aid in the spring, the other in the autumn; one gives a day's labour
in hauling lumber, in exchange for that of another, employed in mining
coal or iron ore. Another trades the labour that has been employed in
the purchase of a plough for that of his neighbour which had been
applied to the purchase of a cradle. Exchanges being thus made on the
spot, from hour to hour and from day to day, with little or no
intervention of persons whose business is trade, their amount is
large, and, combined with those of the family, equals probably
four-fifths of the total product of the labour of the community,
leaving not more than one-fifth to be traded off with distant men; and
this proportion is often greatly diminished as with increasing
population and wealth a market is made on the land for the products of
the land.

This little community forms part of a larger one, styled a nation, the
members of which are distant hundreds or thousands of miles from each
other, and here we find difficulties tending greatly to limit the
power to trade. The man in latitude 40° may have labour to sell for
which he can find no purchaser, while he who lives in latitude 50° is
at the moment grieving to see his crop perish on the ground for want
of aid in harvest. The first may have potatoes rotting, and his wagon
and horses idle, while the second may need potatoes, and have his
lumber on his hands for want of means of transportation--yet distance
forbids exchange between them.

Again, this nation forms part of a world, the inhabitants of which are
distant tens of thousands of miles from each other, and totally unable
to effect exchanges of labour, or even of commodities, except of
certain kinds that will bear transportation to distant markets.
Commerce tends, therefore, to diminish in its amount with every