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
This rise, too, in the nominal or money price of all those different sorts
of rude produce, has been the effect, not of any degradation in the value
of silver, but of a rise in their real price. They have become worth, not
only a greater quantity of silver, but a greater quantity of labour and
subsistence than before. As it costs a greater quantity of labour and
subsistence to bring them to market, so, when they are brought thither
they represent, or are equivalent to a greater quantity.
Third Sort.—The third and last sort of rude produce, of which the
price naturally rises in the progress of improvement, is that in which the
efficacy of human industry, in augmenting the quantity, is either limited
or uncertain. Though the real price of this sort of rude produce,
therefore, naturally tends to rise in the progress of improvement, yet,
according as different accidents happen to render the efforts of human
industry more or less successful in augmenting the quantity, it may happen
sometimes even to fall, sometimes to continue the same, in very different
periods of improvement, and sometimes to rise more or less in the same
period.
There are some sorts of rude produce which nature has rendered a kind of
appendages to other sorts; so that the quantity of the one which any
country can afford, is necessarily limited by that of the other. The
quantity of wool or of raw hides, for example, which any country can
afford, is necessarily limited by the number of great and small cattle
that are kept in it. The state of its improvement, and the nature of its
agriculture, again necessarily determine this number.
The same causes which, in the progress of improvement, gradually raise the
price of butcher’s meat, should have the same effect, it may be thought,
upon the prices of wool and raw hides, and raise them, too, nearly in the
same proportion. It probably would be so, if, in the rude beginnings of
improvement, the market for the latter commodities was confined within as
narrow bounds as that for the former. But the extent of their respective
markets is commonly extremely different.
The market for butcher’s meat is almost everywhere confined to the country
which produces it. Ireland, and some part of British America, indeed,
carry on a considerable trade in salt provisions; but they are, I believe,
the only countries in the commercial world which do so, or which export to
other countries any considerable part of their butcher’s meat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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