An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
other, by affording a ready market for its produce. To diminish the number
of those who are capable of paying it, is surely a most unpromising
expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn. It is like the policy
which would promote agriculture, by discouraging manufactures.
The rent and profit of those productions, therefore, which require either
a greater original expense of improvement in order to fit the land for
them, or a greater annual expense of cultivation, though often much
superior to those of corn and pasture, yet when they do no more than
compensate such extraordinary expense, are in reality regulated by the
rent and profit of those common crops.
It sometimes happens, indeed, that the quantity of land which can be
fitted for some particular produce, is too small to supply the effectual
demand. The whole produce can be disposed of to those who are willing to
give somewhat more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages,
and profit, necessary for raising and bringing it to market, according to
their natural rates, or according to the rates at which they are paid in
the greater part of other cultivated land. The surplus part of the price
which remains after defraying the whole expense of improvement and
cultivation, may commonly, in this case, and in this case only, bear no
regular proportion to the like surplus in corn or pasture, but may exceed
it in almost any degree; and the greater part of this excess naturally
goes to the rent of the landlord.
The usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit
of wine, and those of corn and pasture, must be understood to take place
only with regard to those vineyards which produce nothing but good common
wine, such as can be raised almost anywhere, upon any light, gravelly, or
sandy soil, and which has nothing to recommend it but its strength and
wholesomeness. It is with such vineyards only, that the common land of the
country can be brought into competition; for with those of a peculiar
quality it is evident that it cannot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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