sum of profit from rising so high as it otherwise
would do.
All the original sources of revenue, the
wages of labour, the rent of land, and the
profits of stock, the monopoly renders much
less abundant than they otherwise would be.
To promote the little interest of one little
order of men in one country, it hurts the interest
of all other orders of men in that country,
and of all the men in all other countries.
It is solely by raising the ordinary rate of
profit, that the monopoly either has proved,
or could prove, advantageous to any one particular
order of men. But besides all the
bad effects to the country in general, which
have already been mentioned as necessarily
resulting from a higher rate of profit, there is
one more fatal, perhaps, than all these put
together, but which, if we may judge from
experience, is inseparably connected with it.
The high rate of profit seems everywhere to
destroy that parsimony which, in other circumstances,
is natural to the character of the
merchant. When profits are high, that sober
virtue seems to be superfluous, and expensive
luxury to suit better the affluence of his situation.
But the owners of the great mercantile
capitals are necessarily the leaders and conductors
of the whole industry of every nation;
and their example has a much greater
influence upon the manners of the whole industrious
part of it than that of any other
order of men. If his employer is attentive
and parsimonious, the workman is very likely
to be so too; but if the master in dissolute
and disorderly, the servant, who shapes his
work according to the pattern which his master
prescribes to him, will shape his life, too,
according to the example which he sets him.
Accumulation is thus prevented in the hands
of all those who are naturally the most disposed
to accumulate; and the funds destined
for the maintenance of productive labour,
receive no augmentation from the revenue of
those who ought naturally to augment them
the most. The capital of the country, instead
of increasing, gradually dwindles away,
and the quantity of productive labour maintained
in it grows every day less and less.
Have the exorbitant profits of the merchants
of Cadiz and Lisbon augmented the capital
of Spain and Portugal? Have they alleviated
the poverty, have they promoted the industry,
of those two beggarly countries? Such has
been the tone of mercantile expense in those
two trading cities, that those exorbitant profits,
far from augmenting the general capital
of the country, seem scarce to have been
sufficient to keep up the capitals upon which
they were made. Foreign capitals are every
day intruding themselves, if I may say so,
more and more into the trade of Cadiz and
Lisbon. It is to expel those foreign capitals
from a trade which their own grows every
day more and more insufficient for carrying
on, that the Spaniards and Portuguese endeavour
every day to straiten more and more the
galling bands of their absurd monopoly.
Compare the mercantile manners of Cadiz
and Lisbon with those of Amsterdam, and
you will be sensible how differently the conduct
and character of merchants are affected
by the high and by the low profits of stock.
The merchants of London, indeed, have not
yet generally become such magnificent lords
as those of Cadiz and Lisbon; but neither
are they in general such attentive and parsimonious
burghers as those of Amsterdam.
They are supposed, however, many of them,
to be a good deal richer than the greater part
of the former, and not quite so rich as many
of the latter: but the rate of their profit is
commonly much lower than that of the former,
and a good deal higher than that of the
latter. Light come, light go, says the proverb;
and the ordinary tone of expense seems
everywhere to be regulated, not so much according
to the real ability of spending, as
to the supposed facility of getting money to
spend.
It is thus that the single advantage which
the monopoly procures to a single order of
men, is in many different ways hurtful to the
general interest of the country.
To found a great empire for the sole purpose
of raising up a people of customers,
may at first sight, appear a project fit only
for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however,
a project altogether unfit for a nation of
shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation
whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.
Such statesmen, and such statesmen
only, are capable of fancying that they
will find some advantage in employing the
blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens, to
found and maintain such an empire. Say to
a shopkeeper, Buy me a good estate, and I
shall always buy my clothes at your shop,
even though I should pay somewhat dearer
than what I can have them for at other shops;
and you will not find him very forward to
embrace your proposal. But should any
other person buy you such an estate, the
shopkeeper will be much obliged to your benefactor
if he would enjoin you to buy all
your clothes at his shop. England purchased
for some of her subjects, who found themselves
uneasy at home, a great estate in a
distant country. The price, indeed, was very
small, and instead of thirty years purchase,
the ordinary price of land in the present
times, it amounted to little more than the
expense of the different equipments which
made the first discovery, reconoitered the
coast, and took a fictitious possession of the
country. The land was good, and of great
extent; and the cultivators having plenty of
good ground to work upon, and being for
some time at liberty to sell their produce
where they pleased, became, in the course of