conversion and exchange, but that in the work of production the earth
aided man by increasing the _quantity_ of things to, be consumed;
whereas labour applied in other ways could change them only in their
_form_ or in their _place_, making no addition to their quantity. He,
therefore, saw clearly that the nearer the spinner and the weaver came
to the producer of food and wool, the more would be the quantity of
food and cloth to be divided between them; and thus was he led to see
how great an act of injustice it was on the part of his countrymen to
endeavour to compel the people of the world to send their raw
materials to them to be converted, at such vast loss of
transportation. He had no faith in the productive power of ships or
wagons. He knew that the barrel of flour or the bale of cotton, put
into the ship, came out a barrel of flour or a bale of cotton, the
weight of neither having been increased by the labour employed in
transporting it from this place of production to that of consumption.
He saw clearly that to place the consumer by the side of the producer
was to economize labour and aid production, and therefore to increase
the power to trade. He was, therefore, in favour of the local
application of labour and capital, by aid of which towns should grow
up in the midst of producers of food; and he believed that if "human
institutions" had not been at war with the best interests of man,
those towns would "nowhere have increased beyond what, the improvement
and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could
support." Widely different is all this from the system which builds up
London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, to be the manufacturing
centres of the world, and urges upon all nations the adoption of a
system looking directly to their maintenance and increase!

Directly opposed in this respect to Dr. Smith, Mr. McCulloch has
unbounded faith in the productive power of ships and wagons. To him--