CHAP. xxx. OF COMMODITIES. 377 



heard, however various may be the tenures by 

 which land is held. Such complaints are not 

 bounded by the limits of Europe. The cultivators 

 in North America assert that the prices of their 

 productions yield them no profit, especially those 

 of corn, cotton, tobacco, and rice. The same is 

 the case in the West India Islands, and according 

 to the common reports, in South America, and in 

 India. There must be some general cause pro- 

 ducing such extensive effects, which are thus felt 

 alike where taxation is high or low, under de- 

 spotic and free governments 5 and whether the 

 land is cultivated by slaves, by serfs, by. hired 

 labourers, or by proprietors. 



It would lead into a field far too extensive to 

 speculate on what would be the effect in another 

 twenty or forty years, if the same difference 

 should continue between the production and the 

 consumption of the precious metals, as appears to 

 have been in operation during the past twenty . * 

 years. It may, however, be observed that the 

 world is very little really richer or poorer from 

 the portion of metallic wealth that may be dis- 

 tributed over its surface; that the whole mass of 

 material wealth is neither diminished nor increased 

 by any change in the relative weight of gold and 

 silver to the usual measures of other commodities. 

 The only benefit to the world in general from 

 the increase of those metals is, that it acts as a 

 stimulus to industry by that gradual rise of money 



