that is wholly owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the
food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other,
provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us, which how much
they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then
see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we
enjoy in this world: and the ground which produces the materials, is
scarce to be reckoned in, as any, or at most, but a very small part of
it; so little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature,
that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called,
as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to
little more than nothing. This shews how much numbers of men are to be
preferred to largeness of dominions; and that the increase of lands, and
the right employing of them, is the great art of government: and that
prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of
liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of
mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will
quickly be too hard for his neighbours: but this by the by. To return to
the argument in hand,
Sec. 43. An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat,
and another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the
like, are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet
the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5l. and
from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian
received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly
say, not one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part
of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing:
it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for
all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth
than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the
effect of labour: for it is not barely the plough-man's pains, the