London, Lisbon, and Copenhagen, are, perhaps, the only three cities in Europe which are both the constant residence of a court, and can at the same time be considered as trading cities, or as cities which trade not only for their own consumption, but for that of other cities and countries.The situation of all the three is extremely advantageous, and naturally fits them to be the entrepots of a great part of the goods destined for the consumption of distant places.In a city where a great revenue is spent, to employ with advantage a capital for any other purpose than for supplying the consumption of that city is probably more difficult than in one in which the inferior ranks of people have no other maintenance but what they derive from the employment of such a capital.The idleness of the greater part of the people who are maintained by the expense of revenue corrupts, it is probable, the industry of those who ought to be maintained by the employment of capital, and renders it less advantageous to employ a capital there than in other places.There was little trade or industry in Edinburgh before the union.When the Scotch Parliament was no longer to be assembled in it, when it ceased to be the necessary residence of the principal nobility and gentry of Scotland, it became a city of some trade and industry.It still continues, however, to be the residence of the principal courts of justice in Scotland, of the Boards of Customs and Excise, etc.A considerable revenue, therefore, still continues to be spent in it.In trade and industry it is much inferior to Glasgow, of which the inhabitants are chiefly maintained by the employment of capital.The inhabitants of a large village, it has sometimes been observed, after having made considerable progress in manufactures, have become idle and poor in consequence of a great lord having taken up his residence in their neighbourhood.
The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness.Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails:
wherever revenue, idleness.Every increase or diminution of capital, therefore, naturally tends to increase or diminish the real quantity of industry, the number of productive hands, and consequently the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, the real wealth and revenue of all its inhabitants.
Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigality and misconduct.
Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive hands, or enables some other person to do so, by lending it to him for an interest, that is, for a share of the profits.As the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the same manner.
Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of the increase of capital.Industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates.But whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater.
Parsimony, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of productive hands, tends to increase the number of those hands whose labour adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed.It tends, therefore, to increase the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country.It puts into motion an additional quantity of industry, which gives an additional value to the annual produce.
What is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent, and nearly in the same time too; but it is consumed by a different set of people.That portion of his revenue which a rich man annually spends is in most cases consumed by idle guests and menial servants, who leave nothing behind them in return for their consumption.That portion which he annually saves, as for the sake of the profit it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed in the same manner, and nearly in the same time too, but by a different set of people, by labourers, manufacturers, and artificers, who reproduce with a profit the value of their annual consumption.
His revenue, we shall suppose, is paid him in money.Had he spent the whole, the food, clothing, and lodging, which the whole could have purchased, would have been distributed among the former set of people.By saving a part of it, as that part is for the sake of the profit immediately employed as a capital either by himself or by some other person, the food, clothing, and lodging, which may be purchased with it, are necessarily reserved for the latter.The consumption is the same, but the consumers are different.
By what a frugal man annually saves, he not only affords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands, for that or the ensuing year, but, like the founder of a public workhouse, he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.The perpetual allotment and destination of this fund, indeed, is not always guarded by any positive law, by any trust-right or deed of mortmain.It is always guarded, however, by a very powerful principle, the plain and evident interest of every individual to whom any share of it shall ever belong.No part of it can ever afterwards be employed to maintain any but productive hands without an evident loss to the person who thus perverts it from its proper destination.
The prodigal perverts it in this manner.By not confining his expense within his income, he encroaches upon his capital.