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
In the most improved societies, however, there are always a few
commodities of which the price resolves itself into two parts only: the
wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and a still smaller number, in
which it consists altogether in the wages of labour. In the price of
sea-fish, for example, one part pays the labour of the fisherman, and the
other the profits of the capital employed in the fishery. Rent very seldom
makes any part of it, though it does sometimes, as I shall shew hereafter.
It is otherwise, at least through the greater part of Europe, in river
fisheries. A salmon fishery pays a rent; and rent, though it cannot well
be called the rent of land, makes a part of the price of a salmon, as well
as wares and profit. In some parts of Scotland, a few poor people make a
trade of gathering, along the sea-shore, those little variegated stones
commonly known by the name of Scotch pebbles. The price which is paid to
them by the stone-cutter, is altogether the wages of their labour; neither
rent nor profit makes any part of it.
But the whole price of any commodity must still finally resolve itself
into some one or other or all of those three parts; as whatever part of it
remains after paying the rent of the land, and the price of the whole
labour employed in raising, manufacturing, and bringing it to market, must
necessarily be profit to somebody.
As the price or exchangeable value of every particular commodity, taken
separately, resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three
parts; so that of all the commodities which compose the whole annual
produce of the labour of every country, taken complexly, must resolve
itself into the same three parts, and be parcelled out among different
inhabitants of the country, either as the wages of their labour, the
profits of their stock, or the rent of their land. The whole of what is
annually either collected or produced by the labour of every society, or,
what comes to the same thing, the whole price of it, is in this manner
originally distributed among some of its different members. Wages, profit,
and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all
exchangeable value. All other revenue is ultimately derived from some one
or other of these.
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