An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

131

Adam Smith

quarter of nine Winchester bushels.

But in the twelve years preceding 1764 including that year, the

average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same

market was £ 2:1:9½d.

In the first twelve years of the last century, therefore, wheat ap-

pears to have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher’s meat a good

deal dearer, than in the twelve years preceding 1764, including

that year.

In all great countries, the greater part of the cultivated lands are

employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. The

rent and profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other

cultivated land. If any particular produce afforded less, the land

would soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if any afforded

more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be

turned to that produce.

Those productions, indeed, which require either a greater origi-

nal expense of improvement, or a greater annual expense of culti-

vation in order to fit the land for them, appear commonly to af-

ford, the one a greater rent, the other a greater profit, than corn or

pasture. This superiority, however, will seldom be found to amount

to more than a reasonable interest or compensation for this supe-

rior expense.

In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent

of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater

than in acorn or grass field. But to bring the ground into this

condition requires more expense. Hence a greater rent becomes

due to the landlord. It requires, too, a more attentive and skilful

management. Hence a greater profit becomes due to the farmer.

The crop, too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, is more pre-

carious. Its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional

losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. The

circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always moder-

ate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over-

recompensed. Their delightful art is practised by so many rich

people for amusement, that little advantage is to be made by those

who practise it for profit; because the persons who should natu-

rally be their best customers, supply themselves with all their most

precious productions.

The advantage which the landlord derives from such improve-

ments, seems at no time to have been greater than what was suffi-

cient to compensate the original expense of making them. In the

ancient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well-watered kitchen gar-

den seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed

to yield the most valuable produce. But Democritus, who wrote

upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was re-

garded by the ancients as one of the fathers of the art, thought

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132

The Wealth of Nations

they did not act wisely who inclosed a kitchen garden. The profit,

he said, would not compensate the expense of a stone-wall: and

bricks (he meant, I suppose, bricks baked in the sun) mouldered

with the rain and the winter-storm, and required continual re-

pairs. Columella, who reports this judgment of Democritus, does

not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of inclosing

with a hedge of brambles and briars, which he says he had found

by experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence; but

which, it seems, was not commonly known in the time of

Democritus. Palladius adopts the opinion of Columella, which

had before been recommended by Varro. In the judgment of those

ancient improvers, the produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems,

been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture

and the expense of watering; for in countries so near the sun, it

was thought proper, in those times as in the present, to have the

command of a stream of water, which could be conducted to ev-

ery bed in the garden. Through the greater part of Europe, a kitchen

garden is not at present supposed to deserve a better inclosure

than mat recommended by Columella. In Great Britain, and some

other northern countries, the finer fruits cannot Be brought to

perfection but by the assistance of a wall. Their price, therefore, in

such countries, must be sufficient to pay the expense of building

and maintaining what they cannot be had without. The fruit-wall

frequently surrounds the kitchen garden, which thus enjoys the ben-

efit of an inclosure which its own produce could seldom pay for.

That the vineyard, when properly planted and brought to per-

fection, was the most valuable part of the farm, seems to have

been an undoubted maxim in the ancient agriculture, as it is in

the modern, through all the wine countries. But whether it was

advantageous to plant a new vineyard, was a matter of dispute

among the ancient Italian husbandmen, as we learn from Col-

umella. He decides, like a true lover of all curious cultivation, in

favour of the vineyard; and endeavours to shew, by a comparison

of the profit and expense, that it was a most advantageous im-

provement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and

expense of new projects are commonly very fallacious; and in noth-

ing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by

such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might

have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same

point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy in the wine

countries. Their writers on agriculture, indeed, the lovers and pro-

moters of high cultivation, seem generally disposed to decide with

Columella in favour of the vineyard. In France, the anxiety of the

proprietors of the old vineyards to prevent the planting of any

new ones, seems to favour their opinion, and to indicate a con-

sciousness in those who must have the experience, that this spe-

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