country, is in every particular country promoted
by the natural inclinations of man. If
human institutions had never thwarted those
natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere
have increased beyond what the improvement
and cultivation of the territory in which they
were situated could support; till such time,
at least, as the whole of that territory was
completely cultivated and improved. Upon
equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will
choose to employ their capitals, rather in the
improvement and cultivation of land, than
either in manufactures or in foreign trade.
The man who employs his capital in land, has
it more under his view and command; and his
fortune is much less liable to accidents than
that of the trader, who is obliged frequently
to commit it, not only to the winds and the
waves, but to the more uncertain elements of
human folly and injustice, by giving great
credits, in distant countries, to men with whose
character and situation he can seldom be
thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the
landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in
the improvement of his land, seems to be as
well secured as the nature of human affairs
can admit of. The beauty of the country, besides,
the pleasure of a country life, the tranquillity
of mind which it promises, and, wherever
the injustice of human laws does not disturb
it, the independency which it really affords,
have charms that, more or less, attract
everybody; and as to cultivate the ground
was the original destination of man, so, in
every stage of his existence, he seems to retain
a predilection for this primitive employment.
Without the assistance of some artificers,
indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried
on, but with great inconveniency and
continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters,
wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and
bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors,
are people whose service the farmer has frequent
occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand
occasionally in need of the assistance of one
another; and as their residence is not, like
that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a
precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood
of one another, and thus form a
small town or village. The butcher, the
brewer, and the baker, soon join them, together
with many other artificers and retailers,
necessary or useful for supplying their occasional
wants, and who contribute still further
to augment the town. The inhabitants
of the town, and those of the country, are mutually
the servants of one another. The town
is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants
of the country resort, in order to exchange
their rude for manufactured produce.
It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants
of the town, both with the materials of
their work, and the means of their subsistence.
The quantity of the finished work which they
sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily
regulates the quantity of the materials and
provisions which they buy. Neither their employment
nor subsistence, therefore, can augment,
but in proportion to the augmentation
of the demand from the country for finished
work; and this demand can augment only in
proportion to the extension of improvement
and cultivation. Had human institutions,
therefore, never disturbed the natural course
of things, the progressive wealth and increase
of the towns would, in every political society,
be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement
and cultivation of the territory or
country.
In our North American colonies, where
uncultivated land is still to be had upon easy
terms, no manufactures for distant sale have
ever yet been established in any of their towns.
When an artificer has acquired a little more
stock than is necessary for carrying on his own
business in supplying the neighbouring country,
he does not, in North America, attempt
to establish with it a manufacture for more
distant sale, but employs it in the purchase
and improvement of uncultivated land. From
artificer he becomes planter; and neither the
large wages nor the easy subsistence which
that country affords to artificers, can bribe him
rather to work for other people than for himself.
He feels that an artificer is the servant
of his customers, from whom he derives his
subsistence; but that a planter who cultivates
his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence
from the labour of his own family, is
really a master, and independent of all the
world.
In countries, on the contrary, where there
is either no uncultivated land, or none that
can be had upon easy terms, every artificer
who has acquired more stock than he can employ
in the occasional jobs of the neighbourhood,
endeavours to prepare work for more
distant sale. The smith erects some sort of
iron, the weaver some sort of linen or woollen
manufactory. Those different manufactures
come, in process of time, to be gradually subdivided,
and thereby improved and refined in
a great variety of ways, which may easily be
conceived, and which it is therefore unnecessary
to explain any further.
In seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures
are, upon equal or nearly equal
profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce,
for the same reason that agriculture is
naturally preferred to manufactures. As the
capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure
than that of the manufacturer, so the capital
of the manufacturer, being at all times
more within his view and command, is more
secure than that of the foreign merchant. In
every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus
part both of the rude and manufactured
produce, or that for which there is no demand
at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be