of other nations for the exportation of their surplus produce; this dependence must have discouraged the increase of this surplus produce. Manufactures require a more extensive market than the most important parts of the rude produce of land. A shoemaker, for instance, can supply fifty families with the produce of his own labour; but a person employed in agriculture cannot supply more than four. In Egypt and Hindostan the confinement of the market was, in some measure, compensated by the convenience of inland navigation, though a difference in the extent of the two countries made a difference in their respective exports. The small extent of ancient Egypt rendered the home market too narrow to support a great variety of manufactures, and accordingly Egypt was always most distinguished for its great exportation of grain. The great extent of Hindostan has produced a very different condition of the export trade, pp. 267-8.

The sovereigns of China, Egypt, and Hindostan, have derived the most considerable part of their revenue from some sort of land tax, which consisted in a certain proportion of the produce of the land. It was natural, therefore, that the sovereigns should be attentive to the interests of agriculture. The policy of the ancient republics of Greece, and that of Rome, seems rather to have discouraged manufactures, than to have given any direct encouragement to agriculture. The employments of artificers and manufacturers were considered as hurtful to the strength and agility of the human body, and such as were fit only for slaves, who, consequently, were the only persons employed in them, for even in those states (such as Athens and Rome) in which free citizens were not prohibited from exercising such occupations, they were in effect excluded by the competition of the slaves of the rich, the power of the master rendering it dangerous, and the degradation of the slave rendering

it disreputable for the poor freeman to employ himself in any such manner. Slaves, however, are very seldom inventive, suggestions for improvement being often regarded by masters as suggestions of laziness, and worthy of punishment rather than of reward.1 Improvements

in mechanics have been the discoveries of freemen. In manufactures carried on by slaves, more labour must be employed than in those carried on by freemen. The work of the former must therefore be dearer than that of the latter. The Hungarian mines, wrought by freemen, are more profitable than those of Turkey, in the same neighbourhood, wrought by slaves. The finer sorts of manufactures in the times of the Greeks and Romans were at a very high price. Silk sold for its weight in gold. Some cloths, dyed in a particular manner, cost 33l. 68. 8d. the pound weight. This high price was probably owing to the dye. The cloths, however, must have been much dearer than at present, or so expensive a dye would not have been bestowed on them, pp. 268-71.

The greatest and most important branch of the commerce of every nation is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country: the former draw from the country rude produce, and pay for this rude produce a part of it that is manufactured. The dearer the latter the cheaper the former; and whatever tends to raise the price of manufactured produce tends to lower that of the rude produce of the land, and thereby to discourage agriculture, p. 271.

1 Probably the mechanical arts would have advanced among the ancients as rapidly as the fine arts did, but for the degradation of labour induced by the system of slavery. Similar results ensued in modern times when the regime of slavery prevailed in the Southern States of the Union. Northerners used to assert (probably with more point than truth) that the only machine ever invented in the South had been a whipping machine.

Those systems, therefore, which, in order to promote agriculture, impose restraints on manufactures and foreign trade, indirectly discourage that very species of industry which they mean to promote. It is thus that every system which endeavours, by extraordinary encouragements or restraints, to change the direction of the capital of a society, is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote, retarding, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness, pp. 271-2.

way.

All systems of preference or restraint being taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man is left at liberty to lawfully pursue his own interest in his own The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty to which he cannot be equal, the duty of superintending the industry of private people. According to this system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to, (1) the duty of protecting the society from the violence of other independent societies; (2) the duty of protecting every member of the society from the oppression of every other member of it; and, (3) the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and institutions, which it cannot be the interest of individuals to erect and maintain. These duties suppose a certain expense; and this expense requires a certain revenue to support it. In the following book will be explained: (1) What are the necessary expenses of the sovereign, or commonwealth; and which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society, and which of them by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of the society; (2) what are the different methods in which the whole scciety may be made to contribute towards the expenses incumbent on the whole society; and, (3) what are the reasons and

causes which have induced governments to contract debts, pp. 272-23.1

For a severe and in many respects just attack on the evils of the commercial system, see Preface to Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, a book all the more valuable for the illustration of our author, as having been published only four years after the Wealth of Nations.

N.B.-In understanding the III. and IV. books of our author, much assistance may be derived from Millar, On Distinctions of Rank, published in 1771. The execution of the work is said to have been suggested to its author by Adam Smith, and it abounds in interesting and acute observations. The 1st and 4th chapters appear almost parallel to the 3rd book of the Wealth of Nations, whilst many portion s of Sir H. Maine's Ancient Law, and Village Communities, are anticipated in the 2nd and 3rd.

BOOK V.

OF THE REVENUE OF THE SOVEREIGN, OR COMMONWEALTH.

CHAPTER I.

Of the Expenses of the Sovereign, or Commonwealth.

PART I.

Of the Expense of Defence.

THE first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence of independent societies, can be performed only by military force, the expense of which is different in the different states of society. Among nations of hunters, every man is a warrior as well as a hunter. His society is at no expense to prepare him for the field, or to maintain him while he is in it, p. 274.

Among nations of shepherds, every man easily and necessarily becomes a soldier, his common pastimes being the images of war, and his ordinary avocations perfectly compatible with all the duties of military service. Whilst an army of hunters can seldom exceed two or three hundred men, an army of shepherds may amount to two or three hundred thousand, for however remote may be the expedition on which he is bound, the herdsman finds it easy to transport with him the whole stock from which he derives his subsistence.'

1 Hence the pastoral army can dispense with a base of operations, and is in no anxiety about its communications.