I. WITHOUT the affistance of some artificers, in- CHA P. deed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption: Smiths, carpenters, wheel-wrights, and plough-wrights, mafons, and bricklayers, tanners, fhoemakers, and taylors, are people, whose service the farmer has frequent occafion for. Such artificers too ftand, occafionally, in need of the affiftance of one another; and as their refidence is not, like that of the farmer, neceffarily tied down to a precife fpot, they naturally fettle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a fmall town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker, foon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, neceffary or useful for supplying their occafional wants, and who contribute ftill further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town and thofe of the country are mutually the fervants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country refort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which fupplies the inhabitants of the town both with the materials of their work, and the means of their fubfiftence. The quantity of the finished work which they fell to the inhabitants of the country, neceffarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provifions which they buy. Neither their employment nor fubfiftence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only BOOK only in proportion to the extenfion of improvement and cultivation. Had human inftitutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progreffive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political fociety; be confequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country. In our North American colonies, where un cultivated land is ftill to be had upon eafy terms, no manufactures for diftant fale have ever 'yet been established in any of their towns. When an artificer has acquired a little more ftock than is neceffary for carrying on his own business in fupplying the neighbouring country, he does not, in North America, attempt to establish with it a manufacture for more diftant fale, but employs it in the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land. From artificer he becomes planter, and neither the large wages nor the eafy fubfiftence 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 fervant of his customers, from whom he derives his fubfiftence; but that a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives his neceffary fubfiftence 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 eafy terms, every artificer who has acquired more ftock than he can employ in the occafional jobs of the neighbourhood, endeavours to prepare I. prepare work for more diftant fale. The fmith CHA P. erects fome fort of iron, the weaver fome fort of linen or woollen manufactory. Those different manufactures come, in procefs of time, to be gradually fubdivided, and thereby improved and refined in a great variety of ways, which may easily be conceived, and which it is therefore unneceffary to explain any further. IN feeking for employment to a capital, manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the fame reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the capital of the landlord or farmer is more fecure than that of the manufacturer, fo the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more fecure than that of the foreign merchant. In every period, indeed, of every fociety, the furplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be fent abroad in order to be exchanged for fomething for which there is fome demand at home. But whether the capital, which carries this furplus produce. abroad, be a foreign or a domestic one, is of very little importance. If the fociety has not acquired fufficient capital both to cultivate all its lands, and to manufacture in the completeft manner the whole of its rude produce, there is even a confiderable advantage that that rude produce should be exported by a foreign capital, in order that the whole ftock of the fociety may be employed in more useful purposes. The wealth BOOK wealth of ancient Egypt, that of China and InIII. doftan, fufficiently demonftrate 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 progrefs of our North American and Weft Indian colonies would have been much less rapid, had no capital but what belonged to themselves been employed in exporting their furplus produce. ACCORDING to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing fociety is, firft, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and laft of all to foreign commerce. This order of things is fo very natural, that in every society that had any territory, it has always, I believe, been in fome degree obferved. Some of their lands must have been cultivated before any confiderable towns could be established, and fome fort of coarse induftry of the manufacturing kind must have been carried on in thofe towns, before they could well think of employing themselves in foreign com merce. BUT though this natural order of things muft have taken place in fome degree in every fuch fociety, it has, in all the modern ftates of Europe, been, in many refpects, entirely inverted. The foreign commerce of fome of their cities has introduced all their finer manufactures, or fuch as were fit for diftant fale; and manufactures and foreign commerce together, have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and cuftoms which the nature of I. their original government introduced, and which CHAP. remained after that government was greatly altered, neceffarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order. CHA P. II. Of the Difcouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman : Empire. WH HEN the German and Scythian nations. over-ran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the confufions which followed fo great a revolution lafted for feveral centuries. The rapine and violence which the barbarians exercifed against the ancient inhabitants, interrupted the commerce between the towns and the country. The towns were deferted, and the country was left uncultivated, and the western provinces of Europe, which had enjoyed a confiderable degree of opulence under the Roman empire, funk into the lowest state of poverty and barbarism. During the continuance of thofe confufions, the chiefs and principal leaders of thofe nations, acquired or ufurped to themselves the greater part of the lands of thofe countries. A great part of them was uncultivated; but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left without a proprietor. All of them were enVOL. II. groffed, G |