ADAM SMITH. 275 



to multiply the comforts and pleasures of human life, are 

 equally productive in the strict sense of the word, and 

 tend to augment the mass of human riches, meaning, by 

 riches, all those things which are necessary, or convenient, 

 or delightful to man. The progress of society has heen at- 

 tended with a complete separation of employments originally 

 united. At first, every man provided for his necessities as 

 well as his pleasures, and for all his wants as well as all his 

 enjoyments. By degrees, a division of those cares was in- 

 troduced : the subsistence of the community became the 

 province of one class, its comforts of another, and its grati- 

 fications of a third. The different operations subservient 

 to the attainment of each of these objects, were then in- 

 trusted to different hands ; and the universal establishment 

 of barter connected the whole of the divisions and subdi- 

 visions together ; enabled one man to manufacture for all, 

 without danger of starving by not ploughing or hunting ; 

 and another to plough or hunt for all, without the risk of 

 wanting tools and clothes by not manufacturing. It has 

 thus become as impossible to say exactly who feeds, clothes, 

 and entertains the community, as it would be impossible to 

 say which of the many workmen employed in the manufac- 

 ture of a pin is the actual pin-maker, or which of the farm- 

 servants produces the crop. All the branches of useful in- 

 dustry work together to the common end, as all the parts 

 of each branch co-operate to its particular object. If you 

 say that the farmer feeds the community, and produces all 

 the raw materials which the other classes work upon ; we 

 answer, that unless those other classes worked upon the raw 

 materials, and supplied the farmer's necessities, he would be 

 forced to allot part of his labour to this employment, while 

 he forced others to assist in raising the rude produce. In 

 such a complicated system, it is clear that all labour has the 

 same effect, and equally increases the whole mass of wealth. 

 Nor can any attempt be more vain than theirs who would 

 define the particular parts of the machine that produce the 

 motion, which is necessarily the result of the whole powers 

 combined, and depends on each one of the mutually con- 

 nected members. Yet so wedded have those theorists been 

 to the notion, that certain necessary kinds of employment 

 are absolutely unproductive, that a writer of no less name 



