at every body's door.

This shows not the extent of our manufactures only, but the usefulness
of them, and how they are so necessary to mankind that our own people
cannot be without them, and every sort of them, and cannot make one
thing serve for another; but as they sell their own, so they buy from
others, and every body here trades with every body: this it is that
gives the whole manufacture so universal a circulation, and makes it so
immensely great in England. What it is abroad, is not so much to our
present purpose.

Again, the magnitude of the city of London adds very considerably to the
greatness of the inland trade; for as this city is the centre of our
trade, so all the manufactures are brought hither, and from hence
circulated again to all the country, as they are particularly called
for. But that is not all; the magnitude of the city influences the whole
nation also in the article of provisions, and something is raised in
every county in England, however remote, for the supply of London; nay,
all the best of every produce is brought hither; so that all the people,
and all the lands in England, seem to be at work for, or employed by, or
on the account of, this overgrown city.

This makes the trade increase prodigiously, even as the city itself
increases; and we all know the city is very greatly increased within few
years past. Again, as the whole nation is employed to feed and clothe
this city, so here is the money, by which all the people in the whole
nation seem to be supported and maintained.

I have endeavoured to make some calculation of the number of shopkeepers
in this kingdom, but I find it is not to be done--we may as well count
the stars; not that they are equal in number neither, but it is as
impossible, unless any one person corresponded so as to have them
numbered in every town or parish throughout the kingdom. I doubt not
they are some hundreds of thousands, but there is no making an
estimate--the number is in a manner infinite. It is as impossible
likewise to make any guess at the bulk of their trade, and how much they
return yearly; nor, if we could, would it give any foundation for any
just calculation of the value of goods in general, because all our goods
circulate so much, and go so often through so many hands before they
come to the consumer. This so often passing every sort of goods through
so many hands, before it comes into the hands of the last consumer, is
that which makes our t