第125页 / 共2651页

In the most improved societies, however, there are always a few

commodities of which the price resolves itself into two parts

only: the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and a still

smaller number, in which it consists altogether in the wages of

labour. In the price of sea-fish, for example, one part pays the

labour of the fisherman, and the other the profits of the capital

employed in the fishery. Rent very seldom makes any part of it,

though it does sometimes, as I shall shew hereafter. It is

otherwise, at least through the greater part of Europe, in river

fisheries. A salmon fishery pays a rent; and rent, though it

cannot well be called the rent of land, makes a part of the price

of a salmon, as well as wares and profit. In some parts of

Scotland, a few poor people make a trade of gathering, along the

sea-shore, those little variegated stones commonly known by the

name of Scotch pebbles.