1831.] Enrichment consequent on the Division of Production, Qc. 143 
III . — Of the Enrichment consequent on the Division of Production 
and Commerce . 
If we now suppose, that from the earliest time, men had devoted a part 
of their own labour to the acquisition, not only of the articles of the primary,, 
hut also of the secondary description of wealth, which they required, we may 
readily conceive how great an advance may be made in obtaining both the wrought 
and raw necessaries of existence, and consequently in increasing the incomes of all, 
when those enjoying particularly, favorable situations, or peculiar genius, for 
conducting certain kinds of production, take upon themselves such occupations 
alone, as they can prosecute with advantage. 
When the husbandman, besides the labour of his field to attend to, has the 
fabrication also on his hands, of his agricultural instruments, household utensils 
and clothes; then, as a part only of his labour can be given to agriculture, the 
plot of ground he occupies, must, on this account, he fitted in an inferior degree 
for being peculiarly the matrix of that reproduction whence his primary wealth 
is obtained; and hence a comparatively small income of this description of 
necessaries : again, as there can be expected but little dexterity in any business, 
and a great loss of time in changing occupations, when, upon every occasion of a 
person’s requiring wrought commodities, he has to leave his cultivation ; as he 
must, besides, in preparing many of these commodities, labour under great disad- 
vantages, and be subjected to the inconvenience of long search for what he requires, 
before he can proeeed, the raw materials of his wares, and the tools for preparing 
them not being all obtainable on the very spot he occupies ; so we may readily 
imagine, how great an increase of power is obtained, when production comes to 
be divided amongst distinct classes of labourers ; and the incomes upon which 
men are supported, comprising articles both of primary and secondary wealth, 
being thus vastly increased, we may also see how an extension of population 
must follow the introduction of such a system. 
% 
But under the supposition, that man does not now. labour in the preparation 
of what he himself is ultimately to consume, the advantages attending the division 
of production having been perceived and felt; the consumption, which is the end 
of all production, must now be preceded by interchanges of the peculiar pro- 
ducts of each individual ; and hence we see at once the necessity for that barter- 
ing and trading which prevails in all advanced countries of the world ; and 
we see, at the same time, the source of the gain which each obtains, on every 
commercial transaction. If two individuals, one peculiarly expert in the fabri- 
cation of cloth, and living where looms and his raw materials w^ere readily obtain- 
able, but ignorant of the arts of agriculture, — and the other ignorant of the 
modes of working adopted by spinners and weavers, and settled in a compara- 
tively fertile tract, — were each to quit their own peculiar occupation, and become, 
in their own persons, both weavers aud husbandmen, to the extent of their indi- 
vidual wants, it is manifest that the quantity of food, and the quantity and qua- 
lity of clothing, realized by both, would be inferior to what, through the division 
of production, had been obtained. Now the difference between the quantity op 
food obtainable when the husbandman labours in raising the supply for both, and 
in the quantity of cloth obtainable, when the weaver labours in fabricating cloth 
for both, is the fund which forms the gain on the commercial interchange. 
This principle is in constant operation wherever commerce can have being 
whether between man and man, or between nation and nation ; and it is vain to 
