128 TllF. NATURE AND CAUSES OF

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everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farmers, and la-bourers of the country, who have seldom opposed the esta-blishment of such monopolies. They have commonly neitherinclination nor fitness to enter into combinations; and theclamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easilypersuade them that the private iirterest of a part and of asubordinate part of the society, is the general interest of thewhole.

In Great Britain the superiority of the industry of the townsover that of the country, seems to have been greater formerlythan in the present times. The wages of country labour ap-proach nearer to those of manufacturing labour, and the pro-fits of stock employed in agriculture to those of trading andmanufacturing stock, than they are said to have done in thelast century, or in the begining of the present. This changemay be regarded as the necessary, though very late conse-quence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the in-dustry of the towns. The stock accumulated in them comesin time to be so great, that it can no longer be employed withthe ancient profit in that species of industry which is peculiarto them. That industry has its limits like every other; andthe increase of stock, by increasing the competition, neces-sarily reduces the profit. The lowering of profit in the townforces out stock to the country, where, by creating a new de-mand for country labour, it necessarily raises its wages. Itthen spreads itself, if I may say so, over the face of the land,and by being employed in agriculture is in part restored tothe country, at the expense of which, in a great measure, ithad originally been accumulated in the town. That every-where in Europe the greatest improvements of the countryhave been owing to such overflowings of the stock originallyaccumulated in the towns, I shall endeavour to shew here-after; and at the same time to demonstrate, that though somecountries have by this course attained to a considerable degreeof opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liableto be disturbed and interrupted by innumerable accidents,and in every respect contrary to the order of nature and ofreason. The interests, prejudices, laws, and customs whichhave given occasion to it, I shall endeavour to explain as fullyand distinctly as I can in the third and fourth books of thisinquiry.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even formerriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a con-