THE WEALTH OK NATIONS.

035

same light as menial servants. The labour ol menial servantsdoes not continue the existence of the fund which maintainsand employs them. Their maintenance and employment isaltogether at the expense of their masters, and the workwhich they perform is not of a nature to repay that expense.That work consists in services which perish generally in thevery instant of their performance, and does not fix or realizeitself in any vendible commodity which can replace the valueof their wages and maintenance. The labour, on the con-trary, of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, naturallydoes fix and realize itself in some such vendible commodity.It is upon this account that, in the chapter in which I treat ofproductive and unproductive labour, I have classed artificers,manufacturers, and merchants, among the productive labour-ers, and menial servants among the barren or unproductive.

Thirdly, it seems, upon every supposition, improper to say,that the labour of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants,does not increase the real revenue of the society. Thoughwe should suppose, for example, as it seems to be supposedin this system, that the value of the daily, monthly, andyearly consumption of this class was exactly equal to thatof its daily, monthly, and yearly production; yet it wouldnot from thence follow that its labour added nothing to thereal revenue, to the real value of the annual produce of theland and labour of the society. An artificer, for example,who, in the first six months after harvest, executes ten poundsworth of work, though he should in the same time consumeten pounds worth of corn and other necessaries, yet reallyadds the value of ten pounds to the annual produce of theland and labour of the society. While he has been consum-ing a half yearly revenue of ten pounds worth of corn andother necessaries, he has produced an equal value of workcapable of purchasing, either to himself or to some otherperson, an equal half yearly revenue. The value, therefore,ot what has been consumed and produced during these sixmonths is equal, not. to ten, but to twenty pounds. It is pos-sible, indeed, that no more than ten pounds worth of this va-lue may ever have existed at any one moment of time. Butit the ten pounds worth of corn and other necessaries, whichwere consumed by the artificer, had been consumed by a sol-dier, or by a menial servant., the value of that part of the an-mml produce which existed at the end of the six monthswo «ld ha.ve been ten pounds less than it actually is in con-