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406 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
,
the comfort and enjoyment of life depends. 1 Yet all
this work is necessarily local; and this characteristic
equally belongs to such industries as agriculture, min-
ing and fishing, so far as a community possesses lands
and mines and fisheries of ' its own. It follows from
this that the prosperity of every community, if it has
the means of obtaining ab e~tra certain essential com-
modities for use in other proauction, or which are con-
sidered indlst,ensable in consumption according to the
scale of living suitable to the degree of civilisation
arrived at, depends solely,on the mutual industry of
the members of the community itself. There is nothing
mysterious about the matter. If the butchers, the
bakers, the tailors, the dressmakers and all the others
are each competent and industrious in their own call-
ing, the whole community will reap the benefit, no one
to say them nay. Whatever foreign tariffs and foreign
bounties may be, the community itself has its own affairs
and its own prosperity substantially in its own hands.
The condition laid down is no doubt important and
is of varying degrees of importance in different com-
munities. It is conceivable theoretically that a given
community might have so much difficulty in producing
things necessary for it to obtain ab extra what is indis-
pensable to its existence that no course is open to it
but emigration from the unfavourable spot; but in
practice there are no such communities of any real
importance. 2 The distribution of natural resources and
hereditary skill and expertness is such that no important
communities exist which do not possess or produce
something useful to others, and by which the things it
wants ab extra can be more or less readily obtained.
Objection will be made by some that this mode of
1 The proportion of the working population in England engaged in.
manufacturing for export, or in home manufactures where forei'gn
competition is possible, does/not probably exceed 20 per cent. See
supra, vol. ii., p .• 1.51.
• Mr. Balfour's reference to the island of St. Vincent, which can
grow nothing but sugar, was a mere academical illustration.