In their latter employment they consumed the same quantity of food and left in return provision for a hundred thousand men. A capital employed upon land may be unproductive to the individual that employs it and yet be highly productive to the society. It is, indeed, almost impossible to see the great fortunes that are made in trade, and the liberality with which so many merchants live, and yet agree in the statement of the economists, that manufacturers can only grow rich by depriving themselves of the funds destined for their support. Daily experience proves that the labour employed in trade and manufactures is sufficiently productive to individuals, but it certainly is not productive in the same degree to the state. The home trade of consumption is by far the most important trade of every nation.
China is the richest country in the world, without any other.
Putting then, for a moment, foreign trade out of the question, the man who, by an ingenious manufacture, obtains a double portion out of the old stock of provisions, will certainly not to be so useful to the state as the man who, by his labour, adds a single share to the former stock. Foreign commerce adds to the wealth of a state, according to Dr Adam Smith's definition, though not according to the definition of the economists. In the natural progress of a state towards riches, manufactures, and foreign commerce would follow, in their order, the high cultivation of the soil. In Europe, this natural order of things has been inverted, and the soil has been cultivated from the redundancy of manufacturing capital, instead of manufactures rising from the redundancy of capital employed upon land. The superior encouragement that has been given to the industry of the towns, and the consequent higher price that is paid for the labour of artificers than for the labour of those employed in husbandry, are probably the reasons why so much soil in Europe remains uncultivated.