The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (best novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

Money and Coins, pt. i, §§ 22⁠–⁠27, and cp. Lectures, pp. 182⁠–⁠185. ↩

Plin. Historia Naturalis lib. 33 cap. 3. —⁠Smith

“Servius rex primus signavit aes. Antea rudi usos Romæ Timæus tradit.” Ed. 1 reads “authority of one Remeus, an ancient author,” Remeus being the reading in the edition of Pliny in Smith’s library, cp. Bonar’s Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith, 1894, p. 87. Ed. 1 does not contain the note. —⁠Cannan ↩

Ed. 1 reads “weighing them.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “with the trouble.” ↩

Aristotle, Politics, 1257a 38⁠–⁠41; quoted by Pufendorf, De Jure Naturæ et Gentium, lib. v, cap. i, § 12. ↩

The aulnager measured woollen cloth in England under 25 Ed. III, st. 4, c. 1. See John Smith, Chronicon Rusticum-Commerciale or Memoirs of Wool, 1747, vol. i, p. 37. The stampmasters of linen cloth in the linen districts of Scotland were appointed under 10 Ann., c. 21, to prevent “diverse abuses and deceits” which “have of late years been used in the manufacturies of linen cloth⁠ ⁠… with respect to the lengths, breadths and unequal sorting of yarn, which leads to the great debasing and undervaluing of the said linen cloth both at home and in foreign parts.” —⁠Statutes of the Realm, vol. ix, p. 682 ↩

Genesis 23:16. ↩

“King William the First, for the better pay of his warriors, caused the firmes which till his time had for the most part been answered in victuals, to be converted in pecuniam numeratam.” —⁠Lowndes, Report Containing an Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins, 1695, p. 4. Hume, whom Adam Smith often follows, makes no such absurd statement, History, ed. of 1773, vol. i, pp. 225, 226. ↩

Lowndes, Essay, p. 4. ↩

Above, p. 26. ↩

The Assize of Bread and Ale, 51 Hen. III, contains an elaborate scale beginning, “When a quarter of wheat is sold for 12d. then wastel bread of a farthing shall weigh 6l. and 16s.” and goes on to the figures quoted in the text above. The statute is quoted at secondhand from Martin Folkes’ Table of English Silver Coins with the same object by Harris, Essay Upon Money and Coins, pt. i, § 29, but Harris does not go far enough in the scale to bring in the penny as a weight. As to this scale see below, here and here through here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “twenty, forty and forty-eight pennies.” Garnier, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, par Adam Smith, 1802, tom. v, p. 55, in a note on this passage says that the sou was always twelve deniers. ↩

Hume, History of England, ed. of 1773, i, p. 226. Fleetwood, Chronicon Preciosum, 1707, p. 30. These authorities say there were 48 shillings in the pound, so that 240 pence would still make £1. ↩

Harris, Money and Coins, pt. i, § 29. ↩

“It is thought that soon after the Conquest a pound sterling was divided into twenty shillings.” —⁠Hume, History of England, ed. of 1773, vol. i, p. 227 ↩

Pliny, Historia Naturalis, lib. xxxiii, cap. iii.; see below, here through here. ↩

Harris, Money and Coins, p. i, § 30, note, makes the French livre about one seventieth part of its original value. ↩

The subject of debased and depreciated coinage occurs again below, here, here, here through here, and here through here. One of the reasons why gold and silver became the most usual forms of money is dealt with below, here through here. See Coin and Money in the index. ↩

In Lectures, pp. 182⁠–⁠190, where much of this chapter is to be found, money is considered “first as the measure of value and then as the medium of permutation or exchange.” Money is said to have had its origin in the fact that men naturally fell upon one commodity with which to compare the value of all other commodities. When this commodity was once selected it became the medium of exchange. In this chapter money comes into use from the first as a medium of exchange, and its use as a measure of value is not mentioned. The next chapter explains that it is vulgarly used as a measure of value because it is used as an instrument of commerce or medium of exchange. ↩

Lectures, p. 157. Law, Money and Trade, 1705, ch. i (followed by Harris, Money and Coins, pt. i, § 3), contrasts the value of water with that of diamonds. The cheapness of water is referred to by Plato, Euthydem. 304 B., quoted by Pufendorf, De Jure Naturæ et Gentium, lib. v, cap. i, § 6; cp. Barbeyrac’s note on § 4. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “subject which is.” ↩

“La richesse en elle-même n’est autre chose que la nourriture, les commodités et les agréments de la vie.” —⁠Cantillon, Essai, pp. 1, 2 ↩

“Everything in the world is purchased by labour.” —⁠Hume, “Of Commerce,” in Political Discourses, 1752, p. 12 ↩

“Also riches joined with liberality is Power, because it procureth friends and servants: without liberality not so, because