The demand for labour which such increase would occasion, by creating a competition in the market, must necessarily raise the value of labour, and, till the additional number of hands required were reared, the increased funds would be distributed to the same number of persons as before the increase, and therefore every labourer would live comparatively at his ease.

But perhaps Dr Adam Smith errs in representing every increase of the revenue or stock of a society as an increase of these funds.

Such surplus stock or revenue will, indeed, always be considered by the individual possessing it as an additional fund from which he may maintain more labour: but it will not be a real and effectual fund for the maintenance of an additional number of labourers, unless the whole, or at least a great part of this increase of the stock or revenue of the society, be convertible into a proportional quantity of provisions; and it will not be so convertible where the increase has arisen merely from the produce of labour, and not from the produce of land.

A distinction will in this case occur, between the number of hands which the stock of the society could employ, and the number which its territory can maintain.
To explain myself by an instance.

Dr Adam Smith defines the wealth of a nation to consist.