---
id: book-3-chapter-01
title: "OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE."
book: "3"
chapter: 1
artifact_type: content
---

CHAPTER I.
OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE.



      The great commerce of every civilized society is that carried on between
      the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists in the
      exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the
      intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money.
      The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence and the
      materials of manufacture. The town repays this supply, by sending back a
      part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The
      town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of substances,
      may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from
      the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the
      gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual
      and reciprocal, and the division of labour is in this, as in all other
      cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various
      occupations into which it is subdivided. The inhabitants of the country
      purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods with the
      produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labour, than they must
      have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves. The town
      affords a market for the surplus produce of the country, or what is over
      and above the maintenance of the cultivators; and it is there that the
      inhabitants of the country exchange it for something else which is in
      demand among them. The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants
      of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of
      the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more
      advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of the
      town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty
      miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally, not only pay
      the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the
      ordinary profits of agriculture to the farmer. The proprietors and
      cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of
      the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the
      price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like
      produce that is brought from more distant parts; and they save, besides,
      the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare
      the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable
      town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will
      easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce
      of the town. Among all the absurd speculations that have been propagated
      concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that either
      the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that with
      the country which maintains it.

      As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and
      luxury, so the industry which procures the former, must necessarily be
      prior to that which ministers to the latter. The cultivation and
      improvement of the country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must,
      necessarily, be prior to the increase of the town, which furnishes only
      the means of conveniency and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the
      country only, or what is over and above the maintenance of the
      cultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town, which can
      therefore increase only with the increase of the surplus produce. The
      town, indeed, may not always derive its whole subsistence from the country
      in its neighbourhood, or even from the territory to which it belongs, but
      from very distant countries; and this, though it forms no exception from
      the general rule, has occasioned considerable variations in the progress
      of opulence in different ages and nations.

      That order of things which necessity imposes, in general, though not in
      every particular 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 of 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 farther.

      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 exchanged for something for
      which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital which carries
      this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or a domestic one, is of very
      little importance. If the society has not acquired sufficient capital,
      both to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the completest
      manner the whole of its rude produce, there is even a considerable
      advantage that the rude produce should be exported by a foreign capital,
      in order that the whole stock of the society may be employed in more
      useful purposes. The wealth of ancient Egypt, that of China and Indostan,
      sufficiently demonstrate that a nation may attain a very high degree of
      opulence, though the greater part of its exportation trade be carried on
      by foreigners. The progress of our North American and West Indian
      colonies, would have been much less rapid, had no capital but what
      belonged to themselves been employed in exporting their surplus produce.

      According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of
      the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture,
      afterwards to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce. This
      order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any
      territory, it has always, I believe, been in some degree observed. Some of
      their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could
      be established, and some sort of coarse industry of the manufacturing kind
      must have been carried on in those towns, before they could well think of
      employing themselves in foreign commerce.

      But though this natural order of things must have taken place in some
      degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe,
      been in many respects entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of some of
      their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were
      fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together have
      given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and
      customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and
      which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily
      forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order.
