ductiveness or
unproductiveness of different sorts of labour. The French economists
consider all labour employed in manufactures as unproductive. Comparing
it with the labour employed upon land, I should be perfectly disposed
to agree with them, but not exactly for the reasons which they give.
They say that labour employed upon land is productive because the
produce, over and above completely paying the labourer and the farmer,
affords a clear rent to the landlord, and that the labour employed upon
a piece of lace is unproductive because it merely replaces the
provisions that the workman had consumed, and the stock of his
employer, without affording any clear rent whatever. But supposing the
value of the wrought lace to be such as that, besides paying in the
most complete manner the workman and his employer, it could afford a
clear rent to a third person, it appears to me that, in comparison with
the labour employed upon land, it would be still as unproductive as
ever. Though, according to the reasoning used by the French economists,
the man employed in the manufacture of lace would, in this case, seem
to be a productive labourer. Yet according to their definition of the
wealth of a state, he ought not to be considered in that light. He will
have added nothing to the gross produce of the land: he has consumed a
portion of this gross produce, and has left a bit of lace in return;
and though he may sell this bit of lace for three times the quantity of
provisions that he consumed whilst he was making it, and thus be a very
productive labourer with regard to himself, yet he cannot be considered
as having added by his labour to any essential part of the riches of
the state. The clear rent, therefore, that a certain produce can
afford, after paying the expenses of procuring it, does not appear to
be the sole criterion, by which to judge of the productiveness or
unproductiveness to a state of any particular species of labour.

Suppose that two hundred thousand men, who are now employed in
producing manufactures that only tend to gratify the vanity of a few
rich people, were to be employed upon some barren and uncultivated
lands, and to produce only half the quantity of food that they
themselves consumed; they would be still more productive labourers with
regard to the state than they were before, though their labour, so far
from affording a rent to a third person, would but half replace the
provisions used in obtaining the pro