BOOK fumed in Great Britain. The trade which is II. carried on in British bottoms between the dif ferent ports of the Mediterranean, and fome trade of the faine kind carried on by British merchants between the different ports of India, make, perhaps, the principal branches of what is properly the carrying trade of Great Britain. THE extent of the home-trade and of the capital which can be employed in it, is neceffarily limited by the value of the furplus produce of all thofe diftant places within the country which have occafion to exchange their respective productions with one another. That of the foreign trade of confumption, by the value of the furplus produce of the whole country and of what can be purchased with it. That of the carrying trade, by the value of the furplus produce of all the different countries in the world. Its poffible extent, therefore, is in a manner infinite in comparison of that of the other two, and is capable of absorbing the greatest capitals. THE Confideration of his own private profit, is the fole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in fome particular branch of the wholefale or retail trade. The different quantities of productive labour which it may put into motion, and the different values which it may add to the annual produce of the land and labour of the fociety, according as it is employed in one or other of thofe different ways, never enter into his thoughts. In countries, therefore, where agriculture is the moft profitable of all V. all employments, and farming and improving the CHA E. moft direct roads to a fplendid fortune, the capitals of individuals will naturally be employed in the manner moft advantageous to the whole fociety. The profits of agriculture, however, seem to have no fuperiority over those of other employments in any part of Europe. Projectors, indeed, in every corner of it, have within these few years amused the public with most magnificent accounts of the profits to be made by the cultivation and improvement of land. Without entering into any particular difcuffion of their calculations, a very simple obfervation may fatisfy us that the refult of them must be falfe. We fee every day the most fplendid fortunes that have been acquired in the course of a single life by trade and manufactures, frequently from a very finall capital, fometimes from no capital. A fingle inftance of fuch a fortune acquired by agriculture in the fame time, and from fuch a capital, has not, perhaps, occurred in Europe during the courfe of the prefent century. In all the great countries of Europe, however, much good land ftill remains uncultivated, and the greater part of what is cultivated is far from bèing improved to the degree of which it is capable. Agriculture, therefore, is almost every where capable of abforbing a much greater capital than has eyer yet been employed in it. What circumstances in the policy of Europe have given the trades which are carried on in towns fo great an advantage over that which is carried on in the country, F 4 II. BOOK country, that private perfons frequently find it more for their advantage to employ their capitals in the most distant carrying trades of Afia and America, than in the improvement and cultivation of the moft fertile fields in their own neighbourhood, I fhall endeavour to explain at full length in the two following books. BOOK III. Of the different Progrefs of Opulence in different Nations. CHAP. I. Of the natural Progress of Opulence. TH every civilized fo BOOK HE great commerce of bitants of the town and those of the country. III. I. It confists in the exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the intervention of money, or of fome fort of paper which represents money. The country fupplies the town with the means of fubfiftence, and the materials of manufacture. The town repays this fupply by fending back a part of the manufactured produce to the inhabitants of the country. The town, in which there neither is nor can be any reproduction of fubftances, may very properly be faid to gain its whole wealth and fubfiftence from the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the gain of the town is the lofs of the country. The gains of both are mutual and reciprocal, and the divifion of labour is in this, as in all other cafes, advantageous to all the different perfons employ ed in the various occupations into which it is fubdivided. BOOK fubdivided. The inhabitants of the country purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods, with the produce of a much fmaller quantity of their own labour, than they must have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves. The town affords a market for the furplus produce of the country, or what is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, and it is there that the inhabitants of the country exchange it for fomething elfe which is in demand among them. The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extenfive is the market which it affords to thofe of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of the town, fells there for the fame price with that which comes from twenty miles diftance. But the price of the latter muft generally, not only pay the expence of raifing and bringing it to market, but afford too the ordinary profits of agriculture to the farmer. The proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they fell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more diftant parts, and they fave, befides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any confiderable town, with that of those which lie at fome distance from |