THE WEALTH OE NATIONS.

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try which have occasion to exchange their respective pro-ductions with one another. That of the foreign trade ofconsumption, by the value of the surplus produce of thewhole country and of what can be purchased with it. Thatof the carrying trade, by the value of the surplus produce ofall the different countries in the world. Its possible extent,therefore, is in a manner infinite in comparison of that of theother two, and is capable of absorbing the greatest capitals.

The consideration of his own private profit, is the solemotive which determines the owner of any capital to employit either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particu-lar branch of the wholesale or retail trade. The differentquantities of productive labour which it may put into motion,and the different values which it may add to the annual pro-duce of the land and labour of the society, according as it isemployed in one or other of those different ways, never enterinto his thoughts. In countries, therefore, where agricultureis the most profitable of all employments, and farming andimproving the most direct roads to a splendid fortune, thecapitals of individuals will naturally be employed in the man-ner most advantageous to the whole society. The profits ofagriculture, however, seem to have no superiority over thoseof other employments in any part of Europe . Projectors, in-deed, in every corner of it, have within these few yearsamused the public with most magnificent accounts of theprofits to be made by the cultivation and improvement of land.Without entering into any particular discussion of their cal-culations, a very simple observation may satisfy us that theresult of them must be false. We see every day the mostsplendid fortunes that have been acquired in the course of asingle life by trade and manufactures, frequently from a verysmall capital, sometimes from no capital. A single instanceof such a fortune acquired by agriculture in the same time,and from such a capital, has not, perhaps, occurred in Europe during the course of the present century. In all the greatcountries of Europe , however, much good land still remainsuncultivated, and the greater part of what is cultivated, isfar from being improved to the degree of which it is capa-ble. Agriculture, therefore, is almost everywhere capableof absorbing a much greater capital than has ever yet beenemployed in it. What circumstances in the policy of Europe have given the trades which are carried on in towns so greatsin advantage over that which is carried on in the country,