it for something for which there is a demand
at home. It as effectually replaces the capital
of the person who produces that surplus, and
as effectually enables him to continue his business,
the service by which the capital of a
wholesale merchant chiefly contributes to support
the productive labour, and to augment
the value of the annual produce of the society
to which he belongs.
It is of more consequence that the capital
of the manufacturer should reside within the
country. It necessarily puts into motion a
greater quantity of productive labour, and adds
a greater value to the annual produce of the
land and labour of the society. It may, however,
be very useful to the country, though it
should not reside within it. The capitals of
the British manufacturers who work up the
flax and hemp annually imported from the
coasts of the Baltic, are surely very useful to
the countries which produce them. Those
materials are a part of the surplus produce of
those countries, which, unless it was annually
exchanged for something which is in demand
there, would be of no value, and would soon
cease to be produced. The merchants who
export it, replace the capitals of the people
who produce it, and thereby encourage them
to continue the production; and the British
manufacturers replace the capitals of those
merchants.
A particular country, in the same manner
as a particular person, may frequently not
have capital sufficient both to improve
cultivate all its lands, to manufacture and prepare
their whole rude produce for immediate
use and consumption, and to transport the
surplus part either of the rude or manufactured
produce to those distant markets, where it
can be exchanged for something for which
there is a demand at home. The inhabitants
of many different parts of Great Britain have
not capital sufficient to improve and cultivate
all their lands. The wool of the southern
counties of Scotland is, a great part of it, after
a long land carriage through very bad
roads, manufactured in Yorkshire, for want of
a capital to manufacture it at home. There
are many little manufacturing towns in Great
Britain, of which the inhabitants have not capital
sufficient to transport the produce of
their own industry to those distant markets
where there is demand and consumption for it.
If there are any merchants among them, they
are, properly, only the agents of wealthier
merchants who reside in some of the great
commercial cities.
When the capital of any country is not sufficient
for all those three purposes, in proportion
as a greater share of it is employed in agriculture,
the greater will be the quantity of
productive labour which it puts into motion
within the country; as will likewise be the value
which its employment adds to the annual
produce of the land and labour of the society.
After agriculture, the capital employed in manufactures
puts into motion the greatest quantity
of productive labour, and adds the greatest
value to the annual produce. That which
is employed in the trade of exportation has the
least effect of any of the three.
The country, indeed, which has not capital
sufficient for all those three purposes, has not
arrived at that degree of opulence for which
it seems naturally destined. To attempt,
however, prematurely, and with an insufficient
capital, to do all the three, is certainly not the
shortest way for a society, no more than it
would be for an individual, to acquire a sufficient
one. The capital of all the individuals
of a nation has its limits, in the same manner
as that of a single individual, and is capable of
executing only certain purposes. The capital
of all the individuals of a nation is increased in
the same manner as that of a single individual,
by their continually accumulating and adding
to it whatever they save out of their revenue.
It is likely to increase the fastest, therefore,
when it is employed in the way that affords
the greatest revenue to all the inhabitants of
the country, as they will thus be enabled to
make the greatest savings. But the revenue
of all the inhabitants of the country is necessarily
in proportion to the value of the annual
produce of their land and labour.
It has been the principal cause of the rapid
progress of our American colonies towards
wealth and greatness, that almost their whole
capitals have hitherto been employed in agriculture.
They have no manufactures, those
household and coarser manufactures excepted,
which necessarily accompany the progress of
agriculture, and which are the work of the
women and children in every private family.
The greater part, both of the exportation and
coasting trade of America, is carried on by
the capitals of merchants who reside in Great
Britain. Even the stores and warehouses from
which goods are retailed in some provinces,
particularly in Virginia and Maryland, belong
many of them to merchants who reside in the
mother country, and afford one of the few
instances of the retail trade of a society being
carried on by the capitals of those who are
not resident members of it. Were the Americans,
either by combination, or by any other
sort of violence, to stop the importation of
European manufactures, and, by thus giving
a monopoly to such of their own countrymen
as could manufacture the like goods, divert
any considerable part of their capital into this
employment, they would retard, instead of accelerating,
the further increase in the value
of their annual produce, and would obstruct,
instead of promoting, the progress of their
country towards real wealth and greatness.
This would be still more the case, were they
to attempt, in the same manner, to monopolize
to themselves their whole exportation
trade.