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Show 406 ON TilE IMMEDIAT..E CAUSES [ CH. VI I, easy mode of plunder, sometin1es gave the Inost enor1nous prices for fancied luxuries. A feather will weigh do,vn a scale vvhen there is nothing in the opposite one. But 'vhere the amount of the incomes of a country depend, in a considerable. deoTee UJ)On the exertion of labour, activity and · . b ' attention, there must be something in the commo-dities to be obtained sufficiently desirable to balance this exertion, or the exertion will cease. And experience amply shews, . b~ the number of per~ons who daily leave off business, when th~y rn1ght certainly have continu~d to improve their fortunes, that n1ost n1en place some limits, however variable, to the quantity of conveniences and luxuries 'vhich they \vill labour for; and that very fevv indeed vvould attend a counting-house six or eight hours a day, in order to purchase cornmodities vvhich have no other tnerit than the quantity of labour which has been etnployed upon them. ' Still however it is true that, when a grep.t in~ GOme has once been created in a country, in the shape of a large tnass of rents, profits and vvages, a considerable resistance vvill be made to any essential fall in its value . . It is a ,;ery just ren1ark of Hume,* that when the affairs of a society are brought to this situation ; tpat is, when, by n1eans of foreign trade, it has acquired the tastes neces~ sary to give value to a great quantity of labour not e1nployed upon actual necess~1Ties, it n1ay lose 1nost of this trade, and yet continue gre~t apd * Essays, vol. i. p. 293. SEC. V.] 014' 'fHE PllOGRESS O:F WEALTH. 407 powerful, on account of the . extraordinary efforts ,vhich would be made by the spare capital and ingenuity of the country to refine home tnanufactures, in order to supply the tastes already formed, and the incomes already created. But if '\IVe were to allow that the incon1e of such a nation n1ight, in this way, by possibility be n1aintained, there is little chance of its increasing; and it is almost certain that it would not have reached the satne amount, without the market occasioned by fo~1eign commerce. . Of this I think we shall be convinced, if, in our own country, we look at the quantity of goods which we export chiefly in consequence of our machinery, and consider the nature of the returns obtained for them. In the accounts of the year ended the 5th of January 1818, it appears that the exports of three articles alone in which machinery is used-cottons, vvoollen and hardware, including steel goods, &c. are valued at above 29 n1illions. And among the n1ost pron1inent articles of the imports of the satne year, '\IVe find coffee, indigo, sugar, tea, silks, tobacco, 'vines, and cotton-'\vool, amounting in value all together to above 18 millions out .of thirty ! N o'v I would ask hovv we should have obtained these valuable in1ports, if the foreign tnarkets for our cottons, woollens, and hard,vare had not been extended '\Vith the use of machinery? And further, where we could have found substitutes ~t home for such irnports, which vvould have 'been hkely to have produced the same effects, in stimulating the cultivation of the land, the accumulation D D 4~ ' . |