Countries with a temperate climate are (almost withoutexception) adapted for factories and manufacturing industry.Themoderate temperature of the air promotes the development andexertion of power far more than a hot temperature.But the severeseason of the year, which appears to the superficial observer as anunfavourable effect of nature, is the most powerful promoter ofhabits of energetic activity, of forethought, order, and economy.
A man who has the prospect before him of six months in which he isnot merely unable to obtain any fruits from the earth, but alsorequires special provisions and clothing materials for thesustenance of himself and his cattle, and for protection againstthe effects of cold, must necessarily become far more industriousand economical than the one who merely requires protection from therain, and into whose mouth the fruits are ready to drop during thewhole year.Diligence, economy, order, and forethought are at firstproduced by necessity afterwards by habit, and by the steadycultivation of those virtues.Morality goes hand in hand with theexertion of one's powers and economy, and immorality with idlenessand extravagance: each are reciprocally fertile sources, the one ofpower, the other of weakness.
An agricultural nation, which inhabits a country of temperateclimate, leaves therefore the richest part of its natural resourcesunutilised.
The school, inasmuch as, in judging the influences of climateon the production of wealth, it has not distinguished betweenagriculture and manufacturing industry, has fallen into the gravesterrors in respect to the advantages and disadvantages of protectiveregulations, which we cannot here omit thoroughly to expose,although we have already made mention of them in general termselsewhere.
In order to prove that it is foolish to seek to produceeverything in one and the same country, the school asks thequestion: whether it would be reasonable if we sought to producewine by growing grapes in Scottish and English greenhouses? It isof course possible to produce wine in this manner, only lt would beof much worse quality and more expensive than that which Englandand Scotland could procure in exchange for their manufacturedgoods.To anyone who either is unwilling or unable to penetratemore deeply into the nature of things, this argument is a strikingone, and the school is indebted to it for a large portion of itspopularity; at any rate among the French vine growers and silkmanufacturers, and among the North American cotton planters andcotton merchants.Regarded in the light of day, however, it isfundamentally false, since restrictions on commercial intercourseoperate quite differently on the productive power of agriculturethan they do on the productive power of manufacturing industry.
Let us first see how they operate on agriculture.