An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith · 1776

passage 308 of 725 · PRICES OF WHEAT > part of their tenants. Farms were enlarged, and the occupiers of land, (2/4)

in brief

He argues that a major public-happiness revolution came from landlords’ vanity and merchants’ self-interest, not altruism, and that in much of Europe city commerce and manufactures became a cause of rural improvement rather than its result.

frequently do, without any regulations of law; for among nations of shepherds, such as the Tartars and Arabs, the consumable nature of their property necessarily renders all such regulations impossible.

A revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness, was in this manner brought about by two different orders of people, who had not the least intention to serve the public. To gratify the most childish vanity was the sole motive of the great proprietors. The merchants and artificers, much less ridiculous, acted merely from a view to their own interest, and in pursuit of their own pedlar principle of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got. Neither of them had either knowledge or foresight of that great revolution which the folly of the one, and the industry of the other, was gradually bringing about.

It was thus, that, through the greater part of Europe, the commerce and manufactures of cities, instead of being the effect, have been the cause and occasion of the improvement and cultivation of the country.

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topics: crafts, industry, and manufacture · fate, destiny, and necessity · justice as a virtue

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations · Adam Smith · 1776