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Of the cultivation by farmers properly so called. - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 5 Lectures On Jurisprudence [1762]

Edition used:

Lectures On Jurisprudence, ed. R.. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein, vol. V of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Of the cultivation by farmers properly so called.

| That to those metayers or tenants by steelbow succeeded, in some few places, farmers properly so called, or tenants who had a lease of their lands either for life or during a term of years, for a rent certain to be paid at first in kind and afterwards in money. That those tenants seem to have been originally metayers, in whose hands, notwithstanding many oppressions, some property had accumulated, and who were thereby enabled to stock their own farms, and consequently to offer a contract of this kind to their lords. That such farmers, having some little stock of their own, and not being liable to have their rents immediately raised upon them, might be both able and willing to make some improvements. That they still, however, laboured under many inabilities and discouragements. That a lease of lands, being a transaction founded upon contract, originally and naturally begot only a personal right in the tenant, which, tho it was good against the lessor and his heirs, was not good against a purchaser. That, therefore, if a tenant made any such improvement of his lands as greatly increased their value, he was sure of being turned outz of his lease, either by a real or by a sham purchaser. Of the statutes of England and Scotland by which leases were first secured against purchasers, and that this police is almost peculiar to Great Britain. Of the many other discouragements which tenants laboured under. | Of the disadvantages of a rent paid in kind, and of the difficulties which attended the first introduction of money rents. Of leases from year to year, or at will.a Of the arbitrary services with which all sorts of tenants were all over Europe long burdened at the will of the landlord. Of the laws by which these were restrained or abolished in some countries, of the political reasons of those laws, and how far these services are still due in many countries. Of purveyance. Of the arbitrary and exorbitant tallages to which tenants of all kinds were liable, and how far these still subsist in many countries. Of the taille in France and its effects upon agriculture. Of the advantage which agriculture derives in England from the law which gives certain lease holders a right of voting for Members of Parliament, which thereby establishes a mutual dependance between the landlord and the tenant, and makes the former, if he has any regard to his interest in the county, very cautious of attempting to raise his rents, or of demanding any other oppressive exactions of the latter. The superior liberty of the English above the Scots.

That the original engrossment of lands by the chiefs of the nations has been perpetuated in Europe by three different causes. First, by the obstruction which the antient feudal government gave to the alienation of land, which, notwithstanding the almost | entire extinction of that government, is still every where embarrassed by many unnecessary forms, not requisite in the transference of any other property, how valuable soever. Secondly, by entails and other perpetuities. Thirdly, by the right of primogeniture. The reasons of the rapid progress of opulence in those colonies in which this engrossment of lands has been in some measure prevented, and in which the greater part of lands are cultivated not by farmers but by proprietors. Of the British North American colonies.

Of other discouragements to the cultivation of lands. Of tythes. Of the prohibition of the exportation of corn according to the antient police of almost every part of Europe. That sometime after the full establishment of the power of the Romans, a prohibition of this kind, together with the distributions which were annually made by the government of Sicilian, Egyptian, and African corn at a very low price to the people, and which must have had the same effect to discourage home cultivation as a bounty upon importation, gave occasion to the depopulation of antient Italy, and to the saying of old Cato, ‘Qui cuidam querenti quid maxime prodesset in re familiari? Bene pascere, respondit. Quid proximum? Satis bene pascere. Quid tertium? Male pascere. Quid quartum? Arare.’ Cicero, de off. lib. 2d. at the end.3

2do of

FIRST FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

| who, for an equal quantity of work, would have taken more time and consequentlya have required more wages, which must have been charged upon the goods. The philosopher, on the other hand, is of use to the porter; not only by being sometimes an occasional customer, like any other man who is not a porter, but in many other respects. If the speculations of the philosopher have been turned towards the improvement of the mechanic arts, the benefit of them may evidently descend to the meanest of the people. Whoever burns coals has them at a better bargain by means of the inventer of the fire–engine. Whoever eats bread receives a much greater advantage of the same kind from the inventers and improvers of wind and water mills. Even the speculations of those who neither invent nor improve any thing are not altogether useless. They serve, at least, to keep alive and deliver down to posterity the inventions and improvements which have been made before them. They explain the grounds and reasons upon which those discoveries were founded and do not suffer the quantity of useful science to diminish.

As it is the power ofb exchangingc whichd gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division will always be in proportion to the extent of that power.e Every species of industry will be carried on in a more or less perfect manner, that is, will be more or less accurately subdivided intof the different branches according tog which it is capable of being split, in proportion | to the extent of the market, which is evidently the same thing with the power of exchanging. When the market is very small it is altogether impossible that there can be that separation of one employment from another which naturally takes place when it is more extensive. In a country village, for example, it is altogether impossible that there should be such a trade as that of a porter. All the burdens which, in such a situation, there can be any occasion to carry from one house to another would not give full employment to a man for a week in the year. Such ah business can scarce bei perfectly separated from all others in a pretty large market town. For the same reason, in all the small villages which are at a great distance from any market town, each family must bake their own bread and brew their own beer, to their own great expence and inconveniency,j by the interruption which is thereby given to their respective employments, and by being obliged, on this account, to maintaink a greater number of servants than would otherwise be necessary. In mountainous and desart countries,l such as the greater part of the Highlands of Scotland, we cannot expect to find, in the same manner,m even a smith,n a carpenter, or a mason within less than twenty or thirty miles of another smith,o carpenter, or mason. The scattered families who live at ten or fifteen miles distance from the nearest of anyp of those threeq artisans, must learn to perform themselves a great number of little pieces of work for which, in more populous countries, they would readily have recourse to one or other of them,r whom they now can afford to send fors only upon very extraordinary occasions.t | In a savage tribe of North Americans, who are generally hunters, the greatest number who can subsist easily together seldom exceeds one hundred oru one hundred and fifty persons.v Each village is at so great a distance from every other, and it is so very difficult and dangerous to travel the country, that there is scarce any intercourse between the differentw villagesx even of the same nation except what war and mutual defence give occasion to. In such a country it is impossible that any one employment should be entirely separated from every other. One man, etc:y One man may excel all his companions in some particular piece of dexterity, but it is impossible that he can be wholly employed in it, for want of a market to take off and exchange for other commodities the greater part of the goods which he would, in this case, necessarily produce. Hence the poverty which must necessarily take place in such a society. In a tribe of Tartars, or wild Arabs, who are generally shepherds, a greater number can live conveniently in one place. They do not depend upon the precarious accidents of the chace for subsistence, but upon the milk and flesh of their herds and flocks, who graze in the fields adjoining to the village. The Hottentots near the Cape of Good–hope are the most barbarous nation of shepherds that is known in the world. One of their villages or Kraals, however, is said generally to consist of upwards of five hundred persons. A Hord of Tartars frequently consists of five, six, or even ten times that number. As among such nations, therefore, tho’ they have scarce any foreign commerce, the home market is somewhatz more extensive, we may expect to find something like the beginning of the division of labour.a Even in each village of Hottentots, therefore, according to Mr. Kolben,1 there areb suchc trades as those of a smith, a taylor, and even a phisician, and the persons who exercise them, tho’ they | are not entirely, are principally supported by those respective employments, by which too they are greatly distinguished from the rest of their fellow citizens. Among the Tartars and Arabs we find the faint commencementsd of a stille greater variety of employments. The Hottentots, therefore, may be regarded as a richer nation than the North Americans, and the Tartars and Arabs asf richer than the Hottentots. The compleat division of labour, however, is posteriour to the invention even of agriculture. By means of agriculture the same quantity of groundg not only produces corn but is made capable of supporting a much greater number of cattle than before. A much greater number of people, therefore, may easily subsist in the same place. The home market, in consequence,h becomes much more extensive. The smith, the mason, the carpenter, the weaver, and the taylor soon find it for their interest not to trouble themselves with cultivating the ground, but to exchange with the farmer the produces of their several employmentsi for the corn and cattle which they have occasion for. The farmer too veryj soon comes to find it equally for his interest not to interrupt his own business withk making cloaths for his family, with building or repairing his own house, with mending or making the different instruments of his trade, or the different parts of his houshold furniture, but to call in the assistance of other workmen for each of those purposes whom he rewards with corn and with cattle.l

SECOND FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

| or ten men, and sailing from the port of Leith, will frequently in three days, generally in six days, carry two hundred tuns of goods to the same market. Eight or ten men, therefore, by the help of water carriage, can transport, in a much shorter time, a greater quantity of goods from Edinburgh to London than sixty six narrow wheeled waggons drawn by three hundred and ninety six horses and attended by a hundred and thirty two men: or than forty broad wheeled waggons drawn by three hundred and twenty horses and attended by eighty men. Upon two hundred tuns of goods, therefore, which are carried by the cheapest land carriage from Edinburgh to London there must be charged the maintenance of eighty men for three weeks, both the maintenance and what, tho’ less than the maintenance, is however of very great value, the tear and wear of three hundred and twenty horses as well as of forty waggons. Whereas upon two hundred tuns of goods carried between the same markets by water carriages, there is to be charged only the maintenance of eight or ten men for about a fortnight and the tear and wear of a ship of two hundred tuns burden. If there was no other communication, therefore, between Edinburgh and London but by land, as no goods could be transported from the one place to the other except such whose price was very high in proportion to their weight,m there could not be the hundredth part of the commerce which is at present carried on between them, nor, in consequence, the hundredth part of the encouragement which they at present mutually give to each other’s industry. There could be very littlen commerce of any kind between the distant parts of the world. How few goods are so precious as to bear the expence of land carriage between London and Canton in China, | which at present carry on so extensive a commerce with one another and give consequently so much mutual encouragement to each other’s industry? The first improvements, therefore, in arts and industry are always made in those places where the conveniency of water carriage affords the most extensive market to the produce of every sort ofo labour. In our North American colonies the plantations have constantly followed either the sea coast or the banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce any where extended themselves to any considerable distance from both. What James the sixth of Scotland said of the country of Fife, of which the inland parts were at that time very ill while the sea coast was extremely well cultivated, that it was like a coarse woollen coat edged with gold lace, mightp still be saidq of the greater part of our North American colonies.r The countries in the world which appear to have been first civilised are those which ly round the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. That sea,s by far the greatest inlet that is known in the world, having no tides nor consequently any waves except such as are caused by the wind only, was by the smoothness of its surface as well as by the multitude of its islands and the proximity of its opposite coastst extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world, when from theu want of the compass men werev afraid to quit the coast, and from the imperfection of the art of shipbuilding to abandon themselves to the boisterous waves of the ocean. Egypt, of all the countries upon the coast of the Mediterranean, seems to have been the first | in which either agriculture or manufactures werew cultivated or improved to any considerable degree.x Upper Egypt scarce extendsy itself any where above five or six miles from the Nile; and in lower Egypt that great river, etc:z breaks itself into a great many different canals which with the assistance of a little art afforded, as in Holland at present, a communication by water carriage not only between all the great towns but between all the considerable villages and between almost all the farm houses in the country. The greatness and easiness of their inland navigation and commerce, therefore, seem to have been evidently the causes of the early improvement of Egypt.a Agriculture and manufactures too seem to have been of very great antiquity in some of the maritime provinces of China and in the province of Bengal in the East Indies. Allb these are countries very much of the same nature with Egypt, cut by innumerable canals which afford them an immense inland navigation.

[z]The last two words replace an illegible word

[a]The last nine words are written in the margin

[3 ]‘Who, when asked what was the most profitable aspect of land–owning, replied “Raising cattle well.” “What next?” “Raising cattle adequately.” “What comes third?” “Raising cattle badly.” “What comes fourth?” “Raising crops.” ’ Smith is quoting from memory. The actual text of Cicero (De Officiis, II.89) differs slightly in words but not in meaning.

[a]‘would’ deleted

[b]‘bartering and’ deleted

[c]‘which one thing for another’ deleted

[d]‘originally’ deleted

[e]‘The lar greater the market, the larger the commerce’ deleted

[f]Replaces ‘into according to’

[g]The last two words replace ‘into’

[h]‘buss’ deleted

[i]‘there’ deleted

[j]‘being obliged upon this account, not only frequently’ deleted

[k]‘on this account’ deleted

[l]‘in the same manner’ deleted

[m]The last four words replace ‘such as’

[n]‘or’ deleted

[o]‘or another’ deleted

[p]Replaces ‘either’

[q]Replaces ‘two’

[r]Replaces ‘those workmen’

[s]‘at much trouble and expence’ deleted

[t]‘It is the same | thing with the mason’ deleted

[u]‘one hundred and fifty men two hundred’ deleted

[v]‘They live’ deleted

[w]The last two words replace ‘one’

[x]‘and another’ deleted

[y]The words ‘One man, etc:’ and the three sentences which precede them are written in the margin. Indicators show that the three sentences are intended to replace the following passage, which has been deleted: ‘In a tribe of [‘savage’ deleted] hunters who perhaps do not among them make above a hundred or a hundred and fifty persons and who have no regular commerce or intercourse of any kind with any other tribe, except such as mutual hostility and war may give occasion to, it is scarce possible that any one employment of any kind should be compleatly separated from every other.’

[z]Replaces ‘a good deal’

[a]‘We find’ deleted

[1 ]Peter Kolben (or Kolb), The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope (German edn., 1719; English edn., London, 1731). Smith’s comments on the Hottentots in this section of the fragment were probably derived from p. 216 of vol. I of the English edn. (population of kraals); ch. xix passim (the smith and the tailor); and ch. xxv passim (the physician).

[b]Replaces ‘is’

[c]‘a’ deleted

[d]‘in the same manner’ deleted

[e]Replaces ‘much’

[f]Replaces ‘much’

[g]‘is made to support far’ deleted

[h]The last two words replace ‘therefore’

[i]‘with’ deleted

[j]The last two words replace ‘too’

[k]Replaces ‘in order to’

[l]The last thirteen words replace ‘for each of these purposes’

[m]The last twenty–five words are written in the margin

[n]The last two words replace ‘scarce any’

[o]‘industry’ deleted

[p]Replaces ‘is’

[q]The last two words replace ‘true’

[r]‘the most favoured by nature perhaps of any country in the world the countries in the world perhaps the most favoured by nature’ deleted

[s]‘the gre’ deleted

[t]‘was’ deleted

[u]The last two words replace ‘men for’

[v]The last two words replace ‘were’ and an indecipherable word which is deleted above the line

[w]Replaces ‘seem to have been’

[x]‘In lower Egypt the Nile’ deleted

[y]The first few words of this sentence originally read ‘In upper Egypt the country scarce extends’. ‘In’ and ‘the country’ have been deleted, and ‘upper’ emended to ‘Upper’.

[z]This sentence is written in the margin

[a]‘They seem to have been the only people in the world who never ventured from’, followed by eight or nine indecipherable words, deleted

[b]Replaces ‘both’