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of the productions found to be in excess of the local wants 
there, and which return goods can be used or disposed of in 
the sender’s t)wn country or vicinity. In such cases, the 
merchant and his ships, or the travellers for orders and local 
carriers, are thus employed from necessity , for such produc- 
tions could not go on without those expensive and circuitous 
means of sales and exchanges of merchandise. The like 
necessity creates the small traders or shopkeepers, being the 
general medium through whom consumable goods find their 
way from the producers to those who require them for use. 
This medium, though costly, is indispensable, to the continu- 
ous production of the wares distributed by retail dealers, 
but they create nothing de novo. 
It is true that the profits of the merchants and traders are. 
often such as to leave wealth in their hands, in return for 
their talents and labour, beyond the expenses incurred by 
them as carriers, and thus clear gain or wealth is obtained 
and may be accumulated ; but those gains for their services 
in helping forward the needful exchanges of production are 
no more creatives of wealth than are the fees received by 
the doctor or the lawyer ; the one for preserving our health, 
the other for protecting our property. In one sense it may 
seem too trivial thus to draw these nice distinctions between 
the actual producers of wealth and its necessary distributors; 
that is, between the tool and machine maker, manufacturer 
and farmer on the one hand, and the merchant ship owner 
and carrier on the other ; still it must be of use in reasoning 
upon such questions, as the causes that lead to the growth 
or decay of wealth in a state, to have them, if possible, clearly 
set forth. Hence the terms employed in treating of them 
should be free from ambiguity or looseness of construction. 
I would by no means call in question the value or real im- 
portance of trade and commerce to a state, still it seems 
expedient to guard against the too common fallacy of citing 
them as the source , in place of being merely effects of the 
