smaller quantity of their own labour, than
what they would be obliged to employ, if they
were to attempt, in an awkward and unskilful
manner, either to import the one, or to
make the other, for their own use. By means
of the unproductive class, the cultivators are
delivered from many cares, which would
otherwise distract their attention from the
cultivation of land. The superiority of produce,
which in consequence of this undivided
attention, they are enabled to raise, is fully
sufficient to pay the whole expense which the
maintenance and employment of the unproductive
class costs either the proprietors or
themselves. The industry of merchants, artificers,
and manufacturers, though in its own
nature altogether unproductive, yet contributes
in this manner indirectly to increase the produce
of the land. It increases the productive
powers of productive labour, by leaving
it at liberty to confine itself to its proper
employment, the cultivation of land; and the
plough goes frequently the easier and the
better, by means of the labour of the man
whose business is most remote from the
plough.
It can never be the interest of the proprietors
and cultivators, to restrain or to discourage,
in any respect, the industry of merchants,
artificers, and manufacturers. The greater
the liberty which this unproductive class enjoys,
the greater will be the competition in all
the different trades which compose it, and the
cheaper will the other two classes be supplied,
both with foreign goods and with the manufactured
produce of their own country.
It can never be the interest of the unproductive
class to oppress the other two classes.
It is the surplus produce of the land, or what
remains after deducting the maintenance, first
of the cultivators, and afterwards of the proprietors,
that maintains and employs the unproductive
class. The greater this surplus,
the greater must likewise be the maintenance
and employment of that class. The establishment
of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and
of perfect equality, is the very simple secret
which most effectually secures the highest degree
of prosperity to all the three classes.
The merchants, artificers, and manufacturers
of those mercantile states, which, like Holland
and Hamburgh, consist chiefly of this
unproductive class, are in the same manner
maintained and employed altogether at the
expense of the proprietors and cultivators of
land. The only difference is, that those proprietors
and cultivators are, the greater part
of them, placed at a most inconvenient distance
from the merchants, artificers, and manufacturers,
whom they supply with the materials
of their work and the fund of their
subsistence; are the inhabitants of other
countries, and the subjects of other governments.
Such mercantile states, however, are not
only useful, but greatly useful, to the inhabitants
of these other countries. They fill
up, in some measure, a very important void;
and supply the place of the merchants, artificers,
and manufacturers, whom the inhabitants
of those countries ought to find at home,
but whom, from some defect in their policy,
they do not find at home.
It can never be the interest of those landed
nations, if I may call them so, to discourage
or distress the industry of such mercantile
states, by imposing high duties upon their
trade, or upon the commodities which they
furnish. Such duties, by rendering those
commodities dearer, could serve only to sink
the real value of the surplus produce of their
own land, with which, or, what comes to the
same thing, with the price of which those
commodities are purchased. Such duties
could only serve to discourage the increase of
that surplus produce, and consequently the
improvement and cultivation of their own
land. The most effectual expedient, on the
contrary, for raising the value of that surplus
produce, for encouraging its increase, and
consequently the improvement and cultivation
of their own land, would be to allow the most
perfect freedom to the trade of all such mercantile
nations.
This perfect freedom of trade would even
be the most effectual expedient for supplying
them, in due time, with all the artificers,
manufacturers, and merchants, whom they
wanted at home; and for filling up, in the
properest and most advantageous manner,
that very important void which they felt
there.
The continual increase of the surplus produce
of their land would, in due time, create
a greater capital than what would be employed
with the ordinary rate of profit in the
improvement and cultivation of land; and
the surplus part of it would naturally turn
itself to the employment of artificers and
manufacturers, at home. But these artificers
and manufacturers, finding at home both the
materials of their work and the fund of their
subsistence, might immediately, even with
much less art and skill be able to work as
cheap as the little artificers and manufacturers
of such mercantile states, who had both to
bring from a greater distance. Even though,
from want of art and skill, they might not for
some time be able to work as cheap, yet,
finding a market at home, they might be able
to sell their work there as cheap as that of
the artificers and manufacturers of such mercantile
states, which could not be brought to
that market but from so great a distance; and
as their art and skill improved, they would
soon be able to sell it cheaper. The artificers
and manufacturers of such mercantile
states, therefore, would immediately be
rivalled in the market of those landed nations,
and soon after undersold and justled out of it