Artificers, manufacturers, and merchants can augment the revenue and wealth of their society by parsimony only; or, as it in this system, by privation, that is, by depriving themselves 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 net 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 Hamburg, 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 that 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 of 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 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 ****** 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 Hamburg, 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 subsistences- the inhabitants of other countries and the subjects of other governments.
