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
The difference between the money price of labour in China and in Europe,
is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence;
because the real recompence of labour is higher in Europe than in China,
the greater part of Europe being in an improving state, while China
seems to be standing still. The money price of labour is lower in
Scotland than in England, because the real recompence of labour is much
lower: Scotland, though advancing to greater wealth, advances much more
slowly than England. The frequency of emigration from Scotland, and the
rarity of it from England, sufficiently prove that the demand for labour
is very different in the two countries. The proportion between the real
recompence of labour in different countries, it must be remembered, is
naturally regulated, not by their actual wealth or poverty, but by their
advancing, stationary, or declining condition.
Gold and silver, as they are naturally of the greatest value among the
richest, so they are naturally of the least value among the poorest
nations. Among savages, the poorest of all nations, they are scarce of
any value.
In great towns, corn is always dearer than in remote parts of the
country. This, however, is the effect, not of the real cheapness of
silver, but of the real dearness of corn. It does not cost less labour
to bring silver to the great town than to the remote parts of the
country; but it costs a great deal more to bring corn.
In some very rich and commercial countries, such as Holland and the
territory of Genoa, corn is dear for the same reason that it is dear in
great towns. They do not produce enough to maintain their inhabitants.
They are rich in the industry and skill of their artificers and
manufacturers, in every sort of machinery which can facilitate and
abridge labour; in shipping, and in all the other instruments and means
of carriage and commerce: but they are poor in corn, which, as it must
be brought to them from distant countries, must, by an addition to its
price, pay for the carriage from these countries. It does not cost less
labour to bring silver to Amsterdam than to Dantzic; but it costs a
great deal more to bring corn. The real cast of silver must be nearly
the same in both places; but that of corn must be very different.
Diminish the real opulence either of Holland or of the territory of
Genoa, while the number of their inhabitants remains the same; diminish
their power of supplying themselves from distant countries; and the
price of corn, instead of sinking with that diminution in the quantity
of their silver, which must necessarily accompany this declension,
either as its cause or as its effect, will rise to the price of a
famine. When we are in want of necessaries, we must part with all
superfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opulence and
prosperity, so it sinks in times of poverty and distress. It is
otherwise with necessaries. Their real price, the quantity of labour
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