3. Encreased Wealth Among The Various Classes Of The Community, May Be
Viewed In The Same Light As Capital; It Flows From Increased Trade, And It
Produces A Still Further Increase Of Trade.
The views, and desires, and
habits of mankind, are like their knowledge, they are and must be
progressive:
And if accompanied, as they generally are, by increased means,
they must give birth to increased industry and skill, and their necessary
consequences, increased trade and wealth.
Had the views, desires, and habits of mankind, and especially of the
inhabitants of Europe and the United States, continued as they were fifty
years ago, it is absolutely impossible that one half of the goods
manufactured in Great Britain could have been disposed of; and unless these
additional and enlarged views, desires, and habits, had been accompanied
with commensurate means of gratifying them, our manufactures and commerce
could not have advanced as they have done. Minutely and universally divided
as human labour is, no one country can render its industry and skill
additionally productive, without, at the same time, the industry and skill
of other countries also advance. No one nation can acquire additional
wealth, unless additional wealth is also acquired in other nations. Before
an additional quantity of commodities can be sold, additional means to
purchase them must be obtained; or, in other words, increased commerce,
supposes increased wealth, not only in that country in which commerce is
increased, but also in that where the buyers and consumers live.
4. Since the termination of the American war, Britain has been placed in
circumstances favourable to her commerce: the human mind cannot long be
depressed; there is an elasticity about it which prevents this. Perhaps it
is rather disposed to rebound, in proportion to the degree and time of its
restraint. It is certain, however, that the exhaustion produced by the
American war speedily gave place to wonderful activity in our manufactures
and commerce; and that, at the commencement of the first French
revolutionary war, they had both taken wonderful and rapid strides. The
circumstances, indeed, of such a country as Britain, and such a people as
the British, must be essentially changed, - changed to a degree, and in a
manner, which we can hardly suppose to be brought about by any natural
causes, - before its real wealth can be annihilated, or even greatly or
permanently diminished. The climate and the soil, and all the improvements
and ameliorations which agriculture has produced on the soil, must remain:
the knowledge and skill, and real capital of the inhabitants, are beyond
the reach of any destroying cause: interest must always operate and apply
this knowledge and skill, unless we can suppose, what seems as unlikely to
happen as the change of our climate and soil, the annihilation of our
knowledge and skill, or that interest should cease to be the stimulating
cause of industry; unless we can suppose that political and civil freedom
should be rooted out, and individual property no longer secure.
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