the best returns. Every one is attached to the la'bour or employment of capital to which he has given the preference; and when he begins to perceive that it is not as profitable as others in which he might haye embarked, it is generally too late to quit his pursuit and to go over to that which he ought to have preferred.

To inquire into the most advantageous employment of capital appears, after all, not desirable; the private wealth of certain classes and individuals resulting from the advantages which exchangeable value gives them, affords an incitement to general emulation, activity, and industry, and to aim at effecting a proportionate equality in the benefits of all labours and all employments of capital, would perhaps be attended with pernicious consequences.

The case is different when the advantages which exchangeable value gives to certain productions are derived from bad laws or the partiality of governments, and due to monopolies, privileges, and bounties. Discouraged by the privations to which they are doomed, and sometimes by the sacrifices to which they are forced, the labouring classes are then pining, they attach less importance to the increase of their capitals, and both their industry and wealth decline apace.

Except this highly important case, which is little attended to, I think national wealth has nothing to apprehend from, and cannot be injured by, the inequality of profits resulting from the various exchangeable value of the produce of labour which is circulated at home.

But is the inequality of profits in the exchange of home for foreign produce equally harmless?

Suppose a nation excels another in industry, in the accumulation of capitals, and in sciences and arts, and both nations interchange the produce of their labour; will not the productions of the industrious, enlightened, and wealthy country, have a more considerable exchangeable value, than those of the country inferior in knowledge, industry, and wealth? As her productions are really better, more acceptable, and cheaper, will they not be preferred? And if the circulation of the foreign commodities meet with no obstacles, will not labour diminish in one country, and augment in the other; or, at least, will not one nation appropriate to itself the most lucrative labour, and steadily advance on the road to wealth, whilst the other, being confined to the least profitable labour, pines in continual and intolerable misery?

Among the distinguished writers who hold this opinion, David Hume and Cantillon, in particular, think that rich nations are far from having the advantage in their dealings with poor nations, and that the latter generally get rich in the end at the expence of the former.

"The advantages of a rich trading country," says David Hume," are compensated in some measure by the low price of labour in every nation which has not an extensive commerce. Manufactures gradually shift their places, leaving those countries and provinces which they have already enriched, and flying to others, whither they are allured by the cheapness of provisions

and labour, till they have enriched these also, and are again banished by the same causes.

But the observation is more specious than founded. A country can grow rich only when industry is favoured by nature, and ably seconded by government: in proportion as prosperity increases, the wages of the labouring classes are raised. But let it not be supposed that increased wages are necessarily productive of higher prices. When the labourer is well paid, he labours more and better; the high price of his labour is profitably compensated by an enlarged and improved produce. The fact is established by every traveller who has compared the produce of labour in countries where labour is badly or well paid.

The cheapness of capitals, on the other hand, sinks the price of the productions of the rich, country, because it affords the means of setting up machines which shorten and facilitate labour, of selecting the best raw materials, and of granting long credits; all which are advantages so superior to low wages of labour, that they insure to the nations that enjoy these advantages, an absolute preponderance over those that have them not.

Lord Lauderdale says precisely the same. The noble Earl thinks, that David Hume "did not sufficiently attend to the unlimited resources that are to be found in the ingenuity of man in inventing means of supplanting labour by capital; for any possible augmentation of wages that increased opulence can occa

Essays by David Hume, Edin. 1804, vol. i. of Money, p. 300.

sion, is but a trifling drawback on the great advantages a country derives, not only from the ingenuity of man in supplanting labour by machinery, but from capital laid out in roads, canals, bridges, inclosures, shipping, and employed in the conduct of home and foreign trade. ".

The sentiments of Cantillon and David Hume on this subject ought therefore not to arrest our attention any longer.

But Dr. Quesnay has started a singular opinion.

He not only is not afraid of the augmentation of the wages of labour raising the prices of productions and injuring their sale; but he even wishes to persuade us that the low price of labour, which sinks the exchangeable value of commodities, renders the trade with a foreign country less profitable. "The national income," says he, " is always greater in proportion as the exchangeable value of commodities is high. Abundance and dearness are opulence."†

This doctrine is absolutely contrary to the elementary notions of political economy. If man's propensity to truck and barter, or rather his desire of enjoyment and happiness, promotes the circulation of the produce of labour, it must be more active when the number of those who have any thing to exchange is considerable, and when the objects to be exchanged are in great quantity and variety; when the commodities to be exchanged originally cost little, and when their price is within the reach of a larger number of

the

The Earl of Lauderdale's Inquiry, chap. v. page 299.

+ Physiocratie, Max. 18, page 116.

consumers; or, in other words, the cheaper commodities are, the more consumers do they find, the less precarious is their sale, and the more profitable are their returns.

Mr. Say has expressed this truth by an image of great brilliancy and admirable correctness.

Consumption," he says, " resembles a huge pyra mid; the breadth of the pyramid represents the number of consumers, or the extent of the demand; and its height the price of the commodity: the higher the price, the smaller the breadth; that is, the demand. Sometimes the natural price of certain commodities rises higher than the pyramid; that is, to a height where there is no demand; such commodities are no longer produced."*

If such be the ultimate result of the high price of labour, (and the fact is certain,) it is evident that opulence does not consist in abundance and dearness, which are incompatible; but in abundance and cheappess, which always harmonize. In short, nations are so much the richer as commodities are in greater plenty and at lower prices; and by a consequence equally infallible, their commerce is so much the more, profitable, as the productions of their labour are cheap.

What then ought nations to do that are poor, of inferior in wealth, and do not derive from the general circulation of the produce of their labour the same profits as rich nations?

Must they insulate themselves, multiply customhouses and prohibitions, and refuse to communicate with richer nations?

* Traité d' Economie Politique, par Say, tome ii. page 72.