the most profound and ingenius =sic= writer on political economy.
-=-

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when their industry can be both applied, with any degree of equality,
to the same object, the poor supplies the rich, and therefore increases
its own wealth.

It is thus that great numbers of the people in London are fed with
butcher-meat from Scotland, and wear shoes from Yorkshire; but there
would be a very limited sale in either of those places for meat from
Smithfield, or shoes manufactured in London. {151}

This diminution of the value of money, that takes place in all rich
countries, serves farther to increase the advantage of poorer ones in
manufacturing, and accelerates the natural effect of competition,
which is facilitated, as has been said, by the capital of the rich country
giving activity to the industry of the poorer one.

This last neither can be called an exterior nor an interior cause, as it is
derived entirely from the relative situations of the two countries, and
belongs to both, or originates in both; but, as it raises the poor nation
nearer the level of the rich one, its effect gradually becomes less
powerful. Though there is no means of preventing the operation of
two nations coming nearly to a level by this means, yet it does not
appear to be a necessary consequence that the nation that was the
richer should become the poorer. As this, however, has been a general
case, we must conclude it to be a natural one, but there we stop, and
make a distinction between what is natural only, and what is a