THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

355

advantageous to a great number. The corn which growswithin a mile of the town, sells there for the same price withthat which comes from twenty miles’ distance. But the priceof the latter must generally, not only pay the expense ofraising and bringing it to market, but afford too the ordinaryprofits of agriculture to the farmer. The proprietors andcultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neigh-bourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits ofagriculture, gain in the price of what they sell, the wholevalue of the carriage of the like produce that is brought frommore distant parts, and they save, besides, the whole value ofthis carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare thecultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any consider-able town, with that of those which lie at some distance fromit, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the countryis benefited by the commerce of the town. Among all theabsurd speculations that have been propagated concerningthe balance of trade, it has never been pretended that eitherthe country loses by its commerce with the town, or the townby that with the country which maintains it.

As subsistence is, in the nature of things, prior to conveni-ency and luxury, so the industry which procures the former,must necessarily be prior to that which ministers to the lat-ter. The cultivation and improvement of the country, there-fore, which affords subsistence, must necessarily be prior tothe increase of the town, which furnishes only the means ofconveniency and luxury. It is the surplus produce of the coun-try only, or what is over and above the maintenance of thecultivators, that constitutes the subsistence of the town, whichcan therefore increase only with the increase of this surplusproduce. The town, indeed, may not always derive its wholesubsistence from the country in its neighbourhood, or evenfrom the territory to which it belongs, but from very distantcountries ; and this, though it forms no exception from thegeneral rule, has occasioned considerable variations in theprogress of opulence in different ages and nations.

1 hat order of things which necessity imposes in general,though not in every particular country, is, in every particularcountry, promoted by the natural inclinations of man. Ifhuman institutions had never thwarted those natural inclina-tions, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond whatthe improvement and cultivation of the territory in which theywere situated could support: till such time, at least, as the