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

Ed. 1 reads “If it.” ↩

Berkeley, Querist, qu. 62, asks “whether a country inhabited by people well fed, clothed and lodged would not become every day more populous? And whether a numerous stock of people in such circumstances would not constitute a flourishing nation?” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “tear and wear” here and in the three other cases where the phrase is used on this page. ↩

This is a more favourable view than that taken in Lectures, p. 257. ↩

De morbis artificum diatriba 1700, translated into English (A Treatise on the Diseases of Tradesmen) by R. James, 1746. ↩

Misprinted “taillies” in Eds. 3⁠–⁠5. ↩

Recherches sur la population des généralités d’Auvergne, de Lyon, de Rouen, et de quelques provinces et villes du royaume, avec des réflections sur la valeur du bled tant en France qu’en Angleterre, depuis 1674 jusqu’en 1764, par M. Messance, receveur des tailles de l’élection de Saint-Etienne, 1766, pp. 287⁠–⁠292, 305⁠–⁠308. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “continued to do so.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “that the increase of its price does not compensate the diminution of its quantity.” The meaning is that the increase in the amount paid for a given quantity of labour is more than counterbalanced by the diminution in the quantity required. The statement is repeated below, here. ↩

This statement is somewhat amplified below, here, where the increasing intensity of the competition between the owners of capital is attributed to the gradually increasing difficulty of finding “a profitable method of employing any new capital.” ↩

Defined above, here. ↩

But that interest will not always bear the same proportion to profit is recognised below, here through here. ↩

C. 9, “an act against usury.” On the ground that previous Acts and laws had been obscure it repeals them all, and prohibits the repurchase of goods sold within three months before, and the obtaining by any device more than 10 percent per annum for forbearing payment of money. Its real effect was to legalise interest up to 10 percent. ↩

5 & 6 Ed. VI, c. 20, forbade all interest, and repealed 37 Hen. VIII, c. 9, alleging in its preamble that that Act was not intended to allow usury, as “diverse persons blinded with inordinate love of themselves” imagined, but was intended against all usury, “and yet nevertheless the same was by the said act permitted for the avoiding of a more ill and inconvenience that before that time was used.” ↩

On the ground that 5 & 6 Ed. VI, c. 20, “hath not done so much good as was hoped it should but rather the said vice of usury and especially by way of sale of wares and shifts of interest hath much more exceedingly abounded to the utter undoing of many gentlemen, merchants, occupiers and other.” ↩

C. 17, which alleges that the fall of prices which had taken place made the maintenance of “so high a rate” as 10 percent prejudicial to agriculture and commerce, and therefore reduces the maximum to 8 percent for the future. It concludes with the very empty proviso that “no words in this law contained shall be construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury in point of religion or conscience.” ↩

It had already been so reduced by a Commonwealth Act of Parliament, passed in August, 1651, which adopts the reasons given by 21 Jac. I, c. 17. But of course this, like other Acts of the Commonwealth, had to be ignored by the Restoration Parliament, which, by 12 Car. II, c. 13, remade the reduction on the grounds that the abatement of interest from 10 percent. “in former times hath been found by notable experience beneficial to the advancement of trade and improvement of lands by good husbandry, with many other considerable advantages to this nation, especially the reducing of it to a nearer proportion with foreign states with whom we traffic,” and because “in fresh memory the like fall from eight to six in the hundred by a late constant practice hath found the like success to the general contentment of this nation as is visible by several improvements,” while “it is the endeavour of some at present to reduce it back again in practice to the allowance of the statute still in force to eight in the hundred to the great discouragement of ingenuity and industry in the husbandry trade and commerce of this nation.” ↩

By 12 Ann. st. 2, c. 16, which speaks of the benefit to trade and agriculture resulting from the earlier reductions, of the burdens which the war had laid on landowners, and of the decay of foreign trade owing to the high interest and profit of money at home, which things made it “absolutely necessary to reduce the high rate of interest” to a nearer proportion with the interest allowed in foreign states. ↩

That of 1756⁠–⁠1763. ↩

Holders of 4 percent annuities who declined to accept in exchange new stock bearing interest for some years at 3½ and afterwards at 3 percent were paid off by means of money raised by a 3 percent loan in 1750. See Sinclair, History of the Public Revenue, 1785, pt. ii, p. 113. From that time till the beginning of 1755 the 3 percents were usually above par. Then they gradually sank