can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of
the productive powers of labour. The separation of different trades and
employments from one another, seems to have taken place in consequence of
this advantage. This separation, too, is generally carried furthest in those
countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement; what
is the work of one man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of
several in an improved one. In every improved society, the farmer is
generally nothing but a farmer ; the manufacturer, nothing but a
manufacturer. The labour, too, which is necessary to produce any one
complete manufacture, is almost always divided among a great number of
hands. How many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen
and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the wool, to the
bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of the
cloth ! The nature of agriculture, indeed, does not admit of so many
subdivisions of labour, nor of so complete a separation of one business
from another, as manufactures. It is impossible to separate so entirely
the business of the grazier from that of the corn-farmer, as the trade of
the carpenter is commonly separated from that of the smith. The spinner is
almost always a distinct person from the, weaver; but the ploughman, the
harrower, the sower of the seed, and the reaper of the corn, are often the
same. The occasions for those different sorts of labour returning with the
different seasons of the year, it is impossible that one man should be
constantly employed in any one of them. This impossibility of making so
complete and entire a separation of all the different branches of labour
employed in agriculture, is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the
productive powers of labour, in this art, does not always keep pace with
their improvement in manufactures. The most opulent nations, indeed,
generally excel all their neighbours in agriculture as well as in
manufactures ; but they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority
in the latter than in the former. Their lands are in general better