Of the different modes of spending money, some are more favourable than others to the increase of national wealth—ibid.
Those branches of employment which require a capital, never fail to call forth more or less labour; and thus contribute, in a greater or less degree, to increase the extent of national labour.
Capital can be employed only in four ways:
1. In cultivating and improving the earth, or, in other words, multiplying its rude produce;
2. In supporting manufactures;
3. In buying by the gross, to sell in the same manner;
4. In buying by the gross, to sell by retail.
These four modes of employing capital are equally necessary to, and serve mutually to support, each other. The first supports, beyond all comparison, the greatest number of productive hands; the second occupies more than the two remaining; and the fourth the fewest of any.
Capital may be employed, according to the third mode, in three different ways; each contributing in a very different degree to the support and encouragement of national industry.
When capital is employed in exchanging one description of the produce of national industry for another, it then supports as great a portion of industry as can be done by any capital employed in commerce.