THE WEALTH OK NATIONS.

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The demand lor the precious stones arises altogether fromtheir beauty. They are of no use, but as ornaments ; andthe merit of their beauty is greatly enhanced by their scarcity,or by the difficulty and expense of getting them from themine. Wages and profit accordingly make up, upon mostoccasions, almost the whole of their high price. Rent comesin but for a very small share ; frequently for no share : andthe most fertile mines only afford any considerable rent.When Tavernier, a jeweller, visited the diamond-mines ofGolconda and Visiapour, he was informed that the sovereignof the country, for whose benefit they were wrought, had or-dered all of them to be shut up, except those which yieldthe largest and finest stones. The others, it seems, were tothe proprietor not worth the working.

As the price both of the precious metals and of the pre-cious stones is regulated all over the world by their price atthe most fertile mine in it, the rent which a mine of eithercan afford to its proprietor is in proportion, not to its abso-lute, but to what may be called its relative fertility, or to itssuperiority over other mines of the same kind. If new mineswere discovered as much superior to those of Potosi as theywere superior to those of Europe , the value of silver mightbe so much degraded as to render even the mines of Potosinot worth the working. Before the discovery of the SpanishWest Indies, the most fertile mines in Europe may have af-forded as great a rent to their proprietor as the richest minesin Peru do at present. Though the quantity of silver wasmuch less, it might have exchanged for an equal quantityof other goods, and the proprietor’s share might have en-abled him to purchase or command an equal quantity eitherof labour or of commodities. The value both of the produceand of the rent, the real revenue which they afforded bothto the public and to the proprietor, might have been thesame.

The most abundant mines either of the precious metals orof the precious stones could add little to the wealth of theworld. A produce of which the value is principally derivedfrom its scarcity, is necessarily degraded by its abundance.A service of plate, and the other frivolous ornaments of dressand furniture, could be purchased for a smaller quantity oflabour, or for a smaller quantity of commodities; and inthis would consist the sole advantage which the world couldderive from that abundance.

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