An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

110

The Wealth of Nations

of them may sometimes affect to speak of him. There is scarce any

common mechanic trade, on the contrary, of which all the opera-

tions may not be as completely and distinctly explained in a pam-

phlet of a very few pages, as it is possible for words illustrated by

figures to explain them. In the history of the arts, now publishing

by the French Academy of Sciences, several of them are actually

explained in this manner. The direction of operations, besides,

which must be varied with every change of the weather, as well as

with many other accidents, requires much more judgment and

discretion, than that of those which are always the same, or very

nearly the same.

Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the op-

erations of husbandry, but many inferior branches of country

labour require much more skill and experience than the greater

part of mechanic trades. The man who works upon brass and iron,

works with instruments, and upon materials of which the temper

is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who

ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen, works with

instruments of which the health, strength, and temper, are very

different upon different occasions. The condition of the materials

which he works upon, too, is as variable as that of the instruments

which he works with, and both require to be managed with much

judgment and discretion. The common ploughman, though gen-

erally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is sel-

dom defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accus-

tomed, indeed, to social intercourse, than the mechanic who lives

in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth, and more

difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. His

understanding, however, being accustomed to consider a greater

variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other,

whose whole attention, from morning till night, is commonly

occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. How

much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior

to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either

business or curiosity has led to converse much with both. In China

and Indostan, accordingly, both the rank and the wages of coun-

try labourers are said to be superior to those of the greater part of

artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so every-

where, if corporation laws and the corporation spirit did not pre-

vent it.

The superiority which the industry of the towns has everywhere

in Europe over that of the country, is not altogether owing to

corporations and corporation laws. It is supported by many other

regulations. The high duties upon foreign manufactures, and upon

all goods imported by alien merchants, all tend to the same pur-

pose. Corporation laws enable the inhabitants of towns to raise

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111

Adam Smith

their prices, without fearing to be undersold by the free competi-

tion of their own countrymen. Those other regulations secure them

equally against that of foreigners. The enhancement of price occa-

sioned by both is everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farm-

ers, and labourers, of the country, who have seldom opposed the

establishment of such monopolies. They have commonly neither

inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations; and the clamour

and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade

them, that the private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part,

of the society, is the general interest of the whole.

In Great Britain, the superiority of the industry of the towns

over that of the country seems to have been greater formerly than

in the present times. The wages of country labour approach nearer

to those of manufacturing labour, and the profits of stock em-

ployed in agriculture to those of trading and manufacturing stock,

than they are said to have none in the last century, or in the begin-

ning of the present. This change may be regarded as the necessary,

though very late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement

given to the industry of the towns. The stocks accumulated in

them come in time to be so great, that it can no longer be em-

ployed with the ancient profit in that species of industry which is

peculiar to them. That industry has its limits like every other; and

the increase of stock, by increasing the competition, necessarily

reduces the profit. The lowering of profit in the town forces out

stock to the country, where, by creating a new demand for coun-

try labour, it necessarily raises its wages. It then spreads itself, if I

my say so, over the face of the land, and, by being employed in

agriculture, is in part restored to the country, at the expense of

which, in a great measure, it had originally been accumulated in

the town. That everywhere in Europe the greatest improvements

of the country have been owing to such over flowings of the stock

originally accumulated in the towns, I shall endeavour to shew

hereafter, and at the same time to demonstrate, that though some

countries have, by this course, attained to a considerable degree of

opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be dis-

turbed and interrupted by innumerable accidents, and, in every

respect, contrary to the order of nature and of reason The inter-

ests, prejudices, laws, and customs, which have given occasion to

it, I shall endeavour to explain as fully and distinctly as I can in

the third and fourth books of this Inquiry.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merri-

ment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy

against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is

impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which

either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and

justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade

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