Book II: Chapter 5 - Page 2

immediate
occasions required. If there was no such trade as a butcher, for example,
every man would be obliged to purchase a whole ox or a whole sheep at a
time. This would generally be inconvenient to the rich, and much more so to
the poor. If a poor workman was obliged to purchase a month's or six months'
provisions at a time, a great part of the stock which he employs as a
capital in the instruments of his trade, or in the furniture of his shop,
and which yields him a revenue, he would be forced to place in that part of
his stock which is reserved for immediate consumption, and which yields him
no revenue. Nothing can be more convenient for such a person than to be able
to purchase his subsistence from day to day, or even from hour to hour, as
he wants it. He is thereby enabled to employ almost his whole stock as a
capital. He is thus enabled to furnish work to a greater value; and the
profit which he makes by it in this way much more than compensates the
additional price which the profit of the retailer imposes upon the goods.
The prejudices of some political writers against shopkeepers and tradesmen
are altogether without foundation. So far is it from being necessary either
to tax them, or to restrict their numbers, that they can never be multiplied
so as to hurt the public, though they may so as to hurt one another. The
quantity of grocery goods, for example, which can be sold in a particular
town, is limited by the demand of that town and its neighbourhood. The
capital, therefore, which can be employed in the grocery trade, cannot
exceed what is sufficient to purchase that quantity. If this capital is
divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make
both of them sell cheaper than if it were in the hands of one only ; and if
it were divided among twenty, their competition would be just so much the
greater, and the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the
price, just so much the less. Their competition might, perhaps, ruin some of
themselves; but to take care of this, is the business of the parties
concerned, and it may safely be trusted to their discretion. It can never
hurt either the consumer or the producer ; on the contrary, it must tend to
make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer, than if the whole trade
was monopolized by one or two persons. Some of them, perhaps, may sometimes
decoy a weak customer to buy what he has no occasion for. This evil,
however, is of too little importance to deserve the public attention, nor
would it necessarily be prevented by restricting their numbers. It is not
the multitude of alehouses, to give the must suspicious example, that
occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but
that disposition, arising