little, ultimately, how much a labourer is paid for making
anything; but it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he is
compelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and
fresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low;--the food
and fresh air and water will be at last there; and he will at last get
them. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air or to produce
iron bars instead of them,--the food and air will finally _not_ be
there, and he will _not_ get them, to his great and final inconvenience.
So that, conclusively, in political as in household economy, the great
question is, not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what you
will buy with it, and do with it.

I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work of investigation
must be, to hear my statements laughed at for years, before they are
examined or believed; and I am generally content to wait the public's
time. But it has not been without displeased surprise that I have found
myself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to
force this plain thought into my readers' heads,--that the wealth of
nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers; and that the
real good of all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final worth
of the thing you make, or get by it. This is a practical enough
statement, one would think: but the English public has been so possessed
by its modern school of economists with the notion that Business is
always good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit; and that
buying and selling are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of
what you buy or sell,--that it seems impossible to gain so much as a
patient hearing for any inquiry respecting the substantial result of our
eager modern labours. I have never felt more checked by the sense of
this impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following three
lectures, which, though delivered at considerable intervals of time, and
in different places, were not prepared without reference to each other.
Their connection would, however, have been made far more distinct, if I
had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in
addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any decision, the
common, and to me the most important, part of their subjects. I chiefly
desired (as I have just said) to question my hearers--operatives,
merchants, and soldiers, as to the ultimate mean