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

for sale and when the menial servants are employed merely for the comfort of the employer. A man may and often does grow poor by employing people to make “particular subjects or vendible commodities” for his own consumption, and an innkeeper may and often does grow rich by employing menial servants. ↩

But in the “Introduction and Plan of the Work,” “useful” is coupled with “productive,” and used as equivalent to it. ↩

It must be observed that in this paragraph produce is not used in the ordinary economic sense of income or net produce, but as including all products, e.g., the oil used in weaving machinery as well as the cloth. ↩

The question first propounded, whether profits form a larger proportion of the produce, is wholly lost sight of. With a stock larger in proportion to the produce, a lower rate of profit may give a larger proportion of the produce. ↩

Viz., Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, Pau, Metz, Besançon and Douai. —⁠Encyclopédie, tom. xii, 1765, s.v. Parlement ↩

In Lectures, pp. 154⁠–⁠156, the idleness of Edinburgh and suchlike places compared with Glasgow is attributed simply to the want of independence in the inhabitants. The introduction of revenue and capital is the fruit of study of the physiocratic doctrines. ↩

This paradox is arrived at through a confusion between the remuneration of the labourers who produce the additions to the capital and the additions themselves. What is really saved is the additions to the capital, and these are not consumed. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “it.” ↩

Misprinted “instance” in ed. 5, and consequently in some modern editions. ↩

“Impoverished” is here equivalent to “made poor,” i.e., ruined, not merely to “made poorer.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “is.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “1701.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “the next year.” ↩

As suggested by Germain Garnier’s note on this passage (Recherches sur la Nature et les Causes de la Richesse des Nations, 1802, tom. ii, p. 346), this was doubtless the Count of Bruhl, Minister and Great Chamberlain to the King of Poland, who left at his death 365 suits of clothes, all very rich. Jonas Hanway (Historical Account of the British Trade Over the Caspian Sea, with a Journal of Travels from London Through Russia Into Persia, and Back Through Russia, Germany and Holland, 1753, vol. ii, p. 230) says this count had 300 or 400 suits of rich clothes, and had “collected all the finest colours of all the finest cloths, velvets, and silks of all the manufactures, not to mention the different kinds of lace and embroideries of Europe,” and also pictures and books, at Dresden. He died in 1764. ↩

This was the Castle Inn at Marlborough, which ceased to be an inn and became Marlborough College in 1843, thus undergoing another vicissitude. ↩

The innkeeper, Mrs. Walker, a zealous Jacobite, refused an offer of fifty guineas for the bed, but presented it about 1764 to the Earl of Elgin (John Fernie, History of the Town and Parish of Dunfermline, 1815, p. 71), and its remains now form a mantelpiece in the dining-room at Broomhall, near Dunfermline. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “though.” ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “etc.” ↩

Lectures, p. 220. ↩

Locke, Some Considerations, ed. of 1696, pp. 6, 10, 11, 81; Law, Money and Trade, 2nd ed., 1720, p. 17; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. xxii, ch. vi. Locke and Law suppose that the rate rises and falls with the quantity of money, and Montesquieu specifically attributes the historical fall to the discovery of the American mines. Cantillon disapproves of the common and received idea that an increase of effective money diminishes the rate of interest. —⁠Essai, pp. 282⁠–⁠285; see Lectures, pp. 219, 220 ↩

In his essay, “Of Interest,” in Political Discourses, 1752. ↩

Above, here. ↩

This seems obvious, but it was distinctly denied by Locke, Some Considerations, pp. 83, 84. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “its.” ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “immediately” here or seven lines lower down. ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “immediately.” ↩

Below, here. ↩

Possibly the supposed authority for this statement is Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv., xxi, ch. vi.: “L’Egypte éloignée par la religion et par les mœurs de toute communication avec les étrangers, ne faisait guère de commerce au-dehors.⁠ ⁠… Les Egyptiens furent si peu jaloux du commerce du dehors qu’ils laissèrent celui de la mer rouge à toutes les petites nations qui y eurent quelque port.” ↩

If this doctrine as to the advantage of quick returns had been applied earlier in the chapter, it would have made havoc of the argument as to the superiority of agriculture. ↩

The second part of this sentence is not in Ed. 1. ↩

Bk. iv. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “belong.” ↩

But why may not the labour be diverted to the production of “something for which there is a demand at home”? The “corn, woollens and hardware” immediately below perhaps suggest that it is supposed the country has certain physical characteristics which compel its inhabitants to produce particular commodities. ↩

Below, here. The