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

in this case they defend not but expose men to envy as a prey.” —⁠Leviathan, I, x ↩

This paragraph appears first in Additions and Corrections and ed. 3. ↩

The absence of any reference to the lengthy discussion of this subject in chap. x is curious. ↩

Below, here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “there.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “Equal quantities of labour must at all times and places be.” ↩

The words from “In his ordinary state of health” to “dexterity” appear first in ed. 2. ↩

“Be above all things careful how you make any composition or agreement for any long space of years to receive a certain price of money for the corn that is due to you, although for the present it may seem a tempting bargain.” —⁠Fleetwood, Chronicon Preciosum, p. 174 ↩

Above, here through here. ↩

Below, here through here. ↩

C. 6, which applies to Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester and Eton, and provides that no college shall make any lease for lives or years of tithes, arable land or pasture without securing that at least one-third of “tholde” (presumably the whole not the old) rent should be paid in coin. The Act was promoted by Sir Thomas Smith to the astonishment, it is said, of his fellow-members of Parliament, who could not see what difference it would make. “But the knight took the advantage of the present cheapness; knowing hereafter grain would grow dearer, mankind daily multiplying, and licence being lately given for transportation. So that at this day much emolument redoundeth to the colleges in each university, by the passing of this Act; and though their rents stand still, their revenues do increase.” —⁠Fuller, History of the University of Cambridge, 1655, p. 144, quoted in Strype, Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, 1698, p. 192 ↩

Commentaries, 1765, vol. ii, p. 322. ↩

Above, here. ↩

Below, here through here. ↩

Below, here, here, and here. ↩

Below, chap. xi, see esp. here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “it.” ↩

Ed. 1 places the “for example” here. ↩

“In England and this part of the world, wheat being the constant and most general food, not altering with the fashion, not growing by chance: but as the farmers sow more or less of it, which they endeavour to proportion, as near as can be guessed to the consumption, abstracting the overplus of the precedent year in their provision for the next; and vice versa, it must needs fall out that it keeps the nearest proportion to its consumption (which is more studied and designed in this than other commodities) of anything, if you take it for seven or twenty years together: though perhaps the scarcity of one year, caused by the accidents of the season, may very much vary it from the immediately precedent or following. Wheat, therefore, in this part of the world (and that grain which is the constant general food of any other country) is the fittest measure to judge of the altered value of things in any long tract of time: and therefore wheat here, rice in Turkey, etc., is the fittest thing to reserve a rent in, which is designed to be constantly the same for all future ages. But money is the best measure of the altered value of things in a few years: because its vent is the same and its quantity alters slowly. But wheat, or any other grain, cannot serve instead of money: because of its bulkiness and too quick change of its quantity.” —⁠Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money, ed. of 1696, pp. 74, 75 ↩

Ed. 1 reads “than one which sells for an ounce at London to.” ↩

Below, chap. xi passim. ↩

Pliny, lib. xxxiii c. 3. —⁠Smith

This note is not in ed. 1. —⁠Cannan ↩

Eds. 1 and 2 read “always.” ↩

Habere aes alienum. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “sterling.” ↩

Ed. 1 places the “originally” here. ↩

Ed. 1 places the “only” here. ↩

The Act, 19 Hen. VII, c. 5, ordered that certain gold coins should pass for the sums for which they were coined, and 5 and 6 Ed. VI prescribed penalties for giving or taking more than was warranted by proclamation. The value of the guinea was supposed to be fixed by the proclamation of 1717, for which see Economic Journal, March, 1898. Lead tokens were coined by individuals in the reign of Elizabeth. James I coined copper farthing tokens, but abstained from proclaiming them as money of that value. In 1672 copper halfpennies were issued, and both halfpennies and farthings were ordered to pass as money of those values in all payments under sixpence. —⁠Harris, Money and Coins, pt. i, § 39; Liverpool, Treatise on the Coins of the Realm, 1805, pp. 130, 131 ↩

Ed. 1 reads “sum.” ↩

I.e., if 21 pounds may be paid with 420 silver shillings or with 20 gold guineas it does not matter whether a “pound” properly signifies 20 silver shillings or ²⁰⁄₂₁ of a gold guinea. ↩

This happens to have been usually, though not always, true, but it is so simply because it has