19 ?
which he requires, in the precise quantity required, and at theprecise time when it is wanted.
The three great classes, then, of the industrious population ofa nation, (stating them in the natural order in which their labourscome to be of general utility), are, the Agricultural , the Manufac-turing, and the Commercial: For a surplus of food must be prepar-ed, before there is room for applying attention to the means ofconvenient accommodation ; and there must exist a great surplusproduce, both of necessaries and conveniencies, before their ex-change can give occupation to a distinct profession, and employ-ment to a capital perfectly separate. *
The cultivation of the soil raises, in general, a great surplusproduce, above what is necessary for the subsistence of thoseemployed in its cultivation : And, when we consider the greatnumbers, beyond the mere cultivators, who, in Great Britain ,derive their food from the produce of her soil, aided by, com-paratively speaking, a small proportion of importation—the ar-my, the navy, the towns crowded with manufacturers and mer-chants, the number of persons engaged in the liberal professions,and the multitudes who live on land- rents, or other sources ofrevenue without any particular employment,—we are led to forma very high estimate of the produce of her agricultural industry,and of the skill and ability of those who cultivate her soil, f
Supposing a nation to have been expelled from its territory,by barbaric invasion, or religious persecution, and to have car-ried along with them a considerable portion of their commercialand manufacturing wealth, and to have betaken themselves forrefuge to a station, where (from scantiness or sterility of terri-tory) agriculture could afford no subsistence to the new inhabit-ants ; it might still be possible for the people to derive a plenti-ful subsistence entirely from manufactures, by exchanging theirsurplus manufactured produce against the surplus produce of theagriculture of other nations. Or, a nation might even be suppos-ed to subsist in plenty, without exercising the least degree eitherof manufacturing or agricultural industry, if only possessed ofcapital to enable them to undertake the business of common mer-chants, or even merely of common carriers to other nations ; inuogotiating the exchange of the surplus produce of one nationagainst that of another, or in merely transporting it for the mer-chants who had negotiated the exchange, f
* Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book iii. Chap. 1.
t Malthus conjectures , from the returns under the population bills, which,though far from accurate, yet furnish data for calculation, that the proportionthe immediate cultivators to the rest of the population is less than one-fifthof the whole.
\ The Dutch provinces, filled with refugees from the persecution of the"life of Alva, in modern times, and, more a.ntisntly, the republics that
sprang