The fact really is, that if we once desert matter in the definition of wealth, there is no subsequent line of demarcation which has any tolerable degree of distinctness, or can be maintained with any tolerable consistency, till we have included such a mass of immaterial objects as utterly to confuse the meaning of the term, and render it impossible to speak with any approach towards precision, either of the wealth of different individuals, or different nations. If then we wish, with M. Say, to make political economy a positive science, founded on experience, and capable of making known its results, we must be particularly careful in defining its principal term, to embrace only those objects, the increase or decrease of which is capable of being estimated; and the line which it seems most natural and useful to draw, is that which separates material from immaterial objects. Adam Smith has nowhere given a very regular and formal definition of wealth; but that the meaning which he attaches to the term is confined to material objects is, throughout his work, sufficiently manifest. His prevailing description of wealth may be said to be, “the annual produce of the land and labour.” The objections to it as a definition are, that it refers to the sources of wealth before we are told what wealth is, and that it is not sufficiently discriminate, as it would include all the useless and unappropriated products of the earth, as well as those which are appropriated and enjoyed by man. To avoid these objections, and to keep at an equal distance from a too confined, or a too indiscriminate sense of the term, I should define wealth to be the material objects, necessary, useful, or agreeable to man, which are voluntarily appropriated by individuals* or nations. The definition thus limited includes
