328 positions to be examined. Dec. 26. 
those fhort methods of working ; and thence, being 
apt to suppose more labour employed in the manu- 
factures' than there really is, are more easily impo- 
sed on in their value, and induced to allow more for 
them than they are honestly worth. 
11. Thus the advantage of having manufactures 
in a country, does not consist, as is commonly sup-~ 
posed, in their highly advancing the value of rough 
materials, of which they are formed; since, though 
six pennyworth of flax may be worth twenty jhil- 
lings when worked into lace, yet the very cause of 
its being worth twenty fhillings, is, that, besides the 
flax, it has cost nineteen fhillings and sixpence in sub= 
sistence to the manufacturer. But the advantage 
‘of manufactures is, that under their fhape, provisions 
may be more easily carried to a foreign market; and. 
by. their means our traders may more easily cheat 
strangers. Few, where it is not made, are judges 
of the value of lace. The importer may demand 
forty, and pehaps get thirty fhillings for that which 
cost him but twenty. 
12. Finally, there seem to be but three ways for 
@ nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, 
as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered 
neighbours ; this is robbery.—The second by com- 
merce, which is generally cheating.—The third by 
agriculture, the only honest way; wherein man 
receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the 
ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by 
the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his ine 
-nocent life and his virtuous industry. 
B. FRANKLIN. 
