Usefulness of dealers.

13. The usefulness of people betaking and confining themselves to particular arts, is very manifest. And from hence naturally arise employments for another class of men; I mean, dealers of all sorts, from the meanest shopkeeper to the merchant: These, without applying themselves to any of the manual arts, are busied in collecting, and afterwards in distributing, the various sorts of products or commodities; and by their arts and industry, the products of the remotest places are collected, as it were, into grand store-houses; where every one may be readily supplied, according to his desires.

The dealers, like the artificers, are subdivided into distinct trades, and so, become mutually serviceable to each other. Without this subdivision, commerce would have been strangely embarrassed; many parts of it must have been totally neglected; and a monopoly here would have like bad effects, as if men tried themselves to make all the things they wanted.