2C4

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

feeds, clothes, and lodges the people. Their riches or povertydepends upon the abundant or sparing supplies which thosetwo capitals can afford to the stock reserved for immediateconsumption.

So great a part of the circulating capital being continuallywithdrawn from it, in order to be placed in the other twobranches of the general stock of the society; it must in itsturn require continual supplies, without which it would sooncease to exist. These supplies are principally drawn fromthree sources, the produce of land, of mines, and of fisheries.These afford continual supplies of provisions and materials,of which part is afterward wrought up into finished work,and by which are replaced the provisions, materials, andfinished work continually withdrawn from the circulatingcapital. From mines too is drawn what is necessary formaintaining and augmenting that part of it which consists inmoney. For though, in the ordinary course of business,this part is not, like the other three, necessarily withdrawnfrom it, in order to be placed in the other two branches ofthe general stock of the society, it must, however, like allother things, be wasted and worn out at last, and sometimestoo be either lost or sent abroad, and must, therefore, requirecontinual, though, no doubt, much smaller supplies.

Land, mines, and fisheries, require all both a fixed and acirculating capital to cultivate them ; and their produce re-places with a profit, not only those capitals, but all the othersin the society. Thus the farmer annually replaces to the ma-nufacturer the provisions which he had consumed and thematerials which he had wrought up the year before; and themanufacturer replaces to the farmer the finished work whichhe had wasted and worn out in the same time. This is thereal exchange that is annually made between those two ordersof people, though it seldom happens that the rude produceof the one and the manufactured produce of the other aredirectly bartered for one another; because it seldom happensthat the farmer sells his corn and his cattle, his flax and hiswool, to the very same person of whom he chooses to pur-chase the clothes, furniture, and instruments of trade whichhe wants. He sells, therefore, his rude produce for money,with which he can purchase, wherever it is to be had, themanufactured produce he has occasion for. Land even re-places, in part at least, the capitals with which fisheries andmines are cultivated. It is the produce of land which draws