ter buy it of them with some
part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we
have some advantage. _The general industry of the country being always
in proportion to the capital which employs it_, will not thereby be
diminished, but only left to find out the way in which it can be
employed with the greatest advantage."

Again. "Those, therefore, who have the command of more food than they
themselves can consume, are always willing to exchange the surplus, or,
what is the same thing, the price of it, for gratifications of another
kind. What is over and above satisfying the limited desire, is given for
the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be
altogether endless. The poor, in order to obtain food, exert themselves
to gratify those fancies of the rich; and to obtain it more certainly,
they vie with one another in the cheapness and perfection of their work.
The number of workmen increases with the increasing quantity of food, or
with the growing improvement and cultivation of the lands; and as the
nature of their business admits of the utmost subdivisions of labours,
the quantity of materials which they can work up increases in a much
greater proportion than their numbers. Hence arises a demand for every
sort of material which human invention can employ, either usefully or
ornamentally, in building, dress, equipage, or household furniture; for
the fossils and minerals contained in the bowels of the earth, the
precious metals, and the precious stones."

Adam Smith has justly observed, that it is extremely difficult to
determine the rate of the profits of stock. "Profit is so fluctuating,
that even in a particular trade, and much more in trades in general, it
would be difficult to state the average rate of it. To judge of what it
may have been formerly, or in remote periods of time, with any degree of
precision, must be altogether impossible." Yet since it is evident that
much will be given for the use of money, when much can be made by it, he
suggests, that "the market rate of interest will lead us to form some
notion of the rate of profits, and the history of the progress of
interest afford us that of the progress of profits." Undoubtedly if the
market rate of interest could be accurately known for any considerable
period, we should have a tolerably correct criterion, by which to
estimate the progress of profits.

But in all countries, from mistaken notions of policy, t