neral interest that all things fit
for use should be abundant; but when a man is concerned in producing
any of those things, he sees it to be for his immediate interest that
they should be scarce, because what he has to sell will then bring a
greater price. It is the general interest that all useful things
should be produced and distributed as cheaply as possible; but each
individual producer and distributer feels that the dearer they are, it
is the better for him. It is thus that a trade comes to regard itself
as something detached from the community; that a man also views his
peculiar trading interest as a first principle, to which everything
else must give way. It might, indeed, be easily shewn, that whatever
is good for the whole community, must be in the long-run beneficial to
each member. He either cannot look far enough for that, or he feels
himself unable to dispense with the immediate benefit from that which
is bad for the public. In short, each trade considers the world as
living for it, not it as living for the world--a mistake so monstrous,
that there is little reason to wonder at the enormous misexpenditure
to which it gives rise.

The idea essentially connected with these false positions, that
_because_ there are certain persons in a trade in a particular place,
they _ought_ to be there, and that the primary consideration regarding
them is how to enable them to continue living by that trade--as if
they were fixed there by some decree of Providence--is one of the most
perverse and difficult to deal with in political economy. The
assertion of any principle ruling to the contrary purpose, seems to
the multitude of superficial thinkers as a kind of cruelty to the
persons, the severity of the natural law being, by an easy slide of
thought, laid to the charge of the mere philosopher who detects and
announces its operation. In reality, those are the cruel people who
would contentedly see a great number of their fellow-creatures going
on from year to year in a misery, which, being brought upon themselves
by ignorance, and the want of a right spirit of enterprise, can only
be banished or lessened by their being rightly informed, and induced
to enter upon a proper course.

If there were a right knowledge and just views of these subjects
diffused through the community, a man would be ashamed to enter upon a
business in which a sufficient number of persons was already engaged,
knowing that he was thereby trifling wi