We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures, as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed to the interests of every community to have its products exported in their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all observation.
The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM SMITH:--
"An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _They give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it, that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. _The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for._ They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility_. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. _For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may._ In a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. _The corn which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world._"