be generally
observed, that processes for abridging labour, though they may enable a
farmer to bring a certain quantity of grain cheaper to market, tend
rather to diminish than increase the whole produce; and in agriculture,
therefore, may, in some respects, be considered rather as private than
public advantages.

An immense capital could not be employed in China in preparing
manufactures for foreign trade without taking off so many labourers
from agriculture as to alter this state of things, and in some degree
to diminish the produce of the country. The demand for manufacturing
labourers would naturally raise the price of labour, but as the
quantity of subsistence would not be increased, the price of provisions
would keep pace with it, or even more than keep pace with it if the
quantity of provisions were really decreasing. The country would be
evidently advancing in wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual
produce of its land and labour would be annually augmented, yet the
real funds for the maintenance of labour would be stationary, or even
declining, and, consequently, the increasing wealth of the nation would
rather tend to depress than to raise the condition of the poor. With
regard to the command over the necessaries and comforts of life, they
would be in the same or rather worse state than before; and a great
part of them would have exchanged the healthy labours of agriculture
for the unhealthy occupations of manufacturing industry.

The argument, perhaps, appears clearer when applied to China, because
it is generally allowed that the wealth of China has been long
stationary. With regard to any other country it might be always a
matter of dispute at which of the two periods, compared, wealth was
increasing the fastest, as it is upon the rapidity of the increase of
wealth at any particular period that Dr Adam Smith says the condition
of the poor depends. It is evident, however, that two nations might
increase exactly with the same rapidity in the exchangeable value of
the annual produce of their land and labour, yet if one had applied
itself chiefly to agriculture, and the other chiefly to commerce, the
funds for the maintenance of labour, and consequently the effect of the
increase of wealth in each nation, would be extremely different. In
that which had applied itself chiefly to agriculture, the poor would
live in great plenty, and population would rapidly increase. In that
which had applied itself chief