BOOK I. OF THE CAUSES OF IMPROVEMENT IN THE PRODUCTIVE
POWERS OF LABOUR, AND OF THE ORDER ACCORDING TO WHICH
ITS PRODUCE IS NATURALLY DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE DIFFERENT
RANKS OF THE PEOPLE.

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all
the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist
always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with
that produce from other nations.


According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or
smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion.
But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances: first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed
in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.

Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its
annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.
The abundance or scantiness of this supply, too, seems to depend more upon the
former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of
hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniencies of life,
for himself, and such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too
young, or too infirm, to go a-hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or at least think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of
abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to
perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts.

Among civilized and thriving na-
tions, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of
whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times, more labour
than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of thesociety is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied; and a workman, even of the
lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the
necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.
The causes of this improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the order
according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and
conditions of men in the society, make the subject of the first book of this Inquiry.
Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which
labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must
depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number
of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so
employed. The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is
everywhere in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting
them to work, and to the particular way in which it is so employed. The second book,
therefore, treats of the nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually ac-
cumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, according
to the different ways in which it is employed.
Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the appli-
cation of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct or direction of
it; and those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce.
The policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement to the industry of the
country; that of others to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally and
impartially with every sort of industry. Since the down-fall of the Roman empire, the
policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the
industry of towns, than to agriculture, the Industry of the country. The circumstances
which seem to have introduced and established this policy are explained in the third
book.

[…]

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses,
therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ”

[…]

“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that....But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer;
and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”

[…]

The privileges of the clergy in those ancient times (which to us, who live in the present times, appear the most absurd), their total exemption from the secular jurisdiction, for example, or what in England was called the benefit of clergy, were the natural, or rather the necessary, consequences of this state of things. How dangerous must it have been for the sovereign to attempt to punish a clergyman for any crime whatever, if his order were disposed to protect him, and to represent either the proof as insufficient for convicting so holy a man, or the punishment as too severe to be inflicted upon one whose person had been rendered sacred by religion? The sovereign could, in such circumstances, do no better than leave him to be tried by the ecclesiastical courts, who, for the honour of their own order, were interested to restrain, as much as possible,
every member of it from committing enormous crimes, or even from giving occasion to such gross scandal as might disgust the minds of the people.”