them in favour of our rivals; the workmen of another nation may labour
for less price, or some accidental improvement, or natural advantage,
may procure a just preference to their commodities; as experience has
shown, that there is no work of the hands, which, at different times, is
not best performed in different places.

Traffick, even while it continues in its state of prosperity, must owe
its success to agriculture; the materials of manufacture are the produce
of the earth. The wool which we weave into cloth, the wood which is
formed into cabinets, the metals which are forged into weapons, are
supplied by nature with the help of art. Manufactures, indeed, and
profitable manufactures, are sometimes raised from imported materials,
but then we are subjected, a second time, to the caprice of our
neighbours. The natives of Lombardy might easily resolve to retain their
silk at home, and employ workmen of their own to weave it. And this will
certainly be done when they grow wise and industrious, when they have
sagacity to discern their true interest, and vigour to pursue it.

Mines are generally considered as the great sources of wealth, and
superficial observers have thought the possession of great quantities of
precious metals the first national happiness. But Europe has long seen,
with wonder and contempt, the poverty of Spain, who thought herself
exempted from the labour of tilling the ground, by the conquest of Peru,
with its veins of silver. Time, however, has taught even this obstinate
and haughty nation, that without agriculture they may, indeed, be the
transmitters of money, but can never be the possessours. They may dig it
out of the earth, but must immediately send it away to purchase cloth or
bread, and it must at last remain with some people wise enough to sell
much, and to buy little; to live upon their own lands, without a wish
for those things which nature has denied them.

Mines are themselves of no use, without some kind of agriculture. We
have, in our own country, inexhaustible stores of iron, which lie
useless in the ore for want of wood. It was never the design of
Providence to feed man without his own concurrence; we have from nature
only what we cannot provide for ourselves; she gives us wild fruits,
which art must meliorate, and drossy metals, which labour must refine.

Particular metals are valuable, because they are scarce; and they are
scarce, because the mines that yield them are emptied in