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TllE NATUUE AND CAUSES OF

tions for the exportation of their surplus produce; and thisdependency, as it must have confined the market, so it musthave discouraged the increase of this surplus produce. Itmust have discouraged too the increase of the manufacturedproduce more than that of the rude produce. Manufacturesrequire a much more extensive market than the most impor-tant parts of the rude produce of the land. A single shoe-maker will make more than three hundred pairs of shoes inthe year; and his own family will not perhaps wear out sixpairs. Unless therefore he has the custom of at least fiftysuch families as his own, he cannot dispose of the whole pro-duce of his own labour. The most numerous class of arti-ficers will seldom, in a large country, make more than one infifty or one in a hundred of the whole number of families con-tained it. But in such large countries as France and Eng-land, the number of people employed in agriculture has bysome authors been computed at a half, by others at a third,and by no author that I know of, at less than a fifth of thewhole inhabitants of the country. But as the produce of the.agriculture of both France and England is, the far greaterpart of it, consumed at home, each person employed in itmust, according to these computations, require little morethan the custom of one, two, or, at most, ofifour such fami-lies as his own, in order to dispose of the whole produce ofhis own labour. Agriculture, therefore, can support itselfunder the discouragement of a confined market, much betterthan manufactures. In both ancient Egypt and Indostan,indeed, the confinement of the foreign market was in somemeasure compensated by the conveniency of many inland na-vigations, which opened, in the most advantageous manner,the whole extent of the home market to every part of the pro-duce of every different district of those countries. The greatextent of Indostan too rendered the home market of thatcountry very great, and sufficient to support a great varietyof manufactures. But the small extent of ancient Egypt,which was never equal to England, must at all times haverendered the home market ot that country too narrow torsupporting any great variety of manufactures. Bengal, ac-cordingly, the province of Indostan which commonly exportsthe greatest quantity of rice, has always been more remark-able for the exportation of a great variety of manufactures,than for that of its grain. Ancient Egypt , on the contrary,though it exported some manufactures, fine linen in particu-