ADAM SMITH. 201 



servant must not be compared with that of the labourer 

 employed in farming or manufactures. The menial is em- 

 ployed by the consumer, and for his own use exclusively ; 

 the farm-servant and journeyman are employed by another 

 party, by whom the consumer is supplied. The former is, 

 properly speaking, in the predicament of a commodity bought 

 or hired for consumption or use ; the latter rather resembles 

 a tool bought or hired for working withal. But, at any rate, 

 there is no such difference as Dr. Smith supposes between 

 the effects of maintaining a multitude of these several kinds 

 of workmen. It is the extravagant quantity, not the peculiar 

 quality of the labour thus paid for, that brings on ruin. A 

 man is ruined if he keeps more servants than he can afford 

 or employ, and does not let them out for hire, exactly as 

 he is ruined by purchasing more food than he can consume, 

 or by employing more workmen in any branch of manu- 

 factures than his business requires, or his profits will pay. 



But it may be observed, in general, that there is no solid 

 distinction between the effective powers of the two classes 

 whom Dr. Smith denominates productive and unproductive 

 labourers. The end of all labour is to augment the wealth of 

 the community; that is to say, the fund from which the 

 members of that community derive their subsistence, their 

 comforts and enjoyments. To confine the definition of wealth 

 to mere subsistence is absurd. Those who argue thus admit 

 butcher's meat and manufactured liquors to be subsistence ; 

 yet neither of them are necessary; for if all comfort and 

 enjoyment be kept out of view, vegetables and water would 

 suffice for the support of life ; and by this mode of reasoning 

 the epithet of productive would be limited to the sort of 

 employment that raises the species of food which each 

 climate and soil is fitted to yield in greatest abundance, with 

 the least labour ; to the culture of maize in some countries ; 

 of rice in others; of potatoes, or yams, or the bread-fruit 

 tree in others : and in no country would any variation of 

 employment whatever be consistent with the definition. 

 According to this view of the question, therefore, the menial 

 servant, the judge, the soldier and the buffoon, are to be 

 ranked in the same class with the husbandmen and manu- 



