"An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adam Smith)

give occasion to any considerable inland navigation. The commerce,
besides, which any nation can carry on by means of a river which does
not break itself into any great number of branches or canals, and
which runs into another territory before it reaches the sea, can never
be very considerable, because it is always in the power of the nations
who possess that other territory to obstruct the communication between
the upper country and the sea. The navigation of the Danube is of very
little use to the different states of Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary,
in comparison of what it would be, if any of them possessed the whole
of its course, till it falls into the Black sea.




CHAPTER IV.

OF THE ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY.

When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it
is but a very small part of a man's wants which the produce of his own
labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by
exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which
is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce
of other men's labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by
exchanging, or becomes, in some measure, a merchant, and the society
itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.

But when the division of labour first began to take place, this power
of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and
embarrassed in its operations. One man, we shall suppose, has more of
a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another
has less. The former, consequently, would be glad to dispose of; and
the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter
should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no
exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more meat in his
shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would
each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have
nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of
their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all
the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. No exchange
can, in this case, be made between them. He cannot be their merchant,
nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less
serviceable to one another. In order to avoid the inconveniency of
such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after
the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have
endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all
times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a
certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined
few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of
their industry. Many different commodities, it is probable, were