employ a great deal of machinery, by which
they facilitate and abridge their own labour.
From the very little that is known about the
price of manufactures in the times of the
Greeks and Romans, it would appear that
those of the finer sort were excessively dear.
Silk sold for its weight in gold. It was not,
indeed, in those times an European manufacture;
and as it was all brought from the
East Indies, the distance of the carriage may
in some measure account for the greatness of
the price. The price, however, which a
lady, it is said, would sometimes pay for a
piece of very fine linen, seems to have been
equally extravagant; and as linen was always
either an European, or at farthest, an Egyptian
manufacture, this high price can be accounted
for only by the great expense of the
labour which must have been employed about
it, and the expense of this labour again could
arise from nothing but the awkwardness of
the machinery which is made use of. The
price of fine woollens, too, though not quite
so extravagant, seems, however, to have been
much above that of the present times. Some
cloths, we are told by Pliny[45], dyed in a particular
manner, cost a hundred denarii, or
L.3 6s. 8d. the pound weight. Others, dyed
in another manner, cost a thousand denarii
the pound weight, or L.33 6s. 8d. The Roman
pound, it must be remembered, contained
only twelve of our avoirdupois ounces.
This high price, indeed, seems to have been
principally owing to the dye. But had not
the cloths themselves been much dearer than
any which are made in the present times, so
very expensive a dye would not probably have
been bestowed upon them. The disproportion
would have been too great between the
value of the accessory and that of the principal.
The price mentioned by the same author[46],
of some triclinaria, a sort of woollen
pillows or cushions made use of to lean upon
as they reclined upon their couches at table,
passes all credibility; some of them being
said to have cost more than L.30,000, others
more than L.300,000. This high price, too,
is not said to have arisen from the dye. In
the dress of the people of fashion of both
sexes, there seems to have been much less variety,
it is observed by Dr. Arbuthnot, in
ancient than in modern times; and the very
little variety which we find in that of the ancient
statues, confirms his observation. He
infers from this, that their dress must, upon
the whole, have been cheaper than ours; but
the conclusion does not seem to follow.
When the expense of fashionable dress is very
great, the variety must be very small. But
when, by the improvements in the productive
powers of manufacturing art and industry,
the expense of any one dress comes to be very
moderate, the variety will naturally be very
great. The rich, not being able to distinguish
themselves by the expense of any one
dress, will naturally endeavour to do so by
the multitude and variety of their dresses.
The greatest and most important branch of
the commerce of every nation, it has already
been observed, is that which is carried on between
the inhabitants of the town and those
of the country. The inhabitants of the town
draw from the country the rude produce,
which constitutes both the materials of their
work and the fund of their subsistence; and
they pay for this rude produce, by sending
back to the country a certain portion of it manufactured
and prepared for immediate use.
The trade which is carried on between these
two different sets of people, consists ultimately
in a certain quantity of rude produce exchanged
for a certain quantity of manufactured
produce. The dearer the latter, therefore,
the cheaper the former; and whatever
tends in any country to raise the price of manufactured
produce, tends to lower that of
the rude produce of the land, and thereby to
discourage agriculture. The smaller the
quantity of manufactured produce, which any
given quantity of rude produce, or, what
comes to the same thing, which the price of
any given quantity of rude produce, is capable
of purchasing, the smaller the exchangeable
value of that given quantity of rude produce;
the smaller the encouragement which
either the landlord has to increase its quantity
by improving, or the farmer by cultivating
the land. Whatever, besides, tends to diminish
in any country the number of artificers
and manufacturers, tends to diminish the
home market, the most important of all
markets, for the rude produce of the land,
and thereby still further to discourage agriculture.
Those systems, therefore, which preferring
agriculture to all other employments, in order
to promote it, impose restraints upon manufactures
and foreign trade, act contrary to
the very end which they propose, and indirectly
discourage that very species of industry
which they mean to promote. They are so
far, perhaps, more inconsistent than even the
mercantile system. That system, by encouraging
manufactures and foreign trade
more than agriculture, turns a certain portion
of the capital of the society, from supporting
a more advantageous, to support a less advantageous
species of industry. But still it really,
and in the end, encourages that species
of industry which it means to promote.
Those agricultural systems, on the contrary,
really, and in the end, discourage their own
favourite species of industry.
It is thus that every system which endeavours,
either, by extraordinary encouragements
to draw towards a particular species of
industry a greater share of the capital of the
society than what would naturally go to it,