Amongst the causes of the decline of wealthy nations, this then is one.  The great lose sight of the origin of their wealth, and cease to consider, that all wealth originates in labour, and that, therefore, the industrious and productive classes are the sinews of riches and power.  The French nation, to which we have had occasion to allude already, was in this situation before the revolution.  Rome was so likewise before its fall.  We are not, however, to expect to find this as a principal cause in the fall of all nations; many of them fell from exterior and not interior causes.  Venice, Genoa, and all the places that flourished in the middle ages, fell from other causes.  Whatever their internal energy might have been, their fate could not have been altered, nor their fall prevented.  The case is different with nations of which the extent is sufficiently great to protect them against the attacks of their enemies; and where the local situation is such as to secure them from a change taking place in the channels of commerce, a cause of decline which is not to be resisted by any power inherent in a nation itself.

In Spain and Portugal the internal causes are the preponderating ones, and, in some measure, though not altogether so, in Holland.  If England should ever fall, internal causes must have a great share in the catastrophe.  In this inquiry, then, we must consider the interior state of the country as of great importance.

When property is very unequally divided, the monied capital of a nation, upon the employment of which, next to its industry, its wealth, or revenue, depend, begins to be applied less advantageously.  A preference is given to employments, by which money is got with most ease and [end of page #133] certainty, though in less quantity.  A preference also is given to lines of business that are reckoned the most noble and independent.

Manufacturers aspire to become merchants, and merchants to become mere lenders of money, or agents.  The detail is done by brokers, by men who take the trouble, and understand the nature of the particular branches they undertake, but who furnish no capital.

The Dutch were the greatest example of this.  Independent of those great political events, which have, as it were, completed the ruin of their country, they had long ceased to give that great encouragement to manufactures, which had, at first, raised them to wealth and power in so surprising a manner.  They had, in the latter times, become agents for others, rather than merchants on their own account; so that the capital, which, at one time, brought in, probably, twenty or twenty-five per cent. annually, and which had, even at a late period, produced ten or fifteen, was employed in a way that scarcely produced three.

If it were possible to employ large capitals with as much advantage, and to make them set in motion and maintain as much industry as small ones are made to do, there would scarcely be any limit to the accumulation of money in a country; but a vast variety of causes operate on preventing this.