markitect-main/examples/infospace-with-history/artifacts/sources/book-3-chapter-01.md

id, title, book, chapter, artifact_type

id	title	book	chapter	artifact_type
book-3-chapter-01	OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE.	3	1	content

CHAPTER I. OF THE NATURAL PROGRESS OF OPULENCE.

  The great commerce of every civilized society is that carried on between
  the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists in the
  exchange of rude for manufactured produce, either immediately, or by the
  intervention of money, or of some sort of paper which represents money.
  The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence and the
  materials of manufacture. The town repays this supply, by sending 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 substances,
  may very properly be said to gain its whole wealth and subsistence from
  the country. We must not, however, upon this account, imagine that the
  gain of the town is the loss of the country. The gains of both are mutual
  and reciprocal, and the division of labour is in this, as in all other
  cases, advantageous to all the different persons employed in the various
  occupations into which it is subdivided. The inhabitants of the country
  purchase of the town a greater quantity of manufactured goods with the
  produce of a much smaller quantity of their own labour, than they must
  have employed had they attempted to prepare them themselves. The town
  affords a market for the surplus 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 something else which is in
  demand among them. The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants
  of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those 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, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty
  miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally, not only pay
  the expense of raising it 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 sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like
  produce that is brought from more distant parts; and they save, besides,
  the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare
  the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable
  town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will
  easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce
  of the town. Among all the absurd speculations that have been propagated
  concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that either
  the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that with
  the country which maintains it.

  As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and
  luxury, so the industry which procures the former, must necessarily be
  prior to that which ministers to the latter. The cultivation and
  improvement of the country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must,
  necessarily, be prior to the increase of the town, which furnishes only
  the means of conveniency and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the
  country only, or what is over and above the maintenance of the
  cultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town, which can
  therefore increase only with the increase of the surplus produce. The
  town, indeed, may not always derive its whole subsistence from the country
  in its neighbourhood, or even from the territory to which it belongs, but
  from very distant countries; and this, though it forms no exception from
  the general rule, has occasioned considerable variations in the progress
  of opulence in different ages and nations.

  That order of things which necessity imposes, in general, though not in
  every particular country, is in every particular country promoted by the
  natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted
  those natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond
  what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were
  situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that
  territory was completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly
  equal profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals, rather in
  the improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in
  foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land, has it more under
  his view and command; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents
  than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only
  to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human
  folly and injustice, by giving great credits, in distant countries, to men
  with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted.
  The capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the
  improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of
  human affairs can admit of. The beauty of the country, besides, the
  pleasure of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises,
  and, wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the
  independency which it really affords, have charms that, more or less,
  attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original
  destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to
  retain a predilection for this primitive employment.

  Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land
  cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual
  interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons
  and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose
  service the farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand
  occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their
  residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a
  precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another,
  and thus form a small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the
  baker, soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers,
  necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who
  contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town,
  and those of the country, are mutually the servants of one another. The
  town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the
  country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce.
  It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with
  the materials of their work, and the means of their subsistence. The
  quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the
  country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and
  provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence,
  therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the
  demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment
  only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had
  human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of
  things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every
  political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement
  and cultivation of the territory of country.

  In our North American colonies, where uncultivated land is still to be had
  upon easy terms, no manufactures for distant sale have ever yet been
  established in any of their towns. When an artificer has acquired a little
  more stock than is necessary for carrying on his own business in supplying
  the neighbouring country, he does not, in North America, attempt to
  establish with it a manufacture for more distant sale, but employs it in
  the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land. From artificer he
  becomes planter; and neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence
  which that country affords to artificers, can bribe him rather to work for
  other people than for himself. He feels that an artificer is the servant
  of his customers, from whom he derives his subsistence; but that a planter
  who cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence from
  the labour of his own family, is really a master, and independent of all
  the world.

  In countries, on the contrary, where there is either no uncultivated land,
  or none that can be had upon easy terms, every artificer who has acquired
  more stock than he can employ in the occasional jobs of the neighbourhood,
  endeavours to prepare work for more distant sale. The smith erects some
  sort of iron, the weaver some sort of linen or woollen manufactory. Those
  different manufactures come, in process of time, to be gradually
  subdivided, and thereby improved and refined in a great variety of ways,
  which may easily be conceived, and which it is therefore unnecessary to
  explain any farther.

  In seeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or
  nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the
  same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As
  the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the
  manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more
  within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign
  merchant. In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both
  of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand
  at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for
  which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital which carries
  this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or a domestic one, is of very
  little importance. If the society has not acquired sufficient capital,
  both to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the completest
  manner the whole of its rude produce, there is even a considerable
  advantage that the rude produce should be exported by a foreign capital,
  in order that the whole stock of the society may be employed in more
  useful purposes. The wealth of ancient Egypt, that of China and Indostan,
  sufficiently demonstrate that a nation may attain a very high degree of
  opulence, though the greater part of its exportation trade be carried on
  by foreigners. The progress of our North American and West Indian
  colonies, would have been much less rapid, had no capital but what
  belonged to themselves been employed in exporting their surplus produce.

  According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of
  the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture,
  afterwards to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce. This
  order of things is so very natural, that in every society that had any
  territory, it has always, I believe, been in some degree observed. Some of
  their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could
  be established, and some sort of coarse industry of the manufacturing kind
  must have been carried on in those towns, before they could well think of
  employing themselves in foreign commerce.

  But though this natural order of things must have taken place in some
  degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe,
  been in many respects entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of some of
  their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as were
  fit for distant sale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together have
  given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and
  customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and
  which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily
  forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order.