Of Money confidered as a particular Branch of the general Stock of the Society, or of the Expence of maintaining the National Published by the fame AUTHOR, THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS: An ESSAY towards an Analysis of the Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of themselves. TO WHICH IS ADDED, A DISSERTATION on the ORIGIN of LANGUAGE, The Fourth Edition, Price 6 s. T HE annual labour of every nation is the fund which ori ginally supplies it with all the neceffaries and conveniencies of life which it annually confumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. ACCORDING therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or fmaller proportion to the number of those who are to confume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the neceffaries and conveniencies for which it has occafion. BUT this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumftances; firft, by the skill, dexterity and judgment. VOL. I. B with Introduction. with which its labour is generally applied; and, fecondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in ufèful labour, and that of those who are not fo employed. Whateverbe the foil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or fcantinefs of its annual fupply muft, in that: particular fituation, depend upon those two circumftances. THE abundance or fcantinefs of this fupply too feems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the favage nations of hunters and fishers, every. individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the neceffariesand conveniencies of life, for himself, or fuch of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are fo miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the neceffity fometimes of directly defroying, and fometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering difeafes, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beafts. Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom confume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the fociety is fo great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the loweft and pooreft order, if he is frugal and induftrious, may enjoy a greater fhare of the neceffaries and conveniencies of life than it is poffible for any favage to acquire. THE caufes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally diftributed |
