Book II: Chapter 3 - Page 2

soever,
produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be
procured. The protection, security, and defence, of the commonwealth, the
effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection,
security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be
ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most
frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all
kinds ; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc.
The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the
very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and
that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards
purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the
actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of
all of them perishes in the very instant of its production.

Both productive and unproductive labourers, and those who do not labour at
all, are all equally maintained by the annual produce of the land and labour
of the country. This produce, how great soever, can never be infinite, but
must have certain limits. According, therefore, as a smaller or greater
proportion of it is in any one year employed in maintaining unproductive
hands, the more in the one case, and the less in the other, will remain for
the productive, and the next year's produce will be greater or smaller
accordingly ; the whole annual produce, if we except the spontaneous
productions of the earth, being the effect of productive labour.

Though the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country is
no doubt ultimately destined for supplying the consumption of its
inhabitants, and for procuring a revenue to them; yet when it first comes
either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, it
naturally divides itself into two parts. One of them, and frequently the
largest, is, in the first place, destined for replacing a capital, or for
renewing the provisions, materials, and finished work, which had been
withdrawn from a capital ; the other for constituting a revenue either to
the owner of this capital, as the profit of his stock, or to some other
person, as the rent of his land. Thus, of the produce of land, one part
replaces the capital of the farmer ; the other pays his profit and the rent
of the landlord ; and thus constitutes a revenue both to the owner of this
capital, as the profits of his stock, and to some other person as the rent
of his land. Of the produce of a great manufactory, in the same manner, one
part, and that always the largest, replaces the capital of the undertaker of
the work ; the other pays his profit, and thus