232 T1IE NATURE AND CAUSES 01’

fish, can seldom be supplied without employing more thanten times the quantity of labour which had before been suf-ficient to supply it. The fish must generally be sought forat a greater distance, larger vessels must be employed, andmore extensive machinery of every kind made use of. Thereal price of this commodity, therefore, naturally rises in theprogress of improvement. It has accordingly done so, I be-lieve, more or less in every country.

Though the success of a particular day’s fishing may be avery uncertain matter, yet the local situation of the countrybeing supposed, the general efficacy of industry in bringinga certain quantity of fish to market, taking the course of ayear, or of several years together, it may perhaps be thought,is certain enough; and it, no doubt, is so. As it dependsmore, however, upon the local situation of the country, thanupon the state of its wealth and industry; as upon this ac-count it may in different countries be the same in differentperiods of improvement, and very different in the same period;its connexion with the state of improvement is uncertain, andit is of this sort of uncertainty that I am here speaking.

In increasing the quantity of the different minerals andmetals which are drawn from the bowels of the earth, that ofthe more precious ones particularly, the efficacy of human in-dustry seems not to be limited, but to be altogether uncertain.

The quantity of the precious metals which is to be foundin any country is not limited by any thing in its local situa-tion, such as the fertility or barrenness of its own mines.Those metals frequently abound in countries which possessno mines. Their quantity in every particular country seemsto depend upon two different circumstances; first, upon itspower of purchasing, upon the state of its industry, uponthe annual produce of its land and labour, in consequence ofwhich it can afford to employ a greater or a smaller quantityof labour and subsistence in bringing or purchasing such su-perfluities as gold and silver, either from its own mines orfrom those of other countries ; and, secondly, upon the ferti-lity or barrenness of the mines which may happen at any par-ticular time to supply the commercial world with those me-tals. The quantity of those metals in the countries most re-mote from the mines, must be more or less affected by thisfertility or barrenness, on account of the easy and cheap trans-portation of those metals, of their small bulk and greatvalue. Their quantity in China and Indostan must have