Thus all nations share in the prosperity of each, and the portion of each is proportioned to its labour, manufactures, and commerce.

In vain do nations exert, fatigue, and exhaust themselves in military, diplomatic, and commercial combinations, to obtain, by cunning or force, a larger or smaller share of the general wealth. Their efforts are abortive; the distribution of wealth follows the ratio of labour, manufactures, and commerce; and as these obey neither force nor cunning, and only yield to equivalents, blind ambition will, necessarily, at last be obliged to submit to their peaceable rule.

If the combinations of force are delusive and deceitful, and cannot be substituted for the toilsome and painful efforts of labour, manufactures, and commerce, those of monopoly are neither wiser nor more beneficial. The charges of a monopoly absorb its profits; and monopolizing nations are actually impoverishing themselves, whenever they want to turn the prosperity of other nations to their own particular advantage.*

In short, to prevent wealth from flowing into the ehannels which labour, manufactures, and commerce, have dug for it, is impossible; and if we deplore the blindness of the times when military force fancied it could extract treasures from the misery, indigence,

* As the French begin to perceive the inutility of the devices of force to obtain wealth, it is not unreasonable to hope, that the English will also, at length, perceive the inutility of schemes of monopoly. England's aim at monopolizing the trade with colonial produce, though it cannot excuse the ambitious attempts of France, must yet be acknowledged as one of their causes.-T.

and calamities of the world; the moment is not far distant, when monarchs will acknowledge that there are no safe, legitimate, and honourable means to grow rich but through labour, manufactures, and com

merce.

Let us, therefore, conclude, that wealth, in all ages and under all governments, exercised an absolute power over individuals, nations, and empires; and that, according as it was attempted by force, conquest, and devastation, or by labour, and economy, its effects have been fatal or salutary to the human race. How greatly then have they erred, who thought they could apply to modern wealth the results and effects of the wealth of the nations of antiquity and the middle age! One is no more to be compared to the other, than the offensive and defensive weapons of the ancients can be compared with those of the moderns, or their tactics with ours. Their wealth had its source in the impoverishment of nine-tenths of the people: modern wealth is derived from the riches of the whole population. The former enervated, effeminated, and depraved the rich, perverted and degraded the poor, and rendered them strangers to the community: the latter furnishes the rich with the means of knowledge and instruction, and enables them to direct labour, industry and commerce: it insures to the less fortunate classes, and even to those who are the most needy, a portion of the general wealth, which portion is always proportioned to the extent of that wealth. Thus the interest of the poor is never separated from the interest of the rich; they lend each other a mutual support.

The wealth of the ancients kept all nations in a permanent state of hostility, devastation, and servitude; and, consequently, held out a permanent obstacle to the general civilization and improvement of mankind. Modern wealth connects all nations; it binds them by common interests, causes them to forward the same ends by the sentiment of their private interest, and associates them, in some degree, to the progress of the civilization and amelioration of the human race.

One is, therefore, as desirable as the other is odious; and one ought to be as much extolled, as the other has been justly reprobated by all enlightened writers.

Those nations which ambition is still propelling towards domination, as well as those who possess a sentiment of real grandeur, and know that it consists in a noble independence, are equally interested in studying the causes of modern wealth, and in discovering and improving the methods by which it may be increased and rendered useful in its application : they ought, therefore, to patronize the progress of political economy by all the means in their power.

BOOK I.

OF THE VARIOUS SYSTEMS CONCERNING THE SOURCES OF WEALTH.

THE most ancient system concerning the sources of Wealth derives wealth from foreign commerce; that is to say, from that commerce in which one nation sells more to other nations than it purchases, and is paid for the surplus of its sales over its purchases in precious metals. This doctrine was adopted without any limitation by the authors who first wrote upon Political Economy in England, Italy, and France, during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and up to the middle of the eighteenth century; and although it has been strenuously combated by later writers, it has yet prevailed and still prevails in the opinion of individuals, nations, and governments: all consider commerce as the true way to grow rich; and by commerce they all understand the exchange of commodities with foreign nations. An opinion so general, so ancient, so lasting, can neither be ascribed to blind prepossession, nor to vain credulity or foolish obstinacy. Time, which has destroyed so many errors, superstitions, and inveterate habits, almost coëval with the social state, would not have respected

a doctrine contrary to private and public interest. What then has so long protected this doctrine against the outrages of time, the progress of knowledge, and the charm of innovations? Is it not its resting on the authority of facts, on the experience of ages, on every thing that is certain and evident among men ? The conjecture is not improbable.

If we ascend ever so high in the history of Wealth, we find that wealth always followed the direction of foreign commerce, and remained faithful to its banners and ships. During eight hundred years, the commerce of the Phoenicians fixed wealth in the ports of Sidon and Tyre. In these celebrated cities it long bade defiance to the avarice of the greatest conquerors of the East; and when the conquest and ruin of these industrious cities forced wealth to seek for a fresh asylum, it went over to the nations that inherited their commerce.

The Greek and Iönian cities, Alexandria, Marseilles, and Carthage, which gathered the wrecks of the trade of Sidon and Tyre, were not less celebrated for their wealth. Carthage, in particular, rose to the highest degree of splendour and power, struggled successfully for a length of time against the fortune of the Romans, and delayed for more than a century the subjection of the other nations.

When the Genius of Rome grounded on the ruins of Carthage the conquest of the world, the sources of wealth were dried up in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa; because these countries had no longer any commercial communication.

The treasures which had been accumulated at Rome