The analogy which Adam Smith, in the passage quoted, draws between the French soldier transported from a part of France where wine is scarce, to another where it abounds, and a nation suddenly overflowed with an abundance of these liquors, will not hold; for, the imitative propensity, in the one case, tends as powerfully to check, as in the other it operates to excite to the abuse in question.If a man be brought among sober people, he has every chance to remain, or to become sober; if, on the contrary, he get among drunkards, it requires all his resolution to avoid becoming one.A nation having a taste for these pleasures, and suddenly obtaining the means of indulging in them, may be compared to a company inclined to be jovial assembled round an abundant table, where each excites the other to excess; a band of soldiers living and mixing with the inhabitants of a country where, even though cheap, these liquors are temperately consumed, to an individual partaking of his solitary bottle in the midst of those who despise the pleasure, and view him with contempt for indulging in it.
It is, however, particularly to be remarked, that the author refers to fermented, not to purely alcoholic liquors, and the former are certainly much less apt to lead to excess, than the latter.I apprehend, however, that his reasonings in the preceding, and one or two other passages, have been generally received as applicable to both.
To return to the subject of narcotics in general, all excess in their consumption, whether it be regarded as an application of labor to an useless purpose, or to one partially hurtful; whether it proceed from vanity or pernicious habits, may not improperly be termed dissipation, as the articles so consumed may be termed luxuries.It is not necessary that we should pretend to determine what this loss may in any case amount to; it is sufficient to mark its existence, as a quantity to be taken into account in a consideration of the causes, influencing the increase or decrease of the national stock.
CHAPTER XII.OF EXCHANGES BETWEEN DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES.
There are then, it would appear from the preceding chapters, two great classes into which commodities may be divided, luxuries, and articles of consumption which are not luxuries, but, were the term permitted, might be named utilities.When the events in which instruments issue are of the latter class, then instruments may properly be said to be exhausted, when of the former they are on the contrary dissipated.
Having ascertained the circumstances limiting these two divisions, we are able to enter on the investigation of some phenomena, relating to the exchange of commodities, which we have not hitherto particularly noticed.
As yet we have only attended to the laws finally regulating the exchange of commodities between individuals of the same society, but it is necessary that we should also ascertain the general conditions existing in those exchanges which take place between different societies.
In our view of the subject; every society considered apart, is a system within which all circumstances are common and similar, and all societies compared together, are systems in which all or many circumstances are proper to each and dissimilar to others.The wages of labor, orders of instruments, and profits of stock, in one society, for instance, are the same, in different, are or may be different.When two persons in the same society exchange commodities, we have seen that the exchanges they make are for equal quantities of labor, reckoned according to the time when applied, and the actual orders of instruments.This happens because one man's personal labor, or the command of other men's labor which he may possess, is equal to another man's personal labor, or the command of other men's labor which he may possess.In separate societies, however, this law obviously no longer holds.An individual in one society, exchanging with another, in another society, cannot pretend to regulate the amount he is to receive in return by the power which he possesses, if he conceives too much demanded, of turning his own funds to the formation of that which he desires, for he has no such power.To form the commodities he in this case desires, it is necessary he should become a member of the society in which they are formed, and give up the place he holds in the community of which he now makes one.If the manufacturers of cloth in England find that the farmers do not give them, in the form of wheat, the same quantity of labor that they in exchange give them in cloth, they will turn their capital to agriculture, and so reduce the price demanded; but should they find that the American farmer puts less labor to the formation of the wheat he exchanges for their cloth, than that cloth costs them, they have not the same means of lowering his price.
As the exchanges, therefore, that take place between the members of different societies, cannot be regulated by the amount of labor embodied in the commodities fabricated by each, there would seem to remain, as the foundation of the principles of such exchanges, only the qualities of the articles exchanged.If the manufacturers in England, find that including the expense of transport, they can have wheat as cheap from the American farmers as from the British, they will be inclined to exchange,.and if the American farmers find that, including also the expense of transport, they can have English cloth as cheap as American, they will be inclined to exchange.It is evident too, that the British manufacturer will be more inclined to exchange, if the American wheat come cheaper than the British, and the American farmer, if the British cloth come cheaper than the American.
The commodities to be exchanged between any two societies, may either minister to use, or to luxury, or partly to both.The subject will present itself in the most simple form, by discussing separately the divisions of it thus indicated.
