multiplication of the human species—has intrinsically a strong claim to preeminence over every other kind of industry.
But that it has a title to anything like exclusive predilection in any country ought to be admitted with great caution; that it is even more productive than every other branch of industry requires more evidence than has yet been given in support of the position. That its real interests, precious and important as, without any help of exaggeration, they truly are, will be advanced, rather than injured, "by the due encouragement of manufactures, may, it is believed, be satisfactorily demonstrated. And it is also believed that the expediency of such encouragement, in a general view, may be shown to be recommended by the most cogent and persuasive motives of national policy.
It has been maintained that agriculture is not only the most productive, but the only productive species of industry. The reality of this suggestion, in either respect, has, however, not been verified by any accurate detail of facts and calculations; and the general arguments which are adduced to prove it are rather subtle and paradoxical than solid or convincing.
Those which maintain its exclusive productiveness are to this effect:
Labor bestowed upon the cultivation of land produces enough not only to replace all the necessary expenses incurred in the business and to maintain the persons who are employed in it, but to afford, together with the ordinary profit on the stock or capital of the farmer, a net surplus or rent for the proprietor or landlord of the soil. But the labor of artificers does nothing more than replace the stock which employs them (or which furnishes materials, tools, and wages) and yield the ordinary profit upon the stock. It yields nothing equivalent to the rent of land' neither does it add anything to the total value of the whole annual produce of the land and labor of the country. The additional value given to those parts of the produce of land, which are wrought into manufactures is counterbalanced by the value of those other parts of that produce which are consumed by the manufacturers. It can, therefore, only be by saving or parsimony, not by the positive productiveness of their labor, that the classes of artificers can, in any degree, augment the revenue of the society.
To this it has been answered:
1. "That, inasmuch as it is acknowledged that manufacturing labor reproduces a value equal to that which is expended or consumed in carrying it on, and continues in existence the original stock or capital employed, it ought, on that account alone, to escape being considered as wholly unproductive. That, though it should be admitted as alleged, that the consumption of the produce of the soil by the classes of artificers or manufacturers is exactly equal to the value added by their labor to the materials upon which it is exerted, yet it would not thence follow that it added nothing to the revenue of the society or to the aggregate value of the annual produce of its land and labor. If the consumption for any given period amounted to a given sum and the increased value of the produce manufactured in the same period to a like sum, the total amount of the consumption and production during that period would be equal to the two sums, and consequently double the value of the
