ABSTRACT
Commerce produces nothing and yet enriches the merchant. He is a middleman who levies a tax for arranging to collect and distribute merchandise already existing. Also, by exhibiting or advertising his wares, he may create a market for them where they were not previously required. Manufacture may thus be stimulated in one place and agriculture in another, and a division of labour established on a larger scale than would have been possible without foreign exchanges. The necessaries of life being now more abundant in both places, population will increase and the poor will become more numerous, while the merchant grows richer, since he now levies his tax, though diminished for each consumer, on a larger community. At the same time the variety of articles offered for sale will dazzle the eye, and everybody will be tempted to indulge more and more in superfluities. Thus commerce, without directly producing wealth, indirectly produces luxury.
