TIIE WEALTH OE NATIONS.

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and sixty per cent, and the succeeding- crop is mortgaged forthe payment. As the profits which can afford such aninterest must eat up almost the whole rent of the landlord,so such enormous usury must in its turn eat up the greaterpart of those profits. Before the fall of the Roman repub-lic, a usury of the same kind seems to have been commonin the provinces, under the ruinous administration of then-proconsuls. The virtuous Brutus lent money in Cyprus ateight-and-forty per cent, as we learn from the letters ofCicero .

In a country which had acquired that full complement ofriches which the nature of its soil and climate, and its situa-tion with respect to other countries, allowed it to acquire;which could, therefore, advance no further, and which wasnot going backwards; both the wages of labour and theprofits of stock would probably be very low. In a countryfully peopled in proportion to what either its territory couldmaintain or its stock employ, the competition for employmentwould necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labourto what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of la-bourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, thatnumber could never be augmented. In a country fully stockedin proportion to all the business it had to transact, as greata quantity of stock would be employed in every particularbranch as the nature and extent of the trade would admit.The competition, therefore, would everywhere be as great,and consequently the ordinary profit as low as possible.

But perhaps no country has ever yet arrived at this degreeof opulence. China seems to have been long stationary, andhad probably long ago acquired that full complement of richeswhich is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions.But this complement may be much inferior to what, withother laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, andsituation might admit of. A country which neglects or de-spises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessels offoreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot trans-act the same quantity of business which it might do with dif-ferent laws and institutions. In a country too, where, thoughthe rich or the owners of large capitals enjoy a good deal ofsecurity, the poor or the owners of small capitals enjoy scarceany, but are liable, under the pretence of justice, to be pil-laged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarines,the quantity of stock employed in all the ditferent branches