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Til K NATUUK AND CAlJSK.s OF

the subsistence and conveniencies of the society, are thus di"verted to another employment, highly advantageous indeed,but still different from this one. It is upon this account thatall such improvements in mechanics, as enable the samenumber of workmen to perforin an equal quantity of workwith cheaper and simpler machinery than had been usualbefore, are always regarded as advantageous to every society.A certain quantity of materials, and the labour of a certainnumber of workmen, which had before been employed insupporting a more complex and expensive machinery, canafterward be applied to augment the quantity of work whichthat or any other machinery is useful only for performing.The undertaker of some great manufactory who employs athousand a year in the maintenance of his machinery, if hecan reduce this expense to five hundred, will naturally em-ploy the other five hundred in purchasing an additionalquantity of materials to be wrought up by an additionalnumber of workmen. The quantity of that work, therefore,which his machinery was useful only for performing, willnaturally be augmented, and with it all the advantageand conveniency which the society can derive from thatwork.

The expense of maintaining the fixed capital in a greatcountry, may very properly be compared to that of repairsin a private estate. The expense of repairs may frequentlybe necessary for supporting the produce of the estate, andconsequently both the gross and the neat rent of the landlord.When by a more proper direction, however, it can be dimi-nished without occasioning any diminution of produce, thegross rent remains at least the same as before, and the neatrent is necessarily augmented.

But though the whole expense of maintaining the fixedcapital is thus necessarily excluded from the neat revenue ofthe society, it is not the same case with that of maintainingthe circulating capital. Of the four parts of which thislatter capital is composed, money, provisions, materials,and finished work, the three last, it has already been ob-served, are regularly withdrawn from it, and placed eitherin the fixed capital of the society, or in their stock reservedfor immediate consumption. Whatever portion of those con-sumable goods is not employed in maintaining the former,goes all to the latter, and makes a part of the neat revenueof the society. The maintenance of those three parts of the