202 
Of the Influence of Capital 
[July, 
do not sell, it is solely for want of other products to open a vent for them ; and that 
the opening' of the new vent, the want of which may, tor a time, impede production, 
it is always in the power of man to effect- ; it being believed by them, (a conse- 
quenee of their treating labour as the sole source of wealth,) that man enjoys the 
power of continually increasing wealth so long as he is willing and able to bestow 
labour and capital on the production of such descriptions of articles, as are suited 
to the different markets of the world ; a knowledge of which suitableness, although 
it may not be possessed now, it is always supposed may be gained hereafter, if 
men are only willing to make the requisite inquiry. 
In Dr. Smith’s Wealth of Nations, we are taught to calculate on countries 
attaining a full complement of riches, “ which cannot be exceeded under the existing 
circumstances of their soil, and climate, and their situation, with respect to other 
countries.” (Wealth of Nations, Book 1. Chap, ix.) We are, besides, constantly 
reminded, that falls or rises in the rates of profits, depend on whether the coun- 
try in question is approaching to, or receding from, this state of full enrichment. 
The existence of a limit to production is, therefore, an essential datum, on which 
all his reasonings regarding profits and wages hinge. Indeed, he attributes vast 
influence to the effects of competition ; and the existence of competition, of 
necessity, implies not only the existence of a limit to production, but the actual 
influence of approximation to that limit, as exhibiting its effects in those varia- 
tions of the rates of profits, and of wages, which he attributes thereto ; for it is 
impossible to conceive, that there should be that struggle for pi-oductive employ- 
ment to capital and labour which competition implies, unless the quantity of 
employment itself were subject to some limitation. But in that very work, in 
which we have remarked the author contemplating, not only the existence of a 
limit to production, but the constant influence also, of that limit on the productive 
classes ; we find it stated, “ that the extent of trade does not depend on the trade 
itself, but on the trader.” That “ when a producer has more stock than suffices 
to set himself to work, he adds to his productive establishment, by employing one 
or more journeymen no reference being made to the state of the market for 
his wares ; and we find the whole of the Dr.’s reasonings acknowledge the justice 
of this axiom, that increases of capital, of the fund for setting labourers to work, 
if brought into employment, must increase the wealth of the community : for 
wealth, he says, is the result of productive labour, and “ labourers, productively- 
employed, reproduce with a profit, the. value of the materials consumed by them 
during production.” “ If,” he further says, “ the society were annually 7 to employ 
all the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would 
increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would be 0. 
vastly greater value than that of the foregoing; but,” he continues, “there is n0 
country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the in- 
dustrious ; the idle every where consume a great part of it ; according to the 
different proportions in which it is annually divided between those two diffe rent 
orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase 01 
diminish, or continue the same from one year to another.” 
Here then, although the influence of a limit to production is essential to the 
reasonings of Dr. Smith, we find the doctrine distinctly laid down, that it is optional 
with nations to become as rich as they please ; and that the sole condition 
necessary to increasing wealth, is the feeding of the industrious, in place of the idle; 
a doctrine which his followers have pushed to the extent already pointed out. 
Dr. Smith no where points out a reason why capital and labour should, at one 
tune, be productive, and at others Unproductive, of income or profit, although 
