it—profits would be alike (or equivalent) all over the world, and all things would be produced in the places where the same labor and capital would produce them in greatest quantity and of best quality. A tendency may, even now, be observed toward such a state of things: capital is becoming more and more cosmopolitan; there is so much greater similarity of manners and institutions than formerly, and so much less alienation of feeling, among the more civilized countries, that both population and capital now move from one of those countries to another on much less temptation than heretofore. But there are still extraordinary differences, both of wages and of profits, between different parts of the world.
Between all distant places, therefore, in some degree, but especially between different countries (whether under the same supreme government or not), there may exist great inequalities in the return to labor and capital, without causing them to move from one place to the other in such quantity as to level