domestic one, is of little importance."

It is thus, in his estimation, of small importance whether the capital
engaged in the work of transportation be foreign or domestic--the
operations most essential to the comfort and improvement of man being,
first, the production, and next, the conversion of the products of the
land, by men occupying towns and cities placed among the producers.
The nearer the market the less must be, as he clearly saw, the loss of
transportation, and the greater the value of the land. If the number
or the capital of those markets were insufficient for the conversion
of all the rude produce of the earth, there would then be
"considerable advantage" to be derived from the export of the surplus
by the aid of foreign capital, thus leaving "the whole stock of the
society" to be employed at home "to more useful purpose." These views
are certainly widely different from those of modern economists, who
see in tables of imports and exports the only criterion of the
condition of society. Commerce, by which is meant exchanges with
distant people, is regarded as the sole measure of the prosperity of a
nation; and yet every man is rejoiced when the market for his products
is brought home to him, and he is thereby enabled to economize
transportation and enrich his land by returning to it the elements of
which-those products had been composed.

"According to the natural course of things," says Dr. Smith, "the
greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first,
directed to agriculture, afterward to manufactures, and, last of all,
to foreign commerce."

This, says he, is in accordance with natural laws. As subsistence
precedes luxuries, so must the production, of commodities precede