626

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

•which employs them, together with its ordinary profits. Thatstock consists in the materials, tools, and wages, advanced tothem by their employer; and is the fund destined for theiremployment and maintenance. Its profits are the fund des-tined for the maintenance of their employer. Their em-ployer, as he advances to them the stock of materials, toolsand wages necessary for their employment, so he advancesto himself what is necessary for his own maintenance, andthis maintenance he generally proportions to the profit whichhe expects to make by the price of their work. Unless itsprice repays to him the maintenance which he advances to him-self, as well as the materials, tools, and wages which he ad-vances to his workmen, it evidently does not repay to him thewhole expense which he lays out upon it. The profits of ma-nufacturing stock, therefore, are not, like the rent of land, aneat produce which remains after completely repaying thewhole expense which must be laid out in order to obtainthem. The stock of the farmer yields him a profit as well asthat of the master manufacturer; and it yields a rent likewiseto another person, which that of the master manufacturerdoes not. The expense, therefore, laid out in employing andmaintaining artificers and manufacturers, does no more thancontinue, if one may say so, the existence of its own value,and does not produce any new value. It is therefore alto-gether a barren and unproductive expense. The expense,on the contrary, laid out in employing farmers and countrylabourers, over and above continuing the existence of its ownvalue, produces a new value, the rent of the landlord. It istherefore a productive expense.

Mercantile stock is equally barren and unproductive withmanufacturing stock. It only continues the existence of itsown value, without producing any new value. Its profitsare onlythcrepayment of the maintenance which its employeradvances to himself during the time that he employs it, ortill he receives the returns of it. Ihey are only the repay-ment of a part of the expense which must be laid on in em-ploying it.

The labour of artificers and manufacturers never adds anything to the value of the whole annual amount of the rudeproduce of the land. Its adds indeed greatly to the value ofsome particular parts of it. But the consumption which inthe mean time it occasions of other parts, is precisely equalto the value which it adds to those parts; so that tlm value