to the rapidity of this
increase. The demand for labour which such increase would occasion, by
creating a competition in the market, must necessarily raise the value
of labour, and, till the additional number of hands required were
reared, the increased funds would be distributed to the same number of
persons as before the increase, and therefore every labourer would live
comparatively at his ease. But perhaps Dr Adam Smith errs in
representing every increase of the revenue or stock of a society as an
increase of these funds. Such surplus stock or revenue will, indeed,
always be considered by the individual possessing it as an additional
fund from which he may maintain more labour: but it will not be a real
and effectual fund for the maintenance of an additional number of
labourers, unless the whole, or at least a great part of this increase
of the stock or revenue of the society, be convertible into a
proportional quantity of provisions; and it will not be so convertible
where the increase has arisen merely from the produce of labour, and
not from the produce of land. A distinction will in this case occur,
between the number of hands which the stock of the society could
employ, and the number which its territory can maintain.

To explain myself by an instance. Dr Adam Smith defines the wealth of a
nation to consist. In the annual produce of its land and labour. This
definition evidently includes manufactured produce, as well as the
produce of the land. Now supposing a nation for a course of years was
to add what it saved from its yearly revenue to its manufacturing
capital solely, and not to its capital employed upon land, it is
evident that it might grow richer according to the above definition,
without a power of supporting a greater number of labourers, and,
therefore, without an increase in the real funds for the maintenance of
labour. There would, notwithstanding, be a demand for labour from the
power which each manufacturer would possess, or at least think he
possessed, of extending his old stock in trade or of setting up fresh
works. This demand would of course raise the price of labour, but if
the yearly stock of provisions in the country was not increasing, this
rise would soon turn out to be merely nominal, as the price of
provisions must necessarily rise with it. The demand for manufacturing
labourers might, indeed, entice many from agriculture and thus tend to
diminish the annual produce of the land, but we