An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
General
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the Roman
market from Latium, or the ancient territory of Rome, and must have
discouraged its cultivation in that country.
In an open country, too, of which the principal produce is corn, a
well-inclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn
field in its neighbourhood. It is convenient for the maintenance of the
cattle employed in the cultivation of the corn; and its high rent is, in
this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce, as
from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is
likely to fall, if ever the neighbouring lands are completely inclosed.
The present high rent of inclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the
scarcity of inclosure, and will probably last no longer than that
scarcity. The advantage of inclosure is greater for pasture than for
corn. It saves the labour of guarding the cattle, which feed better,
too, when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his
dog.
But where these is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit
of corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people,
must naturally regulate upon the land which is fit for producing it, the
rent and profit of pasture.
The use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and
the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal
quantity of land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural
grass, should somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority
which, in an improved country, the price of butcher's meat naturally has
over that of bread. It seems accordingly to have done so, and there is
some reason for believing that, at least in the London market, the price
of butcher's meat, in proportion to the price of bread, is a good deal
lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last
century.
In the Appendix to the life of Prince Henry, Doctor Birch has given us
an account of the prices of butcher's meat as commonly paid by that
prince. It is there said, that the four quarters of an ox, weighing six
hundred pounds, usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or
thereabouts; that is thirty-one shillings and eight-pence per hundred
pounds weight. Prince Henry died on the 6th of November 1612, in the
nineteenth year of his age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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