Selections from The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
Language: English
Pages: 115
ISBN: 0882950932
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This carefully annotated selection features the main analysis of the operation of an economic system, the introductory chapter of the great attack on mercantilism, and portions of the analysis of the functions of the state-Books I, IV, and V. Edited by George J. Stigler, this useful volume includes an introduction and a bibliography.
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quantity of bread and beer which he can afterwards purchase. It is more natural and obvious to him, therefore, to estimate their value by the quantity of money, the commodity for which he immediately exchanges them, than by that of bread and beer, the commodities for which he can exchange them only by the intervention of another commodity; and rather to say that his butcher's meat is worth threepence or fourpence a pound, than that it is worth three or four pounds of bread, or three or four'
that to attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils. As the expense of purchasing those unnecessary utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the quantity or goodness of the family provisions, so the expense of purchasing an unnecessary quantity
industry produces a great annual surplus of such manufactu.\"eS, which are usually exported to foreign countries, may carry on for many years a very expensive foreign war, without either exporting any considerable quantity of gold and silver, or even having any such quantity to export. A considerable part of the annual surplus of its manufactures must, indeed, in this case be exported without bringing back any returns to the country, though it does to the. merchant, the government purchasing of
countries, but either the rude produce of the soil, of which no considerable part could be spared from the home consumption, or a few manufactures of the coarsest kind, of which, as well as of the rude produce, the transportation was too expensive. This inability did not arise from the want of money, but of the finer and more improved manufactures. Buying and selling was transacted by means of money in England then, as well as now. The quantity of circulating money must have borne the same
not only their herds and Hocks, but their women and children, become the booty of the conqueror. Even the greater part of those who survive the action are obliged to submit to him for the sake of immediate subsistence. The rest are commonly dissipated and dispersed in the desert. The ordinary life, the ordinary exercises of a Tartar or Arab, prepare him sufficiently for war. Running, ' 11Vfestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing 'he bow, &c. are the common pastimes of those who
