Book III: Chapter 1 - Page 2

absurd speculations that have been
propagated concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that
either the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that
with the country which maintains it.

As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveniency and luxury,
so the industry which procures the former, must necessarily be prior to that
which ministers to the latter. The cultivation and improvement of the
country, therefore, which affords subsistence, must, necessarily, be prior
to the increase of the town, which furnishes only the means of conveniency
and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the country only, or what is over
and above the maintenance of the cultivators, that constitutes the
subsistence of the town, which can therefore increase only with the increase
of the surplus produce. The town, indeed, may not always derive its whole
subsistence from the country in its neighbourhood, or even from the
territory to which it belongs, but from very distant countries; and this,
though it forms no exception from the general rule, has occasioned
considerable variations in the progress of opulence in different ages and
nations.

That order of things which necessity imposes, in general, though not in
every particular country, is in every particular country promoted by the
natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted those
natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the
improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated
could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was
completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal profits,
most men will choose to employ their capitals, rather in the improvement and
cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. The
man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command
; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader,
who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves,
but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving
great credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and
situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the
landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land,
seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The
beauty of the country, besides, the pleasure of a country life, the
tranquillity of mind which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human
laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have
charms that, more or less, attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground
was the