THE WEALTH Ob' NATIONS.

769

PART I.

Of the Funds or Sources of Revenue which may peculiarlybelong to the Sovereign or Commonwealth.

The funds or sources of revenue which may peculiarly be-long to the sovereign or commonwealth must consist, eitherin stock, or in land.

The sovereign, like any other owner of stock, may derive arevenue from it, either by employing it himself, or by lendingit. His revenue is in the one case profit, in the other interest.

The revenue of a Tartar or Arabian chief consists in profit.It arises principally from the milk and increase of his ownherds and flocks, of which he himself superintends the ma-nagement, and is the principal shepherd or herdsman of hisown horde or tribe. It is, however, in this earliest andrudest state of civil government only that profit has evermade the principal part of the public revenue of a monar-chical state.

Small republics have sometimes derived a considerablerevenue from the profit of mercantile projects. The republicof Hamburgh is said to do so from the profits of a publicwine cellar and apothecary’s shop.* The state cannot bevery great of which the sovereign has leisure to carry on thetrade of a wine merchant or apothecary. The profit of apublic bank has been a source of revenue to more consider-able states. It has been so not only to Hamburgh, but toVenice and Amsterdam . A revenue of this kind has evenby some people been thought not below the attention of sogreat an empire as that of Great Britain. Reckoning the ordi-nary dividend of the bank of England at five and a half percent, and its capital at ten millions seven hundred and eightythousand pounds, the neat^annual profit, after paying theexpense of management, must amount, it is said, to live hun-dred and ninety-two thousand nine hundred pounds. Go-vernment, it is pretended, could borrow this capital at threeper cent, interest, and by taking the management of the bankinto its own hands, might make a clear profit of two hun-

* See Mcmoireaconcemnnt les Droits et Impositions on Europe ; tom. i. page 73. Thiswork was compiled by the order of the court for the use of a commission employed for someyears past in considering the proper means for reforming tins finances of France . The ac-count of tile French taxes, which takes up three volumes in quarto, may he regarded as oer-fectly authentic. That of those of oilier European nations was compiled from such infer,'nation as the French ministers at the dill'erent courts could procure. It i s much shorter, andprobably not quite so exact as that of the French taxes.