Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: but a commodity. And as the observations now made seem to be sufficient to give such a general idea of the nature and functions of money, as is necessary to facilitate the acquisition of a knowledge of the principles of Political Economy, the reader is referred to the authors who have treated expressly of Money for a further elucidation of the various questions connected with it. Section III. Different Employments of Capital and Labour?Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce, equally advantageous?The investment of Capital in different Businesses determined by the Rate of Profit which they respectively yield. In the previous section, it has been shown, that I the increase and diminution of capital is the grand point on which national prosperity hinges,?that if you increase capital, you instantly increase the means of supporting and employing additional labourers?and that if you diminish capital, you instantly take away apportion of the comforts and enjoyments, and perhaps also of the necessaries, of the productive classes, and spread poverty and misery throughout the land; and it has also been shown, that the increase or diminution of the rate of profit is the great/ cause of the increase or diminution of capital. Now, if such be the case, it seems impossible to resist coming to the conclusion, that the employments which yield the greatest profit, or in which industry is most productive, are the most advantageous. But Dr Smith, Mr Malthus, and most other political economists, have objected to this standard. They allow that if two capitals yield equal profits, the employ- ments in which they are engaged are equally beneficial to their possessors; but they contend, that, if one of these capitals be employed in agriculture, it Twill be productive of greater public advan…
