But, though skill is valuable both to nations and to individuals, there are many circumstances that render it more so to the former, than to the latter.In the first place, it is more durable.Whatever may be the perfection to which an individual may have brought his skill, dexterity, and judgment, in conducting any particular set of operations, that perfection perishes with him.Whatever expense it may have cost him to acquire this possession, and however valuable it may be to himself, he cannot transmit it to his heirs.But any addition which a society makes, to the skill dexterity, and judgment, with which its members exercise any branch of industry, is not of this fleeting nature.Instead of the benefits derived from it, being bounded by the short space of time that the active life of an individual embraces, they are continuous with the national existence.If it be worth while paying a considerable apprentice-fee, for the acquisition of an art, which can probably only be exercised for twenty or thirty years, it must be better worth while to pay for one, the advantages derived from the possession of which, may be retained for hundreds or thousands of years.
Again, whatever an individual may expend in acquiring any degree of skill is, to a certain extent, lost to him; though he may draw a revenue, he cannot draw a capital from it.No portion of the future skilled labor of an individual can he sold, because it can only be sold with himself, and such bargains, sanctioned in ancient, are not so in modern times.No where can one effectually make over his services for a certain time to any other person, because, no where can he give that person the power of enforcing their exertion.On the contrary, any portion of the future revenue, yielded by the skilled industry of a nation, may be sold, and, consequently an addition to the national skill gives a proportional addition to the command of national resources, to meet any sudden emergency.The produce of the general industry of Great Britain, stands mortgaged for a sum, which it would have appeared a century ago utterly impossible to conceive that industry could sustain, because, a century ago, it was impossible to conceive the vast increase which has since been made to the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it was then directed.
Besides these and other differences between the effects resulting from the acquisition of skill in the pursuits of industry by nations, and by individuals, there is one on which I have already enlarged.An increase of skill seems to be always a necessary concomitant of the increase of national wealth, whereas it is not always a concomitant of the increase of individual wealth.It is not therefore true, that nations and individuals increase their wealth in the same manner, nor, were it so, do the rules, which modern political economists lay down for the increase of national wealth, agree with those which individuals adopt in their endeavors to augment their private stocks.
The main arguments, however, which the author brings forward, are built on what he assumes to be general principles.The doctrine lie maintains throughout his whole system, and more particularly in the chapter to which I have alluded, turns on the following passage.
"If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.
The general industry of the country being always in proportions to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than the capital of an artificer is diminished who purchases an article from another practising a different art instead of making it himself.It will only be left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage.It is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage, when it is thus directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make.The value of its annual produce is certainly more or less diminished, when it is thus turned away from producing commodities evidently of more value than the commodity which it is directed to produce.According to the supposition, that commodity could be purchased from foreign countries cheaper than it can be made at home; it could therefore have been purchased with a part only of the commodities, or, what is the same thing, with a part only of the price of the commodities, which the industry employed by an equal capital would have produced at home, had it been left to follow its natural course.The industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more to a less advantageous employment; and the exchangable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the law-giver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation.
"By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap, or cheaper, than in the foreign country.But though the industry of the society may be thus carried with advantage into a particular channel sooner than it could have been otherwise, it will by no means follow that the sum total either of its industry or of its revenue, can ever be augmented by any such regulation.The industry of the society can augment only in proportion as its capital augments, and its capital can augment only in proportion to what can be gradually saved out of its revenue.But the immediate effect of every such regulation is to diminish its revenue; and what diminishes its revenue is certainly not very likely to augment its capital faster than it would have augmented of its own accord, had both capital and industry been left to find out their natural employments.
