Political Arithmetic » 
173 
of insurance companies is commercial. Hence, if the same capital 
could be employed to equal profit, national and individual at home, 
it were better so employed than abroad. 
Suppose a ship lost by storm, by depredation upon our com- 
merce, by unjust adjudication, the value is gone from us, it is an- 
nihilated. It is true the merchant may lose nothing— he can gene- 
| rally lay his losses on the consumer. The price of insurance is 
i part of the price of the commodities insured. Suppose the va- 
lue of a cargo laid out on a plantation, in building, fencing, making 
roads, manuring, &c. a storm may destroy the crop, as well as the 
ship, but the produce of the year only is lost : the capital still re- 
mains, permanent and productive, 
7thly, The merchant , and all the fie o file directly emfiloyed by 
him , rank among the unproductive classes of society . The farmer, 
the wood-cutter, the miner, the manufacturer, the fisherman, 
employs his capital and labour in producing substantial riches, 
some commodity of value. I know this has been doubted as to the 
manufacturer ; but it is, in my opinion, absurd to say that a mill- 
wright, a saw-maker, an engineer, and all who convert raw mate- 
! rials into labour-saving articles, are not of the productive class ; 
j and eminently so. This may be occasionally the case with the 
[ persons in question, but we are not talking of exceptions to a gene- 
ral rule, but of the rule itself. 
The merchant, the agent, the factor, the retailer, the clerk, 
the captain, the seamen, are employed in arranging, assorting, 
dividing, transporting what has been already produced by the 
capital and labour of others. If produce be (as it clearly is) the 
real, the only riches of a country, we ought to aim at encreasing 
it, and encourage (if the system of encouragement be adopted at 
all) the employments that are productive, rather than those that 
are not so. All these people are usefully employed under the 
system of commerce ; but it forms a! drawback to that system, that 
so many persons are unproductively employed. I am aware of 
the objection, where will you find a market ? There Is never 
"Want of a market in a new settlement : you can make your market, 
by manufacturing a great part of what you buy. When provisions 
become a drag, manufacture starts up, and population abounds. 
This is the most desirable and most permanent order cf things, 
because nature herself has pointed it cut. 
8thly, Mercantile success tem/its to imprudent expenditure and 
speculation. It is no slight objection, that, while by the peaceful 
