sional, depending on seasons, and liable to various and long intermissions, while that occupied in many manufactures is constant and regular, extending through the year, embracing in some instances night as well as day. It is also probable that there are among the cultivators of land more examples of remissness than among artificers. The farmer, from the peculiar fertility of his land or some other favorable circumstance, may frequently obtain a livelihood even with a considerable degree of carelessness in the mode of cultivation, but the artisan can with difficulty effect the same object without exerting himself pretty equally with all those who are engaged in the same pursuit. And if it may likewise be assumed as a fact that manufactures open a wider field to exertions of ingenuity than agriculture, it would not be a strained conjecture that the labor employed in the former, being at once more constant, more uniform, and more ingenious than that which is employed in the latter, will be found at the same time more productive.
But it is not meant to lay stress on observations of this nature; they ought only to serve as a counterbalance to those of a similar complexion. Circumstances so vague and general, as well as so abstract, can afford little instruction in a matter of this kind.
Another, and that which seems to be the principal argument offered for the superior productiveness of agricultural labor turns upon the allegation that labor employed on manufactures yields nothing equivalent to the rent of land, or to that net surplus, as it is called, which accrues to the proprietor of the soil.
But this distinction, important as it has been deemed, appears rather verbal than substantial.
It is easily discernible that what, in the first instance, is divided into two parts, under the denominations of the ordinary profit of the stock of the farmer and rent to the landlord, is, in the second instance, united under the general appellation of the ordinary profit on the stock of the undertaker; and that this formal or verbal distribution constitutes the whole difference in the two cases. It seems to have been overlooked that the land is itself a stock or capital, advanced or lent by its owner to the occupier or tenant, and that the rent he receives is only the ordinary profit of a certain stock in land, not managed by the proprietor himself, but by another, to whom he lends or lets it, and who, on his part, advances a second capital to stock and improve the land, upon which he also receives the usual profit. The rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer are, therefore, nothing more than the ordinary profits of two capitals belonging to two different persons and united in the cultivation of a farm, as, in the other case, the surplus which arises upon any manufactory, after replacing the expenses of carrying it on, answers to the ordinary profits of one or more capitals engaged in the prosecution of such manufactory. It is said one or more capitals, because, in fact, the same thing which is contemplated in the case of the farm sometimes happens in that of a manufactory. There is one, who furnishes a part of the capital or lends a part of the money by which it is carried on, and another, who carries it on with the addition of his own capital. Out of the surplus which remains after defraying expenses, an interest is paid to the money lender, for the portion of the capital furnished by him, which exactly agrees with the rent paid to the landlord; and the residue of that surplus constitutes the profit of the undertaker
