Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the arts of production occasion any embarrassment or difficulty in the distribution of the commodities produced under any tolerable system of security and liberty; for under such a system the principle of distribution here explained necessarily ensures the proper application of all commodities to their destined use, since, however great the quantity produced might be, it never could be any body's interest to throw any of them away, and they must all therefore go to their proper use, through the medium of exchange, either for one another or for labour. Even if improvements were made which should produce effects a hundred or a thousand times greater than is above supposed, they would only confer so much the greater benefits on the human race. It would not follow that a single article would be produced to be thrown away, because it would be no man's interest to do so; nor would it follow that any sort of commodities or manufacture would be produced in any greater quantity than should be necessary to supply the effectual demand; for the principle explained in this chapter prevents that circumstance also from taking place, and causes all commodities to be produced and brought to market in a just proportion to one another. Even if the improvements in the arts and processes of production, therefore, were to be so great as to enable all men to provide for all their wants by half a day's, or half an hour's, or half a minute's labour in the day, they would only enable each to employ so much the more of his time and of his life in study, or in any other sort of duty or enjoyment that he liked best.

III. This principle decrees to the community a part of the benefit of every new increase and new investment of capital.

When an individual saves and accumulates wealth, and invests it in any profitable or productive occupation, it is only, as before mentioned, by producing goods of equal or

better quality, and by selling the latter always at least as low, or rather generally somewhat lower than the same species of goods had previously been sold, that he can in general succeed in obtaining his proper share of business or sales, or that the produce of his new investment can find a market. People will not in general renounce their old connexions, or change their custom from one dealer to another, without some advantage or prospect of advantage inducing them to do so; and when new competitors appear, bringing additions to a market already well stocked with goods, it is always something to the advantage of the public, who are enabled in consequence to purchase what they want on more favourable terms from both the old and new dealers. The advantage gained may and certainly must be but small, and even insensible in every single instance of new increase and new investment; but it must always be something, and must necessarily produce a pressure towards a reduction of price, if it does not produce an actual or observable reduction.

There are a great many trades and employments, it is to be remembered, in the advanced state of society, which it requires a certain amount of capital to enable the traders to engage in, and as wealth increases, greater numbers come to have it in their power to enter into such trades, and many are willing to do so, and accept a lower rate of profit or interest; and sometimes also a lower rate of what is properly to be considered as wages, or remuneration for their labour ; which is all in favour of the community in general, or of the great body of it, consisting of the lower classes of labourers.

But in treating this subject of the distribution of wealth as it takes place under the system of the division of labour, and under the operation of the principle described, and of

the causes depending upon that principle explained in this chapter, it is always to be understood and remembered, that it is only under good government, where there is perfect liberty in the choice of employments, and in the disposal of land, capital, and labour, that all the beneficial effects we have endeavoured to delineate are to be looked for, or that a strictly equitable distribution can be attained; and every infringement of the liberty just mentioned, or any obstruction thrown in the way of the free disposal or employment of land, capital, and labour, or of the free choice of employments in general, is to be regarded as an obstruction thrown in the way of the just distribution of wealth, and consequently as a violation more or less of justice and of the rights, not only of the persons directly restrained, but of all others on whom such restraints or factitious monopolies operate injuriously; and indeed of the community in general, whose prosperity and improvement are always obstructed and prevented from expanding to its full extent by all such restraints; and when such restraints or monopolies are carried to a great excess, the real effect is, that a certain portion of the community, or limited number of individuals, are constituted the legal plunderers and oppressors of the others.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE INSTRUMENT OF DISTRIBUTION,-MONEY.

AFTER the period when any sort of regular and settled government has been once established in a country, when the land has been wholly appropriated, when capital has

accumulated to some considerable extent, and when the system of the division of labour has been fully introduced, money becomes the great instrument of distribution.

After this period it is no longer practicable for every individual, or for the individuals generally of any class or order of men in society, to supply the whole of their wants, either from their immediate possessions of land or capital, or from the immediate produce of their labour; and not only the non-labourers, whose possessions, however large, consist but of one, or at most but a few different objects, or species of vendible property,—as well as the unproductive labourers, under whose hands no sort of produce or vendible property at all arises,—must exchange, the former their land or capital, and the latter their labour, for some convenient and generally useful or acceptable commodity, as money, in order to obtain, by a second exchange, any other article they require; but even the productive labourers themselves, as they produce, or more commonly but assist in producing only one, or at most but a few different articles or species of commodities, are equally subject to the same necessity, and must all exchange their labour or its produce, in the first instance for money, before they can obtain by a second exchange any of those other commodities which every man constantly requires besides the one or the few articles which he himself produces.

The baker and the brewer, the weaver and the shoemaker, must apply to other people for every thing they want, except bread and beer, and cloth and shoes, and to one another when they want any of these necessaries, except the single article which they respectively produce. But if they possessed nothing else to offer in exchange but those articles themselves, it would be always very difficult and often impossible for them to treat or bargain with one another, or to procure either these or any others of the various articles which all men constantly require. "The butcher,"

N

to use the words of Dr Smith, “has more meat in his shop than he can himself consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it; but they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. No exchange can in this case be made between them. He cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another. In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry."

Now this commodity whatever it may be, or whatever other character may belong to it, is money. Every man thenceforward lives by exchanging the surplus part of his property, or of the produce of his industry, for such parts of the property or of the labour of other men, or of the produce of their labour, as he requires; and thus it is that money becomes the great instrument of the distribution of wealth.

The shoemaker uses perhaps one pair of shoes, while he makes fifty. The remaining forty-nine pairs he is therefore at liberty to appropriate to the supply of his other wants; and he endeavours to dispose of them for money, which he knows that every body will be willing to accept for the produce of their labour, and for any commodity he may desire to purchase. It would be in vain for him, he is well aware, to take his shoes to the tanner and the leather-merchant,

* Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. 4.

« AnteriorContinuar »