result of human agency, or in the acquisition of which labour has been exerted, and which are intended, not in their ultimate object for enjoyment, or the supply of present wants, but for procuring, increasing, or assisting in the acquisition of other articles of stock; and whatever is used for such objects, or to aid us in the labours of industry, comes within this portion, and is denominated capital.

Again, this second portion, or capital, may itself also be distinguished as divisible into two kinds. First, into those objects which man employs to aid him in the performance of the labour necessary to procure subsistence and acquire riches; that is, to augment the efficiency of labour, or to lessen, abridge, or facilitate it; and which may be called his tools. Secondly, into the materials, in a raw or more or less advanced state towards completion, on which his labour has been exercised, or remains yet to be exercised, to convert them into finished products; together with the finished products themselves of every kind, in the hands of the producers and dealers, not yet sold, but which industry still has to distribute to their proper consumers, or employ or expend in furtherance of future labours.

The first kind of capital, or what may be called the instruments or tools which man employs to aid his labours, consists chiefly of the five following descriptions of articles.

1. The proper tools, implements, utensils, engines, and machines, of the several arts, together with the labouring cattle, carriages of burthen, shipping, and boats, that are employed to assist in the business of industry, whether appropriative, productive, manufacturing, or distributive.

2. Those buildings and business-premises which are employed in industry; such as workshops, mills, machinery of a fixed nature, shops, warehouses, farm-houses, with all their appropriate buildings, granaries, &c. These are a sort of instruments of trade, and may be considered in the same light. Shops and farm-houses are different from mere dwelling-houses, they are not only the means of procuring a revenue to the proprietor who lets them for a rent, but they assist in procuring a revenue to the person who occupies them, and pays that rent.

3. The improvements of land; what has been judiciously laid

out in clearing, fencing, draining, manuring, and reducing the land into the condition most proper for cultivation, as well as the operations which have been undertaken for working mines. and quarries. An improved farm may be regarded in the same light as one of those useful machines which facilitate and abridge labour; since by its means labour can raise a large quantity of produce. The same may be said of the roads, bridges, navigable canals, artificial harbours, light-houses, and rail-roads, which facilitate the transport of goods, and by means of which labour can transport a greater quantity of goods than it could do without them. The labour expended in such improvements, by rendering the country more fertile or more commodious, is the means of transmitting a better inheritance to posterity; some of which improvements are so durable that they can scarcely be lost by neglect.

Although a most important part of the productive capital of a nation consists in the improvements made on land, which so much augment its produce, we cannot account as capital the land itself, or other natural agents, or the mineral productions the earth affords, over which human industry exerts no control. The land forms part of our property, but its productive agency is the gift of nature, to which industry has contributed nothing, and which therefore cannot properly be classed with capital-the result of previous labour.

The mineral productions of the earth may have been discovered either accidentally or by laborious and expensive search or boring for them; and so far as labour has been expended in bringing to our knowledge these hidden treasures, and in the previous operations necessary for working the mines, they must be considered in the light of improvements, and accounted as capital; but the minerals themselves, though only available for use by discovery, and though mankind are enriched by the knowledge of them, are nevertheless original gifts of nature, to which no human exertion has contributed anything: they are our property, but not our capital.

There are, likewise, some improvements made on land which ought not, perhaps, to be accounted as capital, although they may have been made by an outlay of capital. Of this kind are,

the draining of a lake or a bog, the embankment of land from the sea. When such works are executed in a secure and permanent manner, it seems more natural to view them as further acquisitions of land—the primary source of wealth, than as additions to capital-the secondary source, or the means of augmenting and improving the produce of the primary source.

4. That portion of the money of a country which industry employs in the purchase or exchange of commodities, and the payment of productive services. This money eminently assists in the acquisition and production of commodities, and their distribution to the parties requiring them, by facilitating their purchase or exchange, causing the payments for them and for services to be made without difficulty, and avoiding the labour that would otherwise be necessary in effecting such exchanges and payments by the difficult and embarrassing method of truck or barter. This money may be considered as forming part of the tools of industry. It has been likened to the "oil to the wheels of a machine, which gives the requisite ease and facility to the movements of the complex mechanism of human industry."

Money, circulating from hand to hand, at one time passes from industry, and at another comes back again to it to be employed afresh in business. Thus, at one time it forms part of capital, and at another becomes merely property, and belongs to the stock devoted to consumption. The industrious classes themselves sometimes employ money as revenue devoted to consumption, or rather to purchase the objects required for consumption, as well as in the shape of capital to facilitate labour. At other times, money passing from the industrious classes, in the shape of capital, into the possession of the idle consumer, ceases to exist as capital. However, it quickly returns again, and reassumes its former character of capital, in its employment in business.

Though money is not, like the materials and finished works of industry, entirely and permanently withdrawn from capital, but comes back again to industry to be employed afresh; and although it is almost unalterable and permanent in its nature; it must, however, like all other things, be subject to waste and

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become worn out at last. Sometimes, too, it is lost in its conveyance from place to place, or is sent to other countries, and must, therefore, require continual, though no doubt much smaller, supplies than other kinds of stock.

It would be a great mistake to suppose, that the capital of a country consists principally of its money. Money forms but a small portion of our wealth. The world would be very poor, if it possessed no other kind of wealth than the precious metals, whether in bars or in coined money. The merchant, the manufacturer, the farmer, have commonly but an inconsiderable portion of their capital in the shape of money; and they endeavour to avoid keeping more money by them than is requisite to answer current demands, because their capital is always unproductive when in this shape.

5. The store of food, clothing, and other articles of subsistence, that are destined for the maintenance, either of ourselves or others, while engaged in labour. If it be thought that such articles, since they are devoted to our present subsistence, should not be accounted capital, it should be recollected that they are for our subsistence while engaged in labour to produce articles intended for future use, and for that object only; and therefore are not, in their ulterior destination, intended for present but for future gratification. Besides that, in civilized life, the work of industry is carried on, for the most part, by persons who are not the owners of the capital employed, and who labour for those who are; in which case, the food for their support is clearly not for our present enjoyment, but to be expended in maintaining them to procure something which may contribute to our wants hereafter.

Hence, for the purpose of our discussions, capital is distinguished from the other objects of stock, not in every instance from any real difference in the objects themselves, which often admit of being applied either as capital or as revenue, but from the use to which they are intended to be applied.

Such are the principal items that compose the first kind of capital before spoken of; or what may be called the instruments or tools which man employs to aid his labour in the works necessary to procure subsistence, and acquire riches.

The second kind of capital consists chiefly of the two following descriptions of objects.

1. The seed to be sown, and the useful plants in a more or less advanced state of growth, from which a future produce is to spring; the domestic animals for breeding, or in progress of rearing and fattening for the market; the materials, whether altogether rude, or more or less manufactured, of clothes, furniture, tools, buildings, and other things, such as wool, flax, hemp, cotton, silk, leather, wood, metals, and the like, that are not yet made up, but which industry is to fashion and convert into finished articles adapted to use. Raw materials, it is true, are often the spontaneous offering of nature, and therefore may be thought not properly to belong to capital. But when they have been, as is most commonly the case, collected, perhaps from distant countries, brought thence into store, and preserved by previous labour, they come completely within the ideas that we ascribe to capital. Besides, raw materials are very frequently the products of the cultivation of the soil, which antecedent industry has contributed to raise.

On the objects which compose the description of articles of capital in question, productive industry has been but partially exercised, and remains yet to be further exerted to render them fit for use. On the objects that compose the other description, of which we shall now speak, productive industry has completed its work, and there remains nothing more to be done, but that distributive industry should convey them at the proper time and in suitable quantities to their consumers. This description consists,

2. In the finished products of every kind in the hands of the producers and dealers, not yet sold, but which are to be distributed to the users or consumers, and hereafter to be employed by them, either as capital in the prosecution of further labours, or as objects of use or consumption merely, of which the last end both of productive and distributive industry is ready to be accomplished, in the support and gratification which that use or consumption may afford. Of this kind are, the stock of corn and other provisions and fuel laid up in store, in the possession of the farmer, grazier, butcher, &c. ; the goods