The wealth of England, accordingly, in those days was due rather to her carrying trade and to the extent of her foreign markets, than to her home trade or the actual surplus of her manufactures. It was rather to the monopoly of these manufactures than to their actual amount, that the wealth which was poured into the lap of England was due; in the same way as the monopoly of a few mines, of Potosi and elsewhere, made the wealth of Spain in the Sixteenth Century, and the monopoly of silk manufactures and wines made that of France. In other words, the wealth of nations in the Eighteenth Century was due - so far as manufacturers were concerned - to virtual monopoly rather than to the actual amount of powers of Nature which they had succeeded in enlisting in their service. The only source of wealth in which the powers of Nature could be said to lend and spend themselves freely over and above the mere physical labour and skill of man, was Agriculture. But as this natural increase, due to the free gifts of Nature, went to the landlords in rent, all the rest of the community, - barring the merchants who skimmed off the profits accruing from the monopoly of manufactures and the foreign trade, - were barely able to replace by their labour more real wealth (in the sense of 'value in use' as distinct from 'value in exchange') than was the result of their own physical exertions; inasmuch as each of their hand looms and other crude machinery, instead of turning out per man as much in a day as would serve a thousand families, as is the case with the machinery of the present day, turned out comparatively little more than would minister to the necessities of the man himself and his family who used it.

The consequence was, that as Agriculture was the main source of the natural increase of wealth over and above that of ordinary human labour, and as this wealth went entirely into the hands of the landlords, and as further the means of transport from foreign countries were at once both slow and imperfect, what the nations had most to fear was a series of bad harvests at home or abroad, but especially both together. For in this unfortunate conjunction, the great masses of the people, as in India at the present day, were brought within sight of actual starvation. Now at the present time all this is reversed. Instead of the powers of Nature lending themselves only or mainly to the assistance of man in Agriculture, they lend themselves a thousand times more to his assistance in Manufactures; instead of the corn crops of the world being his chief source of anxiety, they are now, owing to facilities of transport, his least; instead of the savings in which the increase of national wealth consists coming mainly from Agriculture and Monopoly, they now come from the normal output of manufacturing industries; and finally instead of the product consisting of raw materials of food and clothing which can be stored and housed, and which will keep for a while, - as corn, cattle, wine, timber, etc., - it consists now even more of manufactured goods which will not keep, and if not at once used and consumed will speedily begin to decay.

But more important than all for the Science of Political Economy is the fact that in the time of Adam Smith and before the age of machine industry, the increase of wealth was of an intermittent character, being emitted in a series of spurts as it were. The corn, for example, which took six months from the planting of the seed to the harvest, had to supply the population for the next six months; the cattle and sheep also were only intermittently produced, having their seasons of reproduction and increase; and all this was, superficially at least, totally unlike the increase of wealth at the present time, where corn and cattle from all parts of the round world between us and the antipodes, come pouring in on us at all times and seasons, and are consumed and disposed of as quickly at one point of the circumference of the world as they are produced at another. And the same is still more true of the manufactured articles of food and clothing and other goods that will not keep, and which are consumed as fast as they are produced, and produced as fast as they are consumed.

But what has all this to do, the reader will ask, with the Science of Political Economy? This namely, that anyone contemplating the construction of a system of Political Economy having for its end the increase of wealth, would if he took things merely at their face value and impression, have proceeded on an entirely different basis at that time from what he would at the present day. The amount of saving which represented the increase of wealth he would figure to himself as coining out of definite separate quantities of products, the result of definite separate harvests; and in the case of sheep and cattle, of definite separate years or seasons; and so the whole process of wealth production would take shape in his mind as so many rods of varying lengths laid end to end from year to year, each rod representing a year's produce; and the less that was consumed of these rods each year, the greater amount there would be to carry forward to the next and the succeeding years. And the conclusion of the whole matter for him would be, that whatever laws he discovered for his projected Science would have to be deduced from facts which could be summed up in the formula of "produce as much as you can, and consume as little as possible." On the other hand anyone coming fresh to the subject to-day, and taking a survey of the way in which wealth was being increased, would be struck by the general fact that it was being thrown off from a continuous wheel of production and consumption, that is to say, of things that were constantly being produced, sold, and consumed, and that the amount of the increase of wealth depended on the rapidity of the 'turnover,' that is to say, on the rapidity with which the products were produced, sold, consumed, and reproduced.

Or to put it in a word, anyone coming to the subject at the time of Adam Smith would have said that the object to be aimed at in an Applied Science of Political Economy was - how to produce as much as possible, and refrain from consuming it as long as possible; whereas at the present day the object is - how to produce and consume as much and as quickly as possible.

Now although it was quite natural that Adam Smith, like all persons living before the age of Machine Industry, should think that the saving by which the increase of wealth is effected must be drawn directly out of Production, instead of out of the double process of Production and Consumption, he need not necessarily have done so; for the most casual reflection would have taught him that even the saving of an individual can come only after the product has been sold, and so consumed - although that consumption is done by some other person. Had he not rested content, therefore, with a mere surface impression but had felt it necessary to probe the process of wealth production and increase more deeply, he would have escaped the fallacy into which he fell, and which has been perpetuated through the long line of his successors to the present day. But it so happened that just at that time a new system of Political Economy appeared in France, having for its object the reversal of all the old principles on which the wealth of nations had hitherto been based; - principles which were then, owing to the changed conditions of the Industrial world, everywhere falling into disrepute.