The French economists consider all labour employed in manufactures as unproductive.

Comparing it with the labour employed upon land, I should be perfectly disposed to agree with them, but not exactly for the reasons which they give.
They say that labour employed upon land is productive because the produce, over and above completely paying the labourer and the farmer, affords a clear rent to the landlord, and that the labour employed upon a piece of lace is unproductive because it merely replaces the provisions that the workman had consumed, and the stock of his employer, without affording any clear rent whatever.

But supposing the value of the wrought lace to be such as that, besides paying in the most complete manner the workman and his employer, it could afford a clear rent to a third person, it appears to me that, in comparison with the labour employed upon land, it would be still as unproductive as ever.

Though, according to the reasoning used by the French economists, the man employed in the manufacture of lace would, in this case, seem to be a productive labourer.

Yet according to their definition of the wealth of a state, he ought not to be considered in that light.