effects of manufactures and commerce on the general state of society
are in the highest degree beneficial. They infuse fresh life and
activity into all classes of the state, afford opportunities for the
inferior orders to rise by personal merit and exertion, and
stimulate the higher orders to depend for distinction upon other
grounds than mere rank and riches. They excite invention, encourage
science and the useful arts, spread intelligence and spirit, inspire
a taste for conveniences and comforts among the labouring classes;
and, above all, give a new and happier structure to society, by
increasing the proportion of the middle classes, that body on which
the liberty, public spirit, and good government of every country
must mainly depend.

If we compare such a state of society with a state merely
agricultural, the general superiority of the former is
incontestable; but it does not follow that the manufacturing system
may not be carried to excess, and that beyond a certain point the
evils which accompany it may not increase further than its
advantages. The question, as applicable to this country, is not
whether a manufacturing state is to be preferred to one merely
agricultural but whether a country the most manufacturing of any
ever recorded in history, with an agriculture however as yet nearly
keeping pace with it, would be improved in its happiness, by a great
relative increase to its manufacturing population and relative check
to its agricultural population.

Many of the questions both in morals and politics seem to be of the
nature of the problems de maximis and minimis in fluxions; in which
there is always a point where a certain effect is the greatest,
while on either side of this point it gradually diminishes.