WEALTH OF NATIONS. 173 



(1.) The comforts and enjoyments of life have been 

 varied and increased to all nations in the old world. The 

 industry of all has been stimulated by the new vent for 

 their produce, and countries which even do not directly 

 trade with the colonies, have benefited by their produce, 

 and by the surplus produce of the countries that conduct 

 the trade, which is occasioned by the colonial demand. 



(2.) The colonizing countries have derived not only 

 the benefit which all States receive from their own 

 dominions, but also the peculiar advantages of their 

 exclusive traffic with the colonies. The former have been 

 very trifling, as means of defence and revenue are all that 

 a State can derive from its own territory, and of these 

 nothing has been afforded, except the revenue derived 

 from the Spanish and Portuguese settlements. But the 

 commercial monopoly has certainly been very lucrative. 

 This advantage, however, is, by Dr. Smith, considered 

 to be rather relative than absolute, an advantage over 

 nations having no colonies, and whose industry is to 

 a certain degree oppressed by their exclusion from the 

 colonial commerce. The monopoly has kept down the 

 agriculture and trade of the colonies, and thus it has 

 injured the mother country by curtailing the natural 

 supply and thereby raising the natural price of colonial 

 produce. But it has also injured the natural trade and 

 agriculture of the mother country, by drawing much 

 more capital towards the colonial traffic and cultivation 

 than would naturally have gone thither, thus gradually 

 lowering the profits by increasing the competition in the 

 colonial trade, and proportionably decreasing the com- 

 petition and raising the profits in other branches of 

 commerce. The rate of profit in the mother country 



