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.There are many littlemanufacturing towns in Great Britain, of which the inhabitantshave not capital sufficient to transport the produce of their ownindustry to those distant markets where there is demand andconsumption for it.If there are any merchants among them, theyare properly only the agents of wealthier merchants who reside insome of the greater commercial cities.When the capital of any country is not sufficient for all thosethree purposes, in proportion as a greater share of it is employedin agriculture, the greater will be the quantity of productive labourwhich it puts into motion within the country; as will likewise bethe value which its employment adds to the annual produce of theland and labour of the society.After agriculture, the capitalemployed in manufactures puts into motion the greatest quantityof productive labour, and adds the greatest value to the annualAdam Smith ElecBook Classics The Wealth of Nations: Book 2 486produce.That which is employed in the trade of exportation hasthe least effect of any of the three.The country, indeed, which has not capital sufficient for allthose three purposes has not arrived at that degree of opulence forwhich it seems naturally destined.To attempt, however,prematurely and with an insufficient capital to do all the three iscertainly not the shortest way for a society, no more than it wouldbe for an individual, to acquire a sufficient one.The capital of allthe individuals of a nation has its limits in the same manner asthat of a single individual, and is capable of executing only certainpurposes.The capital of all the individuals of a nation is increasedin the same manner as that of a single individual by theircontinually accumulating and adding to it whatever they save outof their revenue.It is likely to increase the fastest, therefore, whenit is employed in the way that affords the greatest revenue to allthe inhabitants of the country, as they will thus be enabled tomake the greatest savings.But the revenue of all the inhabitants ofthe country is necessarily in proportion to the value of the annualproduce of their land and labour.It has been the principal cause of the rapid progress of ourAmerican colonies towards wealth and greatness that almost theirwhole capitals have hitherto been employed in agriculture.Theyhave no manufactures, those household and courser manufacturesexcepted which necessarily accompany the progress ofagriculture, and which are the work of the women and children inevery private family.The greater part both of the exportation andcoasting trade of America is carried on by the capitals ofmerchants who reside in Great Britain.Even the stores andwarehouses from which goods are retailed in some provinces,Adam Smith ElecBook Classics The Wealth of Nations: Book 2 487particularly in Virginia and Maryland, belong many of them tomerchants who reside in the mother country, and afford one of thefew instances of the retail trade of a society being carried on by thecapitals of those who are not resident members of it.Were theAmericans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence,to stop the importation of European manufactures, and, by thusgiving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as couldmanufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of theircapital into this employment, they would retard instead ofaccelerating the further increase in the value of their annualproduce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress oftheir country towards real wealth and greatness.This would bestill more the case were they to attempt, in the same manner, tomonopolize to themselves their whole exportation trade.The course of human prosperity, indeed, seems scarce ever tohave been of so long continuance as to enable any great country toacquire capital sufficient for all those three purposes; unlessperhaps, we give credit to the wonderful accounts of the wealthand cultivation of China, of those of ancient Egypt, and of theancient state of Indostan.Even those three countries, thewealthiest, according to all accounts, that ever were in the world,are chiefly renowned for their superiority in agriculture andmanufactures.They do not appear to have been eminent forforeign trade.The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathyto the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails amongthe Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreigncommerce.The greater part of the surplus produce of all thosethree countries seems to have been always exported by foreigners,who gave in exchange for it something else for which they found aAdam Smith ElecBook Classics The Wealth of Nations: Book 2 488demand there, frequently gold and silver.It is thus that the same capital will in any country put intomotion a greater or smaller quantity of productive labour, and adda greater or smaller value to the annual produce of its land andlabour, according to the different proportions in which it isemployed in agriculture, manufactures, and wholesale trade.Thedifference, too, is very great, according to the different sorts ofwholesale trade in which any part of it is employed.All wholesale trade, all buying in order to sell again bywholesale, may be reduced to three different sorts
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