THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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will not always, in the same degree of goodness, comecheaper to market than that of the poor. The corn of Po­ land , in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as that ofFrance , notwithstanding the superior opulence and improve-ment of the latter country. The corn of France is, in the cornprovinces, fully as good, and in most years nearly about thesame price with the corn of England, though, in opulenceand improvement, France is perhaps inferior to England.^The corn-lands of England, however, are better cultivatedthan those of France , and the corn-lands of France are saidto be much better cultivated than those of Poland . Butthough the poor country, notwithstanding the inferiority ofits cultivation, can, in some measure, rival the rich in thecheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no suchcompetition in its manufactures; at least if those manufac-tures suit the soil, climate, and situation of the rich country.The silks of France are better and cheaper than those of Eng-land, because the silk manufacture, at least under the present' high duties upon the importation of raw silk, does not so wellsuit the climate of England as that of France . But the hard-ware and the coarse woollens of England are beyond all com-parison superior to those of France , and much cheaper too inthe same degree of goodness. In Poland there are said tobe scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those coarserhousehold manufactures excepted, without which no countrycan well subsist.

This great increase in the quantity of work, which, incon-sequence of the division of labour, the same number of peopleare capable of performing, is owing to three different circum-stances ; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular jworkman; secondly, to the saving'of the time which is com-monly lost in passing from one species of work to another;and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machineswhich facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to dothe work of many.

First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman ne-cessarily increases the quantity of the work he can perform;and the division of labour, by reducing every man’s businessto some one simple operation, and by making this operationthe sole employment of his life, necessarily increases verymuch the dexterity of the workman. A common smith, who,though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never beenused to make nails, if upon some particular occasion he is