The superfluity of industry must, therefore, form the principal part of exportation, and if the nation fully stocked be surrounded by others which abound in grain and articles of subsistence, where the inhabitants have a taste for elegance, and are eager of acquiring the manufactures and improvements of their industrious neighbours; it is certain, that a trade with such nations will very considerably increase the inhabitants of the other, though fully stocked, relatively to the production of their own soil; and the additional numbers will only increase that of manufacturers, not of husbandmen. This is the case with Holland, and with many large trading cities which are free and have but a small territory. If, on the contrary, the nation fully stocked be in the neighbourhood of others who take the same spirit as itself, this supply of food will become in time more difficult to be had, in proportion as their neighbours come to supply their own wants. They must therefore seek for it at a greater distance, and as soon as the expence of procuring it comes to exceed the value of the labour of the free hands employed in producing the equivalent, their work will cease to be exported, and the number of inhabitants will be diminished to the proportion of the remaining food. I do not say that trade will cease on this account; by no means. Trade may still go on, and even be more considerable than before; but it will be a trade which never can increase inhabitants, because for this purpose there must be subsistence. It may have however numberless and great advantages: it may greatly advance the wealth of the state, and this will purchase even power and strength. A trading nation may live in profound peace at home, and send war and confusion among her enemies, without even employing her own subjects. Thus trade without increasing the inhabitants of a country can greatly add to its force, by arming those hands which she has not fed, and employing them for her service. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. XIX. _Is the Introduction of Machines into Manufactures prejudicial to the Interest of a State, or hurtful to Population?_ This I find has been made a question in modern times. The antients held in great veneration the inventors of the saw, of the lathe, of the wimble, of the potters wheel; but some moderns find an abuse in bringing mechanism to perfection: (see _Les Interets de la France mal entendus_, p. 272. 313.) the great Montesquieu finds fault with water mills, though I do not find that he has made any objection against the use of the plow. Did people understand one another, it would be impossible that such points could suffer a dispute among men of sense; but the circumstances referred to, or presupposed, which authors almost always keep in their eye, though they seldom express them, render the most evident truths susceptible of opposition.