Like him who perverts the revenues of some pious foundation to profane purposes, he pays the wages of idleness with those funds which the frugality of his forefathers had, as it were, consecrated to the maintenance of industry.By diminishing the funds destined for the employment of productive labour, he necessarily diminishes, so far as it depends upon him, the quantity of that labour which adds a value to the subject upon which it is bestowed, and, consequently, the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the whole country, the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants.If the prodigality of some was not compensated by the frugality of others, the conduct of every prodigal, by feeding the idle with the bread of the industrious, tends not only to beggar himself, but to impoverish his country.
Though the expense of the prodigal should be altogether in home-made, and no part of it in foreign commodities, its effect upon the productive funds of the society would still be the same.
Every year there would still be a certain quantity of food and clothing, which ought to have maintained productive, employed in maintaining unproductive hands.Every year, therefore, there would still be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.
This expense, it may be said indeed, not being in foreign goods, and not occasioning any exportation of gold and silver, the same quantity of money would remain in the country as before.
But if the quantity of food and clothing, which were thus consumed by unproductive, had been distributed among productive hands, they would have reproduced, together with a profit, the full value of their consumption.The same quantity of money would in this case equally have remained in the country, and there would besides have been a reproduction of an equal value of consumable goods.There would have been two values instead of one.
The same quantity of money, besides, cannot long remain in any country in which the value of the annual produce diminishes.
The sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods.By means of it, provisions, materials, and finished work, are bought and sold, and distributed to their proper consumers.The quantity of money, therefore, which can be annually employed in any country must be determined by the value of the consumable goods annually circulated within it.These must consist either in the immediate produce of the land and labour of the country itself, or in something which had been, purchased with some part of that produce.Their value, therefore, must diminish as the value of that produce diminishes, and along with it the quantity of money which can be employed in circulating them.But the money which by this annual diminution of produce is annually thrown out of domestic circulation will not be allowed to lie idle.The interest of whoever possesses it requires that it should be employed.But having no employment at home, it will, in spite of all laws and prohibitions, be sent abroad, and employed in purchasing consumable goods which may be of some use at home.Its annual exportation will in this manner continue for some time to add something to the annual consumption of the country beyond the value of its own annual produce.What in the days of its prosperity had been saved from that annual produce, and employed in purchasing gold and silver, will contribute for some little time to support its consumption in adversity.The exportation of gold and silver is, in this case, not the cause, but the effect of its declension, and may even, for some little time, alleviate the misery of that declension.
The quantity of money, on the contrary, must in every country naturally increase as the value of the annual produce increases.The value of the consumable goods annually circulated within the society being greater will require a greater quantity of money to circulate them.A part of the increased produce, therefore, will naturally be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of gold and silver necessary for circulating the rest.The increase of those metals will in this case be the effect, not the cause, of the public prosperity.Gold and silver are purchased everywhere in the same manner.The food, clothing, and lodging, the revenue and maintenance of all those whose labour or stock is employed in bringing them from the mine to the market, is the price paid for them in Peru as well as in England.The country which has this price to pay will never be long without the quantity of those metals which it has occasion for; and no country will ever long retain a quantity which it has no occasion for.
Whatever, therefore, we may imagine the real wealth and revenue of a country to consist in, whether in the value of the annual produce of its land and labour, as plain reason seems to dictate; or in the quantity of the precious metals which circulate within it, as vulgar prejudices suppose; in either view of the matter, every prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal man a public benefactor.
The effects of misconduct are often the same as those of prodigality.Every injudicious and unsuccessful project in agriculture, mines, fisheries, trade, or manufactures, tends in the same manner to diminish the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour.In every such project, though the capital is consumed by productive hands only, yet, as by the injudicious manner in which they are employed they do not reproduce the full value of their consumption, there must always be some diminution in what would otherwise have been the productive funds of the society.
It can seldom happen, indeed, that the circumstances of a great nation can be much affected either by the prodigality or misconduct of individuals; the profusion or imprudence of some being always more than compensated by the frugality and good conduct of others.