THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

627

of the whole amount is not, at any one moment of time, inthe least augmented by it. The person who works the laceof a pair of hue ruffles, for example, will sometimes raise thevalue of perhaps a penny-worth of flax to thirty poundssterling. But though at first sight he appears thereby to mul-tiply the value of a part of the rude produce, about seventhousand and two hundred times, he in reality adds nothingto the value of the whole annual amount of the rude produce.The workingqf that lace costs him perhaps two years’ labour.The thirty pounds which he gets for it when it is finished, isno more than the repayment of the subsistence which he ad-vances to himself during the two years that he is employedabout it. The value which, by every day's, month’s, or year’slabour, he adds to the flax, does no more than replace thevalue of his own consumption during that day, month, oryear. At no moment of time, therefore, does he add anything to the value of the whole annual amount of the rudeproduce of the land : the portion of that produce which he iscontinually consuming, beingalways equal to the value whichhe is continually producing. The extreme poverty of the greaterpart of the persons employed in this expensive, though triflingmanufacture, may satisfy us that the price of their work doeswot in ordinary cases exceed the value of their subsistence.It is otherwise with the work of farmers and country la-bourers. The rent of the landlord is a value, which, in or-dinary cases, it is continually producing, over and above re-placing, in the most complete manner, the whole consumption,the whole expense laid out upon the employment and mainte-nance both ot the workmen and of their employer.

Artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, can augment therevenue and wealth of their society, by parsimony only; or,as it is expressed in this system, by privation, that is, by de-priving themselves of a part of the funds destined for theirown subsistence. They annually reproduce nothing but thosefunds. Unless, therefore, they annually savesome partofthem,unless they

annually deprive themselves of the enjoyment ofsome part of them, the revenue and wealth of their society cannever be in the smallest degree augmented by means of 1 heirmdustry. 1’ armers and country labourers, on the contrary, mayenjoy completely the whole funds destined for their own sub-sistence, and yet augment at the same time the revenue and^ f, alth of their society. Over and above what is destined for1<Mr own subsistence, their industry annually affords a neat