Book Three – Chapter 03: Of the rise and progress of cities and towns after the fall of the Roman Empire

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. The inhabitants of cities and towns were, after the fall of the Roman empire, not more favoured than those of the country. They consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republics of Greece and

Book Three – Chapter 04: How the commerce of the towns contributed to the improvement of the country

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. The increase and riches of commercial and manufacturing towns contributed to the improvement and cultivation of the countries to which they belonged in three different ways. First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country, they gave

Book Four – Introduction: Of systems of political economy

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for

Book Four – Chapter 01: Of the principle of the commercial or mercantile system

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. That wealth consists in money, or and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce and as the measure of value. In consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we

1 Comments

Book Four – Chapter 02: Of restraints upon the importation from foreign countries of such goods as can be produced at home

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. By restraining, either by high duties or by absolute prohibitions, the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them.

1 Comments

Book Four – Chapter 03: Of the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. PART I Of the Unreasonableness of those Restraints even upon the Principles of the Commercial System To lay extraordinary restraints upon the those particular countries with which the importation of goods of almost all kinds from balance of trade is supposed to be

Book Four – Chapter 04: Of drawbacks

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Merchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the home market, but desire likewise the most extensive foreign sale for their goods. Their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore can seldom procure them any monopoly there. They are

1 Comments

Book Four – Chapter 05: Of bounties

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Bounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently petitioned for, and sometimes granted to the produce of particular branches of domestic industry. By means of them our merchants and manufacturers, it is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap, or

1 Comments

Book Four – Chapter 06: Of treaties of commerce

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. When a nation binds itself by treaty either to permit the entry of certain goods from one foreign country which it prohibits from all others, or to exempt the goods of one country from duties to which it subjects those of all others,

1 Comments

Book Four – Chapter 07: Of colonies

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. PART 1 Of the Motives for establishing new Colonies The interest which occasioned the first settlement of the different European colonies in America and the West Indies was not altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the establishment of those of

Book Four – Chapter 08: Conslusion of the mercantile system

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. Conclusion of the Mercantile System Though the encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities it seems to follow an opposite

Book Four – Chapter 09: Of the agricultural systems, or of those systems of political economy

Source: Smith Adam (1776), The Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London. The agricultural systems of political economy will not require so long an explanation as that which I have thought it necessary to bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system. That system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the

2 Comments

Book Five – Chapter 01: Of the expences of the sovereign or commonwealth

Part Third – Of the Expense of Defence THE first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the viol­ence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force. But the expense both of preparing this military force in time of peace, and of employing it

2 Comments

Book Five – Chapter 02: Of the sources of the general or public revenue of the society

THE revenue which must defray, not only the expense of defending the so­ciety and of supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, but all the other necessary expenses of government for which the constitution of the state has not provided any particular revenue, may be drawn either, first, from some fund which peculiarly belongs

1 Comments

Book Five – Chapter 03: Of public debts

In that rude state of society which precedes the extension of commerce and the improvement of manufactures, when those expensive luxuries which commerce and manufactures can alone introduce are altogether unknown, the person who possesses a large revenue, I have endeavoured to show in the third book of this Inquiry, can spend or enjoy

2 Comments