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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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APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

The first of the three documents in this Appendix was discovered by Professor W. R. Scott and published by him with annotations and comments, under the title ‘An Early Draft of Part of The Wealth of Nations’, in his Adam Smith as Student and Professor.1 The circumstances of his discovery of ED, and the physical characteristics of the document, are fully described by Scott in this work,2 and only one point needs to be added here. Scott identified the handwriting with that of the College scribe who wrote in 1762 a report of a committee on the powers of the Rector and Principal.3 We can confirm his judgement in that identification, and can add a further identification with a manuscript written in 1759. This is a revision of TMS, intended for inclusion in edition 2, and in the hand of the same amanuensis.4

The other two documents are fragments on the division of labour (FA and FB), which were also discovered by Scott (‘amongst letters which belonged to Adam Smith’)5 and published by him—in facsimile, and without annotations or extensive comments—in Adam Smith as Student and Professor.6 In physical appearance, FA consists of a single folio sheet of four pages (each page measuring 203 × 315 mm.), with the text extending almost, but not quite, to the bottom of the last page. FB consists of a single folio sheet of the same size and format, with the text covering rather more than two and one–half pages. The two documents were evidently written in the same hand, and have the same watermark. This watermark seems to be the same as that found in ED, but the hand is different.

ED, it would appear, represented a preliminary and rather tentative attempt by Smith to translate the ‘economic’ material in his Jurisprudence lectures into book form—an attempt which he probably made at some time shortly before April 1763. The origin of FA and FB is perhaps not quite so certain, but it seems implausible to assign them, as Scott did,7 to Smith’s Edinburgh period. It is much more likely, we feel, that they were in fact written in the 1760s. Our judgement on these matters is based on the argumentation in an article by R. L. Meek and A. S. Skinner, which contains an exhaustive survey of the relationships between ED, FA, FB, LJ(A), LJ(B), and WN, and to which the interested reader is referred.8

The principles adopted in the transcription of ED, FA, and FB are the same (mutatis mutandis) as those adopted above in the case of LJ(A) and LJ(B).

EARLY DRAFT OF PART OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

| Chap. 2.

Of the nature and causes of public opulence.

The unassisted labour of a solitary individual, it is evident, is altogether unable to provide for him such food, such cloaths, and such lodging, as not only the luxury of the great but as the natural appetites of the meanest peasant are, in every civilized society, supposed to require. Observe in what manner a common day labourer in Britain or in Holland is accommodated with all these, and you will be sensible that his luxury is much superior to that of many an Indian prince, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of a thousand naked savages. The woolen coat which covers the day labourer, as coarse and rough^a as it may appear to be, could not be produced without the joint labour of a multitude of artists. The shepherd, the grazier, the clipper, the sorter of the wool, the picker, the comber, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, must all join their different arts in order to make out this very homely production. Not to mention the merchants and carriers, who transport the materials from one of those artists to another, who often lives in a very distant country; how many other artists are employed in producing the tools even of the very meanest of these. I shall say nothing of so very complex a machine as the loom of | the weaver or as the mill of the fuller; much less of the immense commerce and navigation, the ship building, the sail–making, the rope–making, necessary to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world; but consider only what a variety of labour is necessary to produce that very simple machine, the sheers of the clipper. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in that operation, the feller of the timber of which that charcoal is made, the brickmaker, the bricklayer, the smelter, the mill wright, the forger, the smith, must all club their different industries in order to produce them. If we^b were to examine in the same manner all the other parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linnen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lyes in and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dugg from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him, perhaps, by a long sea and a long land–carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchin, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the delft or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the many hands who are employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the plowman, the sower of the corn, the reaper, the thresher, the maltster, the miller, the brewer, the baker, with all the other artists who supply each of them with the tools of their respective trades, the glass window which lets in the heat and the | light and keeps out the wind and the rain, and all the knowledge and art which were requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have been made habitable, at least by that effeminate and delicate race of mortals who dwell in them at present: If we examine, I say, all those different conveniencies and luxuries with which he is accomodated and consider what a variety of labours is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that without the assistance and cooperation of many thousands the very meanest person in civilized society could not be provided for, even in, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accomodated. Compared, indeed, with the yet more extravagant luxury of the great, his accomodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet, perhaps, it may be true that the accomodation of a European prince does not so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accomodation of this last exceeds that of the chief of a savage nation in North America.

It cannot be very difficult to explain how it comes about that the rich and the powerful should, in a civilized society, be better provided with the conveniencies and necessaries of life than it is possible for any person to provide himself in a savage and solitary state.^c It is very easy to conceive that the person who can at all times direct the labours of thousands to his own purposes, should be better provided with whatever he has occasion for than he who depends upon his own industry only. But how it comes about that the labourer | and the peasant should likewise be better provided is not perhaps so easily understood. In a civilized society the poor provide both for themselves and for the enormous luxury of their superiors. The rent which goes to support the vanity of the slothful landlord is all earned^d by the industry of the peasant. The monied man indulges himself in every sort of ignoble and sordid sensuality, at the expence of the merchant and the trades man to whom he lends out his stock at interest. All the indolent and frivolous retainers upon a court are, in the same manner, fed, cloathed, and lodged by the labour of those who pay the taxes which support them. Among savages, on the contrary, every individual enjoys the whole produce of his own industry. There are among them no landlords, no usurers, no taxgatherers. We might naturally expect, therefore, if experience did not demonstrate the contrary, that every individual among them should have a much greater affluence of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than can be possessed by the inferior ranks of people in a civilized society.

What considerably increases this difficulty is the consideration that the labour of an hundred, or of an hundred thousand men, should seem to bear the same proportion to the support of an hundred or of an hundred thousand, which the labour of one bears to the support of one man. Supposing therefore that the produce of the labour of the multitude was to be equally and fairly divided, each individual, we should expect, could be little better provided for than the single person who laboured alone. But with regard to the produce of the labour of a great society there is never any such thing as a fair | and equal division. In a society of an hundred thousand families, there will perhaps be one hundred who don’t labour at all, and who yet, either by violence or by the more orderly oppression of law, employ a greater part of the labour of the society than any other ten thousand in it. The division of what remains, too, after this enormous defalcation, is by no means made in proportion to the labour of each individual. On the contrary those who labour most get least. The opulent merchant, who spends a great part of his time in luxury and entertainments, enjoys a much greater proportion of the profits of his traffic than all the clerks and accountants who do the business. These last, again, enjoying a great deal of leisure and suffering scarce any other hardship besides the confinement of attendance, enjoy a much greater share of the produce than three times an equal number of artizans, who, under their direction, labour much more severely and assiduously. The artizan, again, tho he works generally under cover, protected from the injuries of the weather, at his ease and assisted by the conveniency of innumerable machines, enjoys a much greater share than the poor labourer who has the soil and the seasons to struggle with, and who, while he affords the materials for supplying the luxury of all the other members of the common wealth, and bears, as it were, upon his shoulders the whole fabric of human society, seems himself to be pressed down below ground by the weight, and to be buried out of sight in the lowest foundations of the building. In the midst of so much oppressive inequality, in what manner shall we account for the superior affluence and abundance | commonly possessed even by this lowest and most despised member of civilized society, compared with what the most respected and active savage can attain to.

The division of labour, by which each individual confines himself to a particular branch of business, can alone account for that superior opulence which takes place in civilized societies, and which, notwithstanding the inequality of property, extends itself to the lowest member of the community. Let us consider the effects of this division of labour as it takes place in some particular manufactures, and we shall from thence more easily be enabled to explain in what manner it operates in the general business of society. Thus, to give a very frivolous instance, if all the parts of a pin were to be made by one man, if the same person was to dig the mettal out of the mine, seperate it from the ore, forge it, split it into small rods, then spin these rods into wire, and last of all make that wire into pins, a man perhaps could with his utmost industry scarce make a pin in a year. The price of a pin, therefore, must in this case at least have been equal to the maintenance of a man for a year. Let this be supposed equal to six pounds sterling, a miserable allowance for a person of so much ingenuity, the price of a single pin must have been six pounds sterling. Supposing that the wire was furnished to him ready made, as at present, even in this case, I imagine, one man could with his utmost dilligence scarce make twenty pins in a day, which, allowing three hundred working days in the year, will amount to six thousand pins in the year; an immense increase!^e His maintainance for a day therefore must be charged upon those twenty pins. Let us suppose this maintainance equal | to ten pence, a most liberal allowance compared with the foregoing, there must be a half penny of this charged upon each pin over and above the price of the wire and the profite of the merchant, which would make the price of a pin about a penny: a price which appears as nothing compared with the foregoing, but which is still extravagant compared with that which actually takes place. For the pin–maker, in preparing this small superfluity, very properly takes care to divide the labour among a great number of persons. One man straightens the wire, another cuts it, a third points it, a fourth grinds it at the top for receiving the head, three or four people are employed about making the head, to put it on is the business of a particular person, to guild the pins is the occupation of another, it is even a trade by itself to put them in the paper. When this small operation is in this manner divided among about eighteen persons, these eighteen will perhaps among them make upwards of thirty six thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making an eighteenth part of thirty six thousand pins, may be considered as making two thousand pins a day, and supposing three hundred working days in the year, each person may be considered as making six hundred thousand pins in the year, that is, each person produces six hundred thousand times the quantity of work which he was capable of producing when he had the whole machinery and materials to provide for himself, as upon the first supposition; and one hundred times the quantity of work which he was capable of producing when the wire was | afforded him ready made, as upon the second. The yearly maintainance, therefore, of each person is to be charged not upon one pin as by the first supposition, nor upon six thousand as by the second, but upon six hundred thousand pins. The master of the work, therefore, can both afford to increase the wages of the labourer, and yet sell the commodity at a vastly lower rate than before: and pins instead of being sold at six pounds a piece as upon the first supposition, or at twelve pence a dozen as upon the second, are commonly sold at several dozens for a half penny.

The division of labour has the same effect in all the other arts as in this frivolous manufacture, and occasions in the same manner an immense multiplication of the productions of each. In every opulent society, the farmer is nothing but a farmer, the manufacturer nothing but a manufacturer. The labour which is necessary to produce any one compleat manufacture is divided among a vast number of hands. How many different people are employed in each branch of the linnen and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the wool to the dyers and dressers of the cloth, or the bleachers and smoothers of the linnen! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so many subdivisions of labour, nor of such an entire seperation of one business from another, as commonly takes place in manufactures. It is impossible to seperate so entirely the business of the grazier from that of the corn farmer, as the trade of the carpenter is commonly seperated from that of the smith. | The spinner is always a different person from the weaver. But the plowman, the harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn are often the same. The occasions for their different labours returning with the different seasons of the year, make it impossible for one man to be entirely employed on any one of those different occupations. With regard even to agriculture, however, in well cultivated countries the businesses of the thresher and the ditcher, as they can do their work through the whole year, are often considered as compleat trades, distinct and seperated from all others. It is the same case with the plow–wright and the makers of all the other instruments of agriculture, the forgers of the scythe and reaping hook, the wheel wright, the cart and waggon maker. It is this impossibility, however, of making so compleat and entire a seperation of all the different branches of labour employed in agriculture which must forever hinder the improvement of this art from keeping pace with the improvements of manufactures. The most opulent nation will commonly excell all its’ neighbours in agriculture as well as in manufactures; but it will always be more distinguished by its superiority in the latter than in the former, tho’ the former may be of much greater value. The corn of France is fully as good and in the provinces where it grows rather cheaper than that of England, at least during ordinary seasons. But the toys of England, their watches, their cutlery ware, their locks and hinges of doors, their buckles | and buttons, are in accuracy, solidity, and perfection of work out of all comparison superior to those of France, and cheaper too in the same degree of goodness.^f

It is the immense multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which, notwithstanding the great inequalities of property, occasions in all civilized societies that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. So great a quantity of every thing is produced that there is enough both to gratify the slothful and oppressive profusion of the great, and at the same time abundantly to supply the wants of the artizan and the peasant. Each man performs so great a quantity of that work which peculiarly belongs to him that he can both afford something to those who do not labour at all, and at the same time have as much behind as will enable him, by exchanging it for the productions of other arts, to supply himself with all the necessaries and conveniencies which he stands in need of. Let us suppose, for example, to return to the frivolous instance which I formerly gave, that pins may be valued at a penny the hundred, which is nearly the price of some particular sorts of them. The pinmaker who, according to the forgoing supposition, could be considered as making two thousand pins a day, produces work to the value of twenty pence. Let five pence be allowed for the price of the wire, the wear of the tools, and the profits of the master of the work, there remain fifteen pence for the wages of the artizan, with | which he can purchase all the necessaries and conveniencies of life. The case here is the same as if he gave five hundred pins to his master for affording him the wire, the tools, and the employment, and kept fifteen hundred to himself, in order to be exchanged for the productions of the other arts which he had occasion for. For it is the same thing, with regard to opulence, whether we consider a person as possessed of a particular merchandize, or of the value of a particular merchandize. Let us suppose that by still further divisions of labour and improvements of art a pin–maker could be made to produce four thousand pins a day. In this case, tho’ pins were to be valued one fourth less, and to be sold for three farthings the hundred, the artizan would produce work to the value of thirty pence a day. His master might have ten pence, or the value of thirteen hundred and thirty three pins, for his profits and expences, and the artizan retain twenty pence, or the value of two thousand six hundred and sixty seven pins, for his wages. The price of the work would be diminished, and the wages of the labourer increased; the public would be better supplyed and the workmen more amply rewarded. I do not mean that the profits are divided in fact precisely in the above manner, but that they may be divided in such manner.^g

It is in this manner that in an opulent and commercial society labour becomes dear and work cheap, and those two events, which vulgar prejudices and superficial reflection are apt to consider as altogether incompatible, are found by experience to be perfectly consistent. | The high price of labour is to be considered not meerly as a proof of the general opulence of society which can afford to pay well all those whom it employs; it is to be regarded as what constitutes the essence of public opulence, or as the very thing in which public opulence properly consists. That state is properly opulent in which opulence is easily come at, or in which a little labour, properly and judiciously employed, is capable of procuring any man a great abundance of all the necessaries and conveniencies of life. Nothing else, it is evident, can render it general, or diffuse it universally through all the members of the society. National opulence is the opulence of the whole people, which nothing but the great reward of labour, and consequently the great facility of acquiring, can give occasion to. As this labour however is applied with great skill and judgement, as it is supported by the concurrence and united force of a great society, and over and above all this, as it is assisted by innumerable machines, it produces a much greater effect and performs a much greater quantity of work than in proportion to the superiority of its reward. The more opulent therefore the society, labour will always be so much the dearer and work so much the cheaper, and if some opulent countries have lost several of their manufactures and some branches of their commerce by having been undersold in foreign markets by the traders and artizans of poorer countries, who were contented with less profit and smaller wages, this will rarely be found to have been meerly the effect of the opulence of the one country and the poverty of | the other. Some other cause, we may be assured, must have concurred. The rich country must have been guilty of some great error in its police. It must either have oppressed that particular branch of commerce or manufacture by improper customs and excises, or by the licensed insulence^h of the officers of revenue, frequently more vexatious than all the taxes which they levey. Or by taxing, and thereby raising the prices of the necessaries of life, it must have increased the difficulty of subsistance, and thereby have screwed up the price of labour to an unnatural height, far beyond what the opulence of the society could of its own accord have raised it to. Where no error of this kind has been committed, as among individuals a rich merchant can always undersell and a rich manufacturer underwork a poor one, so among great societies a rich nation must always in every competition of commerce and manufactures have an equal or superior advantage over a poor one.

This immense increase of the quantity of work performed, in consequence of the division of labour, is owing to three different circumstances. First, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is lost in passing from one species of work to another; and last of all, to the invention of innumerable machines, which facilitate labour and enable one workman to do the business of many.

The improvement of the dexterity of the workmen greatly increases the quantity of the work performed; and the division of labour, by reducing the work which every man has to perform to a very simple operation, and by making the performance of that operation the sole business | of his life, necessarily improves to the highest degree the dexterity of the workman. A smith, who has rarely or never had occasion to make nails, tho accustomed to use his hammer in a hundred other operations which one would think not very different, can, I am informed, with his utmost dilligence scarce make two or three hundred nails in a day, and these too excessively bad. A country smith who shoes horses, mends locks and hinges of doors, makes and mends spades, shovels, and all the other instruments of agriculture, when he has no particular piece of work upon his hands commonly employs his time in making nails. Such a person can, when he exerts himself, make about a thousand nails a day, and those too pretty good. I have seen a boy of nineteen years of age, who had done nothing else all his life but made nails, who in twelve hours could make two thousand three hundred nails, that is, about eight times the work of the first, and more than double the work of the second. The making of a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest operations. The same person mends the fire, blows the bellows, heats the iron,ⁱ forges every part of the nail, and in forging the head is obliged to change his tools, which occasions a considerable loss of time; notwithstanding all this, a good workman will make very near four nails in a minute.^j The different operations into which the making of a pin or of a mettal button is subdivided are all of them much more simple, and the dexterity acquired by the person, the sole business of whose life is to perform them, is out of all proportion | greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are performed far exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring.

The advantage, too, which is gained by saving the time commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another is very considerable, and much greater than what we should at first be apt to imagine. It is impossible to pass very quickly from some businesses to others, which are carried on in distant places and with quite different tools. A country weaver who likewise cultivates a small farm must lose a good deal of time in passing from his loom to the field and from the field to his loom. Where the two businesses can be carried on in the same work house, the loss of time is no doubt much less. It is even here, however, very considerable. A man commonly saunters a little in turning his hand from one sort of employment to a quite different <?one>. When he first begins the new work he is seldome very keen or hearty. His mind does not go with it, and he for some time rather triffles than applies to good purpose. A man of great spirit and activity, when he is hard pushed upon some particular occasion, will pass with the greatest rapidity from one sort of work to another through a great variety of businesses. Even a man of spirit and activity, however, must be hard pushed before | he can do this. In the ordinary course of business, when he passes from one thing to another he will saunter and trifle, tho’ not undoubtedly in the same degree, yet in the same manner as an idle fellow. This habit of sauntering and of indolent, careless application, which is naturally or rather necessarily contracted by every country workman, who is obliged to change his work and his tools every half hour, and to apply his hand in twenty different manners almost every day in his life, renders him almost always very slothful and lazy, and incapable, even upon the most pressing occasions, of any vigourous application. Independent therefore of his want of the most perfect dexterity this cause alone must always make the quantity of the work which he performs extremely inconsiderable.

Every body must be sensible how much labour is abridged and facilitated by the application of proper machinery. By means of the plough^k two men, with the assistance of three horses, will cultivate more ground than twenty could do with the spade. A miller and his servant, with a wind or water mill, will at their ease grind more corn than eight men could do, with the severest labour, by hand mills. To grind corn in a hand mill was the severest work to which the antients commonly applied their slaves, and to which they seldome condemned them unless^l when they had been guilty of some very great fault. A hand mill, however, is a very ingenuous^m machine which greatly facilitates labour, and by which a great deal of more work can | be performed than when the corn is either to be beat in a mortar, or with the bare hand, unassisted by any machinery, to be rubbed into pouder between two hard stones, as is the practice not only of all barbarous nations but of some remote provinces in this country. It was the division of labour which probably gave occasion to the invention of the greater part of those machines, by which labour is so much facilitated and abridged. When the whole force of the mind is directed to one particular object, as in consequence of the division of labour it must be, the mind is more likely to discover the easiest methods of attaining that object than when its attention is dissipated among a great variety of things. He was probably a farmer who first invented the original, rude form of the plough. The improvements which were afterwards made upon it might be owing sometimes to the ingenuity of the plow wright when that business had become a particular occupation, and sometimes to that of the farmer. Scarce any of them are so complex as to exceed what might be expected from the capacity of the latter. The drill plow, the most ingenious of any, was the invention of a farmer. Some miserable slave, condemned to grind corn between two stones by the meer strength of his arms, pretty much in the same manner as painters bray their colours at present, was probably the first who thought of supporting the upper stone by a spindle and of turning it round by a crank or handle which moved | horizontally, according to what seems to have been the original, rude form of hand mills. He who first thought of making the spindle pass quite through the under millstone, which is at rest, of uniting it with a trundle, and of turning round that trundle by means of a cog wheel, which was itself turned round by a winch or handle, according to the present form of hand mills, was probably a mill wright, or a person whose principal or sole business it was, in consequence of the still further division of labour, to prepare that original, rude machine which it does not exceed the capacity of a common slave to have invented. Great advantages were gained by this improvement. The whole machinery being thus placed below the under millstone, the top of the upper one was left free for the conveniencies of the hopper, the feeder and shoe, and the crank or handle, which turned the cog wheel, moving in a circle perpendicular to the horizon, the strength of the human body could be applied to it with much more advantage than to any crank which was to be turned round in a circle parallel to the horizon. These different improvements were probably not all of them the inventions of one man, but the successive discoveries of time and experience, and of the ingenuity of many different artists. Some of the more simple of them, such as the feeder and the shoe, might be the contrivances of the miller. But the more complex, such as the cog wheel and the trundle, were probably the inventions of the millwright. They bear | ⁿ the most evident marks of the ingenuity of a very intelligent artist. He who first thought of substituting, in the room of the crank or handle, an outer wheel which was to be turned round by a stream of water, and much more, he who first thought of employing a stream of wind for the same purpose, was probably no work man of any kind, but a philosopher or meer man of speculation; one of those people whose trade it is not to do any thing but to observe every thing, and who are upon that account capable of combining together the powers of the most opposite and distant objects. To apply in the most advantagious manner those powers which are allready known and which have already been applyed to a particular purpose, does not exceed the capacity of an ingenious artist. But to think of the application of new powers, which are altogether unknown and which have never before been applied to any similar purpose, belongs to those only who have a greater range of thought and more extensive views of things than naturally fall to the share of a meer artist. When an artist makes any such discovery he showes himself to be not a meer artist but a real philosopher, whatever may be his nominal profession. It was a real philosopher only who could invent the fire engine, and first form the idea of producing so great an effect by a power in nature which had never before been thought of. Many inferior artists, employed in the fabric of this wonderful machine, | may afterwards discover more happy methods of applying that power than those first made use of by its illustrious inventer. It must have been a philosopher who, in the same manner, first invented those now common and therefore disregarded machines, wind and water mills. Many inferior artists may have afterwards improved them. Philosophy or speculation, in the progress of society, naturally becomes, like every other employment, the sole occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other trade it is subdivided into many different branches, and we have mechanical, chymical, astronomical, physical, metaphysical, moral, political, commercial, and critical philosophers. In philosophy as in every other business this subdivision of employment improves dexterity and saves time. Each individual is more expert at his particular branch. More work is done upon the whole and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.

This division of labour from which so many advantages result is originally the effect of no human wisdom which forsees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary tho very slow and gradual consequence of a certain principle or propensity in human nature, which has in view no such extensive utility. This is a propensity, common to all men, | and to be found in no other race of animals, a propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. That this propensity is common to all men is sufficiently obvious. And it is equally so that it is to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to be acquainted neither with this nor with any other species of contract. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This however is not the effect of any contract, but arises meerly from their passions happening at that instant to concurr in the same object. No body ever[y] saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. No body ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, ‘This is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.’ When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the kindness and favour of those whose service it stands in need of. A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours, by a thousand attractions, | to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his bretheren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations endeavours by every fawning attention to obtain their goodwill. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. So necessitous is his natural situation that he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In every other race of animals each individual is almost entirely independent, and in its ordinary and natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. When any uncommon misfortune befals it, its piteous and doleful cries will sometimes engage its fellows, and sometimes prevail even upon man, to relieve it. When such assistance, however, becomes indispensibly necessary, the creature must generally lay its account with perishing for want of it. Such occasions can in the common course of things occur but seldom, and nature, with her usual oeconomy, has not thought proper to make any particular provision for them, any more than she has made for the relief of man | when he is ship wrecked in the middle of the ocean. Her great purpose, the continuance and propogation of each species,1 she has thought, was not likely to be interrupted by such uncommon and extraordinary accidents. But tho’ an animal when once it has grown up to maturity stands but seldom in need of the assistance of its fellows, a man has almost constant occasion for the help of his bretheren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be much more likely to prevail if he can interest their self love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind proposes to do this. ‘Give me that which I want and you shall have this which you want’, is the plain meaning of every such offer. It is in this manner that we obtain from one another by far the greater and more important part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. | Nobody but a beggar chuses^o to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. If he did he would perish in a week. The charity of well disposed people, indeed, may supply him perhaps with the whole fund of his subsistence. But tho’ this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old cloaths which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old cloaths which suit him better, or for lodging or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, cloaths, or lodging as he has occasion.

As it is in this manner, by barter and exchange, that we obtain from one another the greater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need of, so it is this same trucking disposition which originally gives occasion to that division of labour upon which is founded the whole opulence of civilized societies. Among a nation of hunters or | shepherds a particular savage is observed to make bows and arrows with more readiness and dexterity than any other person. He sometimes exchanges them for venison or for cattle with^p his companions, and by degrees comes to find that he can in this manner procure^q more venison and more cattle than if he himself went to the field to hunt them. From a regard to his own interest and ease, therefore, it grows to be his chief business to make bows and arrows; and he becomes in this manner a kind of armourer. Another excells in making the frames and covers of their little huts or moveable houses. He is accustomed in this way to be of use to those of his own tribe, who reward him in the same manner with cattle and with venison, till at length he finds it for his interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and he becomes a sort of house carpenter. In the same manner, a third becomes a smith; a fourth a tanner or dresser of hydes and skins, the principal part of the cloathing of savages; and thus the certainty of being able to exchange all that part of the produce of his own labour which he himself has no occasion for, for such parts of the produce of other mens labours as he has occasion for, enables every man to apply himself to a particular occupation and | to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever natural genius or talent he may possess for that particular species of business.

In reality the difference of natural talents in different men is perhaps much less than we are aware of, and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions when grown up to maturity is not, perhaps, so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. What two men can be more different than a philosopher and a common porter? This difference, however, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first five or six years of their existence, they were perhaps pretty much alike, and neither their parents nor their play fellows could observe any remarkable distinction. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of what we call genius^r comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is scarce willing to acknowledge any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured for himself every necessary of life which he wanted. Every man must have employed himself in every thing. All must have had the | same work to do and the same duties to perform, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of character. It is upon this account that a much greater uniformity of character is to be observed among savages than among civilized nations. Among the former there is scarce any division of labour and consequently no remarkable difference of employments; whereas among the latter there is an almost infinite variety of occupations, of which the respective duties bear scarce any resemblance to one another. What a perfect uniformity of character do we find in all the heroes described by Ossian? And what a variety of manners, on the contrary, in those who are celebrated by Homer? Ossian plainly describes the exploits of a nation of hunters,2 while Homer paints the actions of two nations who, tho’ far from being perfectly civilized, were yet much advanced beyond the age of shepherds, who cultivated lands, who built cities, and among whom he mentions many different trades and occupations, such as masons, carpenters, smiths, merchants, soothsayers, priests, physicians.^s It is this disposition to truck, barter, and exchange which not only gives occasion | to that difference of genius and talents, so remarkable among men of different professions, but which renders that difference usefull. There are many tribes of animals, which are all confessedly of the same species, upon whom nature seems to have stampt a much more remarkable distinction of genius and disposition than any which takes place among men, antecedent to custom and education. By nature a philosopher is not, in genius and disposition, half so different from a porter as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a sheep dog. Those different tribes of animals, however, tho’ all of the same species, are of scarce any use to one another. The strength of the mastiff is not in the least supported, either by the swiftness of the greyhound, or by the sagacity of the spaniel, or by the docility of the sheep dog. The effects of those different geniuses and talents, for want of the power or disposition to barter and exchange, cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in the least contribute to the better accomodation of the species. Each animal is still obliged to support and defend itself seperately and independently, and derives no sort of advantage from that variety of talents with which nature has distinguished its fellows. Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another, the different produces of their different talents being brought, as | it were, into a common stock by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange. A porter is of use to a philosopher, not only by sometimes carrying a burden for him, but by facilitating almost every trade and manufacture whose productions the philosopher can have occasion for. Whatever we buy from any shop or ware–house comes cheaper to us by means of those poor despised labourers, who in all great towns have set themselves aside for the particular occupation of carrying goods from one place to another, of packing and unpacking them, and who in consequence have acquired extraordinary strength, dexterity, and readiness in this sort of business. Every thing would be dearer if before it was exposed to sale it had been carried, packt, and unpackt by hands less able and less dexterous, who for an equal quantity of work would have taken more time, and must consequently 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, as well as 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 inventor of the fire engine. | Whoever eats bread receives a much greater advantage of the same kind from the inventors 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 had been made before them. They explain the grounds and reasons upon which those discoveries were founded, and do not allow the quantity of usefull knowledge to diminish. In opulent and commercial societies, besides, to think or to reason comes to be, like every other employment, a particular business, which is carried on by a very few people, who furnish the public with all the thought and reason possessed by the vast multitudes that labour. Let any ordinary person make a fair review of all the knowledge which he possesses concerning any subject that does not fall within the limits of his particular occupation, and he will find that almost every thing he knows has been acquired at second hand, from books, from the literary instructions which he may have received in his youth, or from the occasional conversations which he may have had with men of learning. A very small part of it only, he will find, has been the produce of his own observations or reflections. All the rest has been purchased, in the same manner as his shoes or his stockings, from those whose business it is to make up and prepare for the market that particular species of goods. It is in this manner that he has acquired all his general ideas concerning the great subjects of | religion, morals, and government, concerning his own happiness or that of his country. His whole system concerning each of those important objects will almost always be found to have been originally the produce of the industry of other people, from whom either he himself or those who have had the care of his education have procured it in the same manner as any other commodity, by barter and exchange for some part of the produce of their own labour.

Contents of the following chapters.

Chap. 3^d. Of the rule of exchanging, or of the circumstances which regulate the prices of commodities. Treats of

1^mo. The price which is requisite to induce the labourer to apply himself to any particular species of industry, which must be sufficient 1^st. to maintain him; 2^dly. to indemnify him for the expence of his education to that particular business; 3^dly. to compensate him for the risk he may run, either of not living long enough to receive this indemnification, or of not succeeding in the trade, let him live ever so long. Price of country labour. Of handicraft work. Of ingenious arts. Of the liberal professions. Profits of silver mines.

2^do. The price which is fixed by the market, and which is regulated 1^st. by the need or demand for any particular commodity; 2^dly. by the | abundance or scarcity of the commodity in proportion to that need or demand; and 3^dly. by the riches or poverty of the demandants.

3^tio. The connection between those two prices. That the market price can never, for any considerable time, be either above or below that price which is sufficient to encourage the labourer, unless there is some great error in the public police, which prevents the concurrence of labour when the price is too high, or forces a greater concurrence than is natural when the price is too low.

4^to. That as national or public opulence consists in the cheapness of commodities in proportion to the wages of labour, whatever tends to raise their price above what is precisely necessary to encourage the labourer tends to diminish national or public opulence. Of excises and other taxes upon industry. Of monopolies.

5^to. That there is in every country what may be called a natural balance of industry, or a disposition in the people to apply to each species of work pre<c>isely in proportion to the demand for that work. That whatever tends to break this balance tends to hurt national or public opulence; whether it be by giving extraordinary discouragement to some sorts of industry | or extraordinary encouragement to others. Of the French kings edict against planting new vineyeards, and of some equally absurd laws of other nations. Of bounties either upon the exportation or manufacture of certain goods. That they tend to render, indeed, such goods cheaper, the public paying a part of the price, but all others dearer; and upon the whole to enhance the price of commodities. Of the bounty upon corn. That it has sunk the price of corn, and thereby tends to lower the rents of corn farms. That by diminishing the number,^t it tends to raise the rent of grass farms,^u to raise the price of butcher meat, the price of hay, the expence of keeping horses, and consequently the price of carriage, which must, so far, embarrass the whole inland commerce of the country.

Chap. 4^th. Of money, it’s nature, origin, and history, considered first as the measure of value, and secondly as the instrument of commerce.

Under the first head I have little to say that is very new or particular; except a general history of the coins of France, England, and Scotland; the different changes they have undergone; their causes and effects. And except some observations upon what may be called the money prices of commodities. That human industry being at all times equally employed to multiply both | silver and commodities, and it being more in human power to multiply commodities than to multiply silver, the quantity of the former should naturally be expected to increase in a much greater proportion than that of the latter, and that consequently the money prices of commodities should at all times be continually sinking. That, however, things do not exactly correspond to this expectation. That in times of great barbarism and ignorance the money prices of such commodities as are in those times to be had are always extremely low, and for what reason. That they rise gradually till the society arives at a certain pitch of civility and improvement; and that in its further progress from this improved state to still greater opulence and improvement, those prices sink gradually again. That the money prices of commodities have in general been sinking in England for near a century past, and would have sunk much more had they not been artificially kept up by improper taxes and excises, and by some unjust monopolies. That the cheapness of commodities in China and the Moguls empire is the necessary effect of the immense opulence of those countries, notwithstanding their great abundance of gold and silver.

Under the second head, after explaining the use and necessity of a general instrument | of commerce, or medium of exchange, and the way in which the precious metals come naturally to be made use of as such, I endeavour to show

1^mo. That as the sole use of money is to circulate commodities, that is, food, cloaths, and the conveniences of lodging, or domestic accomodation, and that as money itself is neither food, cloaths, nor lodging, the larger the proportion which that part of the stock of any nation which is converted into money bears to the whole, the less food, cloaths, and lodging there must be in that nation; which must, therefore, be so much the worse fed, cloathed, and lodged, and consequently so much the poorer and less powerful. That money, serving only to circulate commodities, is so much dead stock which produces nothing, and which may very properly be compared to a high road, which, while it helps to circulate the produce of all the grass and corn in the country, and thereby indirectly contributes to the raising of both, produces itself neither grass nor corn.

2^do. That whatever contrivance can enable any nation to circulate the produce of its industry with a smaller quantity of money than would otherwise be necessary, must be extremely advantagious; because the quantity of money saved may be exchanged abroad for commodities, by means | of which a greater number of people can be fed, cloathed, lodged, maintained, and employed, the profit upon whose industry will still further increase the public opulence. That banks and bank notes are contrivances of this sort. They enable us, as it were, to plough up our high roads, by affording us a sort of communication through the air by which we do our business equally well. That, therefore, to confine them by monopolies, or any other restraints, except such as are necessary to prevent frauds and abuses, must obstruct the progress of public opulence. History of banking, ancient and modern.

3^tio. That national opulence, or the effect of national opulence, either at home or abroad, neither consists in nor depends upon the quantity of money, or even of gold and silver, that is in the country; and that no sort of preference is due to this species of goods above any other. The bad effects of the contrary opinion both in speculation and practice.

In speculation it has given occasion to the systems of Mun and Gee, of Mandeville who built upon them, and of Mr. Hume who endeavoured to refute them.

In practice it has given occasion

1^mo. To the prohibition which takes place in some countries of exporting either coin or | bullion. A prohibition which, very happily, is always in a great measure ineffectual; and which, so far as it is effectual, necessarily tends to impoverish the country. First, because whatever gold and silver there is in any country, over and above what is sufficient to circulate the produce of its industry, is so much dead stock, which is of no use at all: whereas, if allowed to go abroad, it would naturally be exchanged for what would feed, cloath, maintain, and employ a greater number of people, whose industry would increase real national opulence by multiplying the conveniences and necessaries of life. Secondly, because this unnecessary accumulation of gold and silver renders those metals cheap in proportion to other commodities, and consequently raises the money price of every thing. This stops all industry, the peasants, manufacturers, and traders of such a country being necessarily undersold, both at home and abroad, by the traders of other countries in which the money prices of things are lower. The misery of Spain and Portugal, owing, in part, for many other causes concur, to this prohibition.

2^do. To the unreasonable restraints imposed upon certain branches of commerce, and to the unreasonable encouragement given to others; | upon pretence that the one drains us of our money, we sending abroad money and getting home only goods which we consume; and that the other enriches us, we sending abroad only goods and getting home hard cash. The meanness, vulgarity, and folly of both these conceptions. First, that every branch of commerce which one nation can regularly carry on with another is, and necessarily must be, advantagious to both, each exchanging that which it has less need of for that which it has more need of, each giving what is of less value in its own country for what is of more value in the same country; each therefore increasing its own real opulence, and consequently its own power of feeding, cloathing, maintaining, and employing people. Secondly, that whatever tends to restrain the liberty of exchanging one thing for another tends to discourage industry, and to obstruct the division of labour which is the foundation of the opulence of society. It is allowed that all prohibitions of exportation discourage industry; but a prohibition of importation must have the same effect, since it is the same thing whether you forbid me to exchange my wares at the place where I can exchange them to most advantage, or for the goods for which I can exchange them to most advantage. If you prohibit the importation of French | claret, for example, you discourage all that industry of which the produce would have been exchanged for French claret. Whether that industry would have been exercised in making a piece of broad cloth, or in bringing gold from the Brazils, is of no consequence to national opulence. If that cloth is^v more than the home consumption requires, it must go abroad; and if that gold is more than the channel of home circulation requires, or can receive, for these are the same, it must go abroad in the same manner, and be exchanged for something to be consumed at home, and why not for good claret? Thirdly, that the produce of every species of industry which is not either destroyed by some misfortune, or taken from us by an enemy, is, must, and ought to be consumed at home, either in substance or in what it is exchanged for, after one, two, three, or three hundred exchanges: and that this is so far from either taking away or diminishing the national profit upon industry, that it is the very circumstance which renders all industry profitable to the nation; since it is only by means of this home consumption that more people can be maintained and employed, or those maintained and employed before be maintained and employed more agreably, or that the nation can in any respect better its circumstances. Fourthly, that no | nation ever was ruined by what is called the ballance of trade being against them, but by the excess of their annual consumption above the annual produce of their industry, which would necessarily ruin them tho’ they had no foreign trade at all. Fifthly, that no nation whose industry and opulence are entire can be long in want of money; goods commanding money even more necessarily than money commands goods. Sixthly, that all extraordinary encouragement given to any one branch of commerce breaks the natural balance of industry in commerce as well as in manufactures, and, so far, obstructs the progress of opulence. Of the British trade to France and Portugal. That a free trade to France would tend infinitely more to enrich Great Britain than a free trade to Portugal, because France, on account of its superior opulence having more to give, would take more from us, and exchanging to a much greater value and in a much greater variety of ways, would encourage more industry in Great Britain and give occasion to more subdivisions of labour; and that it is only passion and national prejudice which ever made any body think otherwise. The British merchant.

3^tio. The notion that national opulence consists in money has given occasion to the | current and pernicious opinion that we can never hurt ourselves by any expence incurred at home; because the money, being all spent among ourselves, does not go out of the country; and that what one loses another gets. That the difference with regard to the diminution of public opulence, when a stock of the conveniences and necessaries of life is wasted uselessly at home, and when either these or the money which purchases these is sent abroad to be wasted in the same manner, is extremely inconsiderable. Useless sea wars very near as destructive to public opulence as useless land wars.

4^to. The notion that national opulence consisted in or depended upon money, joined to another false notion that the value put upon the precious metals was a matter of institution and agreement, gave occasion to the famous system of Mr. Law. That gentleman imagined that by proper measures the inhabitants of a particular country might gradually be induced to affix the idea of a certain value to a certain paper currency, in the same manner as they affix it at present to a certain sum of money, and even to prefer the paper to the money; and that if this was once fairly brought about, the government, which had the issuing of this paper, might excite what industry, raise and pay what | armies, and fit out what fleets they thought proper, without being at any other expence but that of building a paper mill. The vanity of both these imaginations, together with the history and analysis of the principal operations of this system. South Sea scheme.

Chap. 5^th. Concerning the causes of the slow progress of opulence.

Those causes of two kinds. First, natural impediments; and, secondly, oppressive or injudicious government.

The original poverty and ignorance of mankind the natural impediments to the progress of opulence. That it is easier for a nation, in the same manner as for an individual, to raise itself from a moderate degree of wealth to the highest opulence, than to acquire this moderate degree of wealth; money, according to the proverb, begetting money, among nations as among individuals. The extreme difficulty of beginning accumulation and the many accidents to which it is exposed. The slowness and difficulty with which those things, which now appear the most simple inventions, were originally found out. That a nation is not always in a condition to imitate and copy the inventions and improvements of its more wealthy neighbours; the application of these frequently requiring a stock with which it is not furnished.

The oppressive and injudicious governments to which mankind are almost always subject, but more especially in the rude beginnings of | society, greatly increase those natural impediments, which of themselves are not easily surmounted. The oppression and errors of government affect either 1^mo. agriculture; or 2^do. arts and commerce.

1^mo. The great importance of agriculture and how much the value of its annual produce exceeds that of any other art. That the cultivation of land depends upon the proportion which the stock of those who cultivate it^w bears to the quantity of land to be cultivated. That consequently whatever tends to prevent the accumulation of stock in the hands of the cultivators, or to discourage them from continuing this species of industry after they have accumulated some stock in this manner, must tend to retard the progress of agriculture.

That the chiefs of an independent nation which settles in any country, either by conquest or otherwise, as soon as the idea of private property in land is introduced never leave any part of the land vacant, but constantly, from that greediness which is natural to man, seize much greater tracts of it to themselves than they have either strength or stock to cultivate. From the same greediness and rapacity, being^x unwilling to divide the profites of this land with any freeman, what they cannot or will not cultivate by their own strength they endeavour to cultivate by the strength of slaves, whom they either conquer in war or purchase in some other way, and in whose hands no stock ever can accumulate.

Of the cultivation by slaves.

That land can never be cultivated to the best | advantage by slaves, the work which is done by slaves always coming dearer than that which is done by freemen. Of the scanty produce and great expence of the slave cultivation among the antient Greeks and Romans. Of villenage as it took place among our Saxon and Norman ancestors; of the adscripti glebae in Germany and Poland, and the rustici in Russia, and those who work in the coal and salt works of Scotland. That the high cultivation of Barbadoes, and of some other sugar and tobacco colonies, notwithstanding that in them the labour is performed almost entirely by slaves, is owing to this circumstance, that the cultivation of tobacco and sugar is engrossed, the one almost entirely by the English, the other by the English and French, who thus enjoying a sort of monopoly against all the rest of the world, indemnify themselves by the exorbitancy of their profites for their expensive and thriftless method of cultivation. The great expence of slave cultivation in the sugar plantations. The yet more exorbitant profites of the planter. That the planters in the more northern colonies, cultivating chiefly wheat and Indian corn, by which they can expect no such exorbitant returns, find it not for their interest to employ many slaves, and yet Pensilvania, the Jerseys, and some of the provinces of New England are much richer and more populous than Virginia, notwithstanding that tobacco is by its ordinary high price a more profitable cultivation.

| Of the cultivation of the antient metayers, or tenants by steelbow.^y

That through the whole of that very small corner of the world in which slavery has, by a concurrence of different causes, been abolished, what naturally and almost necessarily came after the cultivation by slaves was that by the antient metayers or tenants by steelbow. To these at the commencement of the lease a certain number of cattle were delivered by the lord, to be returned in equal number and goodness at the expiration of it. With these cattle the tenant was to cultivate the land, and the lord and he were to divide the produce between them, each chusing a sheaff in his turn when the corn was cut down and set up in sheaffs on the field. That land could never be improved to the best advantage by such tenants. 1^st., because stock could not, without the greatest difficulty, accumulate in their hands; and 2^dly., because if it did accumulate they would never lay it out in the improvement of the land, since the lord, who laid out nothing, was to divide the profites with them. That the greater part of the lands in the western parts of Europe, the only corner of the world in which slavery has ever been abolished, particular<l>y about five sixth parts of the lands in France, are still cultivated by tenants of this kind.

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 out^z 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. 2^d. at the end.3

2^do of

FIRST FRAGMENT ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

| who, for an equal quantity of work, would have taken more time and consequently^a 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 of^b exchanging^c which^d 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 into^f the different branches according to^g 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 a^h 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 maintain^k 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 any^p of those three^q 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 for^s 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 or^u 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 different^w villages^x 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 somewhat^z 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 are^b such^c 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 commencements^d of a still^e greater variety of employments. The Hottentots, therefore, may be regarded as a richer nation than the North Americans, and the Tartars and Arabs as^f 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 ground^g 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 very^j soon comes to find it equally for his interest not to interrupt his own business with^k 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 of^o 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, might^p still be said^q 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 coasts^t extremely favourable to the infant navigation of the world, when from the^u want of the compass men were^v 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 were^w cultivated or improved to any considerable degree.^x Upper Egypt scarce extends^y 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. All^b these are countries very much of the same nature with Egypt, cut by innumerable canals which afford them an immense inland navigation.

[1 ]Scott, 317–56.

[2 ]Ibid., 317–22.

[3 ]Ibid., 318.

[4 ]It was enclosed by Smith with Letter 40 addressed to Sir Gilbert Elliot, dated 10 Oct. 1759.

[5 ]Scott, 57.

[6 ]Ibid., 379–85.

[7 ]Ibid., 57–9, and see also the captions to the facsimile reproductions on 379–85, each of which begins ‘Very early economic work of Adam Smith, one of the Edinburgh Lectures.’

[8 ]‘The Development of Adam Smith’s Ideas on the Division of Labour’, Economic Journal, lxxxiii (1973).

[a]Replaces ‘rough’, possibly mis–spelt

[b]‘exam’ deleted

[c]‘to provide himself’ deleted

[d]Replaces ‘earned’, possibly mis–spelt

[e]The last twenty–one words are written in the margin

[f]As the MS. originally stood, the first twenty words of the next paragraph (‘It is the immense multiplication . . . the division of labour’) followed on immediately after ‘the same degree of goodness.’ These twenty words were deleted, and then rewritten so as to form the opening of a new paragraph.

[g]The last sentence is written in the margin

[h]Sic

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APPENDIX - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 5 Lectures On Jurisprudence [1762]

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