cultivated, and having more labour and expense bestowed upon them, produce
more in proportion to the extent and natural fertility of the ground. But
this superiority of produce is seldom much more than in proportion to the
superiority of labour and expense. In agriculture, the labour of the rich
country is not always much more productive than that of the poor ; or, at
least, it is never so much more productive, as it commonly is in
manufactures. The corn of the rich country, therefore, will not always, in
the same degree of goodness, come cheaper to market than that of the poor.
The corn of Poland, in the same degree of goodness, is as cheap as that of
France, notwithstanding the superior opulence and improvement of the latter
country. The corn of France is, in the corn-provinces, fully as good, and in
most years nearly about the same price with the corn of England, though, in
opulence and improvement, France is perhaps inferior to England. The
corn-lands of England, however, are better cultivated than those of France,
and the corn-lands of France are said to be much better cultivated than
those of Poland. But though the poor country, notwithstanding the
inferiority of its cultivation, can, in some measure. rival the rich in the
cheapness and goodness of its corn, it can pretend to no such competition in
its manufactures, at least if those manufactures suit the soil, climate, and
situation, of the rich country. The silks of France are better and cheaper
than those of England, because the silk manufacture, at least under the
present high duties upon the importation of raw silk, does not so well suit
the climate of England as that of France. But the hardware and the coarse
woollens of England are beyond all comparison superior to those of France,
and much cheaper, too, in the same degree of goodness. In Poland there are
said to be scarce any manufactures of any kind, a few of those coarser
household manufactures excepted, without which no country can well subsist.

This great increase in the quantity of work, which, in consequence of the
division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is