THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. 243

cient, than it is in the present times. It lias since receivedthree very capital improvements, besides, probably, manysmaller ones of which it may be difficult to ascertain eitherthe number or the importance. The three capital improve-ments are: first, the exchange of the rock and spindle for thespinning-wheel, which, with the same quantity of labour, willperform more than double the quantity of work. Secondly,the use of several very ingenious machines which facilitateand abridge, in a still greater proportion, the winding of theworsted and woollen yarn, or the proper arrangement of thewarp and woof before they are put into the loom; an operationwhich, previous to the invention of those machines, musthave been extremely tedious and tiresome. Thirdly, the em-ployment of the fulling mill for thickening the cloth, insteadof treading it in water. Neither wind nor water mills of anykind were known in England so early as the beginning ofthe sixteenth century, nor, so far as I know, in any other partof Europe north of the Alps. They had been introduced intoItaly some time before.

The consideration of these circumstances may, perhaps, insome measure, explain to us why the real price both of thecoarse and of the fine manufacture, was so much higher inthose ancient, than it is in the present times. It cost agreater quantity of labour to bring the goods to market.When they were brought thither, therefore, they must havepurchased or exchanged for the price of a greater quantity.

The coarse manufacture probably was, in those ancienttimes, carried on in England, in the same manner as it alwayshas been in countries where arts and manufactures are in theirinfancy. It was probably a household manufacture, in whichevery different part of the work was occasionally performedby all the different members of almost every private family;but so as to be their work only when they had nothing elseto do, and not to be the principal business from which anyof them derived the greater part of their subsistence. Thework which is performed in this manner, it has already beenobserved, comes always much cheaper to market than thatwhich is the principal or sole fund ol the workman’s subsist-ence. The fine manufacture, on the other hand, was not inthose times carried on in England, but in the rich and com-mercial country of Flanders; and it was probably conductedthen, in the same manner as now, by people who derived thewhole, or the principal part of their subsistence from it. It