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SECOND FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR - 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.

About Liberty Fund:

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


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.

[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’