164 ON THE DISTINCTION

of commodities. It is evidently used in a collective
 sense ; it is a term expressive of aggregation,
 if not of plenty. The adjective rich
is never applied but to denote the possession of
abundance, or the means of commanding it,
and it may be doubted whether the substantive
 riches is ever used without an implication
 of the same idea. If it were merely
a general expression for commodities, without
any accessory idea, it might be discarded from
our speculations, and the latter word substituted
in its stead. But such an experiment would
not answer. We could not with any propriety
change the title of Adam Smith’s great work
into “ An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Commodities of Nations.” We should
approximate more nearly to the meaning of the
original, were we to translate it, “ An Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the greater or
smaller abundance of Commodities possessed
by Nations.”

Whether the idea of abundance, however,
is involved in the meaning of riches or not,