The interests of the farmer and the mechanic are in perfect harmony
with each other. The one needs a market for his products, and the
nearer the market the greater must be the produce of his land, because
of his increased power to carry back to it the manure. The other needs
a market for his labour, and the richer the land around him the
greater will be the quantity of products to be offered in exchange for
labour, and the greater his freedom to determine for himself for whom
he will work and what shall be his wages. The combination of effort
between the labourer in the workshop and the labourer on the farm thus
gives value to land, and the more rapid the growth of the value of
land the greater has everywhere been the tendency to the freedom of
man.

These views were opposed to those then universally prevalent.
"England's treasure in foreign trade" had become

"A fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only,
but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the
most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords
the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the
people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign
trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor
carried any out of it. The country, therefore, could never become
richer or poorer by means of it, except as far as its prosperity or
decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade."

It was against this error chiefly that Dr. Smith cautioned his
countrymen. He showed that it had led, and was leading, to measures
tending to disturb the natural course of things in all the countries
connected with England, and to produce among them a necessity, for