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
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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