations, in all tolerably quiet and peaceable
times, even of those who have not enjoyed
the most prudent and parsimonious governments.
To form a right judgment of it, indeed,
we must compare the state of the country
at periods somewhat distant from one another.
The progress is frequently so gradual,
that, at near periods, the improvement is not
only not sensible, but, from the declension
either of certain branches of industry, or of certain
districts of the country, things which
sometimes happen, though the country in general
is in great prosperity, there frequently
arises a suspicion, that the riches and industry
of the whole are decaying.
The annual produce of the land and labour
of England, for example, is certainly much
greater than it was a little more than a century
ago, at the restoration of Charles II.
Though at present few people, I believe,
doubt of this, yet during this period five years
have seldom passed away, in which some book
or pamphlet has not been published, written,
too, with such abilities as to gain some authority
with the public, and pretending to demonstrate
that the wealth of the nation was
fast declining; that the country was depopulated,
agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying,
and trade undone. Nor have these
publications been all party pamphlets, the
wretched offspring of falsehood and venality.
Many of them have been written by very candid
and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing
but what they believed, and for no other
reason but because they believed it.
The annual produce of the land and labour
of England, again, was certainly much greater
at the Restoration than we can suppose it
to have been about a hundred years before, at
the accession of Elizabeth. At this period,
too, we have all reason to believe, the country
was much more advanced in improvement,
than it had been about a century before, towards
the close of the dissensions between the
houses of York and Lancaster. Even then it
was, probably, in a better condition than it
had been at the Norman conquest: and at the
Norman conquest, than during the confusion
of the Saxon heptarchy. Even at this early
period, it was certainly a more improved country
than at the invasion of Julius Cæsar, when
its inhabitants were nearly in the same state
with the savages in North America.
In each of those periods, however, there
was not only much private and public profusion,
many expensive and unnecessary wars,
great perversion of the annual produce from
maintaining productive to maintain unproductive
hands; but sometimes, in the confusion
of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction
of stock, as might he supposed, not
only to retard, as it certainly did, the natural