rnal causes must have a great share in
the catastrophe. In this inquiry, then, we must consider the interior
state of the country as of great importance.

When property is very unequally divided, the monied capital of a
nation, upon the employment of which, next to its industry, its wealth,
or revenue, depend, begins to be applied less advantageously. A
preference is given to employments, by which money is got with most
ease and [end of page #133] certainty, though in less quantity. A
preference also is given to lines of business that are reckoned the most
noble and independent.

Manufacturers aspire to become merchants, and merchants to become
mere lenders of money, or agents. The detail is done by brokers, by
men who take the trouble, and understand the nature of the particular
branches they undertake, but who furnish no capital.

The Dutch were the greatest example of this. Independent of those
great political events, which have, as it were, completed the ruin of
their country, they had long ceased to give that great encouragement
to manufactures, which had, at first, raised them to wealth and power
in so surprising a manner. They had, in the latter times, become agents
for others, rather than merchants on their own account; so that the
capital, which, at one time, brought in, probably, twenty or twenty-
five per cent. annually, and which had, even at a late period, produced
ten or fifteen, was employed in a way that scarcely produced three.

If it were possible to employ large capitals with as much advantage,
and to make them set in motion and maintain as much industry as
small ones are made to do, there would scarcely be any limit to the
accumulation of money in a country; but a vast variety of causes
operate on preventing this.

Whatever, therefore, tends to accumulate the capital of a nation in a
few hands (thereby depriving the many) not only increases luxury, and
corrupts manners and morals, but diminishes the activity of the capital
and the industry of the country. {114}

In all the great places that are now in a state of decay, we find families
living on the interest of money, that formerly were engaged in
manufactures or commerce. Antwerp, Genoa, and Venice, were full

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{114} It is a strange fact, that when this country was not nearly so far
advanced as it is now, almost all the merchants traded on their own
capitals; they purchased goods, paid for them, sold them, and waited
for the returns; but