That it was the increase of their numbers, which, rendering the supplies that nature had dealt out to them insufficient, imposed the task on them of searching out the means of procuring additions to them: and that thus necessity, "Cutis acuens mortalia corda * * * * *Ut varias usus meditando extunderet artes Paulatim, &c.-- ""Whetting human industry by care.
That studious need might useful arts explore,"is in truth the divinity that taught mankind the most essential arts."Primo Ceres ferro mortales vertere terram Instituit; cum jam glandes atque arbuta sacrae Defeceruat sylvae et victum Didona negavit,""First Ceres taught the ground with grain to sow, And armed with iron shares the crooked plough;When new Dodonian oaks no more supplied Their mast, and trees their forest fruit denied,""That this urgent necessity, this imperious mistress, which nature caused to spring from their increasing numbers, made them spread themselves over the earth, and people even the most rigorous climates.That the "rigid lore" of the "stern rugged nurse" thus imposed on them, though harsh, was healthful; as a proof of which we may observe, that men in general subsist in greatest comfort and abundance, where the climate is most forbidding, and the soil most stubborn, because there, that they may subsist at all, they have been obliged to call to their succour the most ingenious arts, and the most indefatigable industry, "Labor omnia viacit Improbus et duris urgens in rebus egestas.""What cannot endless labor urged by need?"That, as it is the action of this principle which has given rise to all the arts, so it is it which has brought them to perfection.That, while a territory is scantily peopled, and its inhabitants spread over it at a great distance from each other, they can never subdivide themselves into different trades and employments, and each devoting himself to a particular business and art, exercise his whole ingenuity to bring that particular occupation to perfection; and that hence arts are in general in the most flourishing condition, where the population is the most dense.
"That to these causes, thus necessarily proceeding from this great principle, we are to ascribe in particular both the opulence and prosperity of our own nation, and the necessary diffusion of the arts, manners, language, and race, with which they are connected, and in which they are embodied, over the remotest regions of the globe.That thus, although men in marrying seek only their own good, they nevertheless adopt that course which is most to the advantage of society; and here too, as in many other instances, are led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of their intention.That, therefore, as the revenue and power of a nation can only increase as its population increases, and as the increase of population tends to give a beginning to every useful art, and to carry it to the highest perfection, legislators act a very absurd and culpable part in attempting, in any instance to restrain it, or to check what is undoubtedly the natural, and apparently the most beneficial course of events."Such a theory, like almost every other view of only one side of a complicated subject, would probably be partly correct, and partly erroneous; but it might be possible to embrace in it a great mass of facts, and perhaps to give it considerable plausibility.
In examining the soundness of the doctrine founded on it, it might first be expedient to allow the assumptions necessarily involved in it to pass unnoticed, and to test its accuracy by an application to facts.Such is the course which I mean to follow in this introductory examination of the somewhat similar theory, as it seems to me, which is the groundwork for the vast and varied accumulation of facts and opinions embodied in the Wealth of Nations.I shall allow the author's assumptions to pass unquestioned in all cases where they are mixed with the explanation of real events, though I may esteem that explanation erroneous; and it is only where, alone and unconnected with facts, they are brought forward for the purpose of arguments as incontrovertible truths in order to establish the particular doctrine which I combat, that I will feel myself called on to expose the fallacies into which they lead.
The celebrated author remarks, "that it is from his labor alone that man can draw the necessaries, the conveniences, the amusements of human life, from the materials which nature has placed around him.As the amount of these necessaries, conveniences, and amusements, which any man can afford to enjoy, constitutes his riches; so the amount of them which all the men in the nation can enjoy constitutes the national riches.Labor, then, being the first price, the original purchase money, that is paid for all things, an inquiry into national wealth is, in fact, an inquiry into the means by which the labor of the individuals composing a nation may produce, from the materials they possess, the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and amusements.
"These may either be the immediate produce of that labor, or what is purchased with that produce from other nations.Hence such an inquiry may be divided into two parts; the first treating of the means by which the produce of the national labor becomes greatest; the second, of the manner in which the part transferred to other nations procures from them, in return, the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and amusements.
"First, then, may be considered the sources of wealth that lie altogether within the society, the means of bringing, by the labor of its members, out of the materials which it possesses, the greatest amount of products;that is, of articles affording necessaries, conveniences, or amusements.
"This, in any particular nation, must be regulated by two circumstances.
