the rent of the landlord. It is, therefore, a
productive expense.
Mercantile stock is equally barren and unproductive
with manufacturing stock. It
only continues the existence of its own value,
without producing any new value. Its profits
are only the repayment of the maintenance
which its employer advances to himself during
the time that he employs it, or till he receives
the returns of it. They are only the
repayment of a part of the expense which must
be laid out in employing it.
The labour of artificers and manufacturers
never adds any thing to the value of the whole
annual amount of the rude produce of the
land. It adds, indeed, greatly to the value
of some particular parts of it. But the consumption
which, in the mean time, it occasions
of other parts, is precisely equal to the
value which it adds to those parts; so that
the value of the whole amount is not, at any
one moment of time, in the least augmented
by it. The person who works the lace of a
pair of fine ruffles for example, will sometimes
raise the value of, perhaps, a pennyworth
of flax to L.30 sterling. But though,
at first sight, he appears thereby to multiply the
value of a part of the rude produce about seven
thousand and two hundred times, he in reality
adds nothing to the value of the whole annual
amount of the rude produce. The working
of that lace costs him, perhaps, two years labour.
The L.30 which he gets for it when
it is finished, is no more than the repayment
of the subsistence which he advances to himself
during the two years that he is employed
about it. The value which, by every
day's, month's, or year's labour, he adds to
the flax, does no more than replace the value
of his own consumption during that day,
month, or year. At no moment of time,
therefore, does he add any thing to the value
of the whole annual amount of the rude produce
of the land: the portion of that produce
which he is continually consuming, being
always equal to the value which he is continually
producing. The extreme poverty of
the greater part of the persons employed in
this expensive, though trifling manufacture,
may satisfy us that the price of their work
does not, in ordinary cases, exceed the value
of their subsistence. It is otherwise with the
work of farmers and country labourers. The
rent of the landlord is a value which, in ordinary
cases, it is continually producing over
and above replacing, in the most complete
manner, the whole consumption, the whole
expense laid out upon the employment and
maintenance both of the workmen and of their
employer.
Artificers, manufacturers, and merchants,
can augment the revenue and wealth of their
society by parsimony only; or, as it is expressed
in this system, by privation, that is, by depriving
themselves of a part of the funds
destined for their own subsistence. They
annually reproduce nothing but those funds.
Unless, therefore, they annually save some
part of them, unless they annually deprive
themselves of the enjoyment of some part of
them, the revenue and wealth of their society
can never be, in the smallest degree, augmented
by means of their industry. Farmers
and country labourers, on the contrary, may
enjoy completely the whole funds destined
for their own subsistence, and yet augment,
at the same time, the revenue and wealth of
their society. Over and above what is destined
for their own subsistence, their industry
annually affords a neat produce, of which the
augmentation necessarily augments the revenue
and wealth of their society. Nations,
therefore, which like France or England,
consist in a great measure, of proprietors
and cultivators, can be enriched by industry
and enjoyment. Nations, on the contrary
which, like Holland and Hamburgh, are composed
chiefly of merchants, artificers, and
manufacturers, can grow rich only through
parsimony and privation. As the interest of
nations so differently circumstanced is very
different, so is likewise the common character
of the people. In those of the former kind,
liberality, frankness, and good fellowship,
naturally make a part of their common character;
in the latter, narrowness, meanness, and
a selfish disposition, averse to all social pleasure
and enjoyment.
The unproductive class, that of merchants,
artificers, and manufacturers, is maintained
and employed altogether at the expense of the
two other classes, of that of proprietors, and
of that of cultivators. They furnish it both
with the materials of its work, and with the
fund of its subsistence, with the corn and
cattle which it consumes while it is employed
about that work. The proprietors and cultivators
finally pay both the wages of all the
workmen of the unproductive class, and the
profits of all their employers. Those workmen
and their employers are properly the
servants of the proprietors and cultivators.
They are only servants who work without
doors, as menial servants work within. Both
the one and the other, however, are equally
maintained at the expense of the same masters.
The labour of both is equally unproductive.
It adds nothing to the value of the
sum total of the rude produce of the land.
Instead of increasing the value of that sum
total, it is a charge and expense which must
be paid out of it.
The unproductive class, however, is not
only useful, but greatly useful, to the other
two classes. By means of the industry of
merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, the
proprietors and cultivators can purchase both
the foreign goods and the manufactured produce
of their own country, which they have
occasion for, with the produce of a much