sorts of labour. The French economists consider all labour
employed in manufactures as unproductive. Comparing it with the
labour employed upon land, I should be perfectly disposed to
agree with them, but not exactly for the reasons which they give.
They say that labour employed upon land is productive because the
produce, over and above completely paying the labourer and the
farmer, affords a clear rent to the landlord, and that the labour
employed upon a piece of lace is unproductive because it merely
replaces the provisions that the workman had consumed, and the
stock of his employer, without affording any clear rent whatever.
But supposing the value of the wrought lace to be such as that,
besides paying in the most complete manner the workman and his
employer, it could afford a clear rent to a third person, it
appears to me that, in comparison with the labour employed upon
land, it would be still as unproductive as ever. Though,
according to the reasoning used by the French economists, the man
employed in the manufacture of lace would, in this case, seem to
be a productive labourer. Yet according to their definition of
the wealth of a state, he ought not to be considered in that
light. He will have added nothing to the gross produce of the
land: he has consumed a portion of this gross produce, and has
left a bit of lace in return; and though he may sell this bit of
lace for three times the quantity of provisions that he consumed
whilst he was making it, and thus be a very productive labourer
with regard to himself, yet he cannot be considered as having
added by his labour to any essential part of the riches of the
state. The clear rent, therefore, that a certain produce can
afford, after paying the expenses of procuring it, does not
appear to be the sole criterion, by which to judge of the
productiveness or unproductiveness to a state of any particular