p 46 “Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only […] to the [employer] [labour] appear[s] sometimes to be of greater and sometimes of smaller value. […] In reality, however, it is the goods which are cheap in the one case, and dear in the other.”
p 68 “In its earliest and rudest period […] the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer.”
p 69 “[Profits] bear no proportion to the quantity, the hardship, or the ingenuity of this supposed labour of inspection and direction.”
p 70 “The labourer shares with the employer, and labour alone no longer regulates value. […] the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
p 87 “The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. […] The exclusive privileges of corporations […] are a sort of enlarged monopoly, and […] keep up the market price of particular commodities above the natural price. […] Such enhancements of the market price may last as long as the regulations of police which give occasion to them.”
p 91 “Produce is the natural wages of labour. Originally the whole belonged to the labourer. If this had continued, all things would have become cheaper, though in appearance things might have become dearer.”
p 92 “This state was ended by the appropriation of land and accumulation of stock.”
p 94 “Wages depend on contract between masters and workmen. The masters have the advantage, though less is heard of masters’ combinations than of workmen’s. But whoever images, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.”
p 108 “In the last century, […] as well as in the present, the wages of labour were higher in England than in Scotland. They have risen too considerably since that time, though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in different places, it is more difficult to ascertain how much. In 1614, the pay of a foot soldier was the same as in the present times, eight pence a day. When it was first established it would naturally be regulated by the usual wages of common labourers, the rank of people from which foot soldiers are commonly drawn.”
p 121 WAGES OF LABOUR
p 114 “High wages increase population. The progressive state is the best for the labouring poor. High wages encourage industry.”
p 110 – 113 “High earnings of labour are an advantage to the society. Poverty does not prevent births, but is unfavourable to the rearing of children, and so restrains multiplication, while the liberal reward of labour encourages it as the wear and tear of the free man must be paid for just like that of the slave, though not so extravagantly.”
p 128 “When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profits is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.”
p 132 “In a country as rich as it possibly could be, profits as well as wages would be very low, but there has never yet been any such country.”
p 136 “In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages.”
p 137 “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
p 175 – 177 town and country
p 178 “The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever. The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his funds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline.”
p 186 “Corporation laws […] give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another than to that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.”
p 194 “The common people of England, however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries never rightly understanding wherein it consists”
p 195 “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable, but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.”
p 196 “When masters combine together in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond or agreement, not to give more than a certain wage under a certain penalty. Were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept of a certain wage under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner.”
p 200 “[Rent] is a monopoly price. Wages and profit are causes of price; rent is an effect.”
p 235 “With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can posses but themselves.”
p 237 “The most abundant mines either of the precious metals or of the precious stones could add little to the wealth of the world. A produce of which the value is principally derived from its scarcity, is necessarily degraded by its abundance.”
p 237 – 238 “The abundance of food […] is the great cause of the demand both for the precious metals and the precious stones, as well as for every other conveniency […] Food not only constitutes the principal part of the riches of the world, but it is the abundance of food which gives the principal part of their value to many other sorts of riches.”
p 257 “Labour, it must be remembered, is the ultimate price which is paid for every thing, and in countries where labour is equally well rewarded, the money price of labour will be in proportion to that of the subsistence of the labourer.”
p 257 – 258 “China is a much richer country than any part of Europe, and the difference between the price of subsistence in China and in Europe is very great. Rice in China is much cheaper than wheat is any-where in Europe.”
p 258 “The difference between the money price of labour in China and in Europe, is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence; because the real recompense of labour is higher in Europe than in China, the greater part of Europe being in an improving state, while China seems to be standing still.”
p 259 “When we are in want of necessaries we must part with all superfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opulence and prosperity; so it sinks in times of poverty and distress. It is otherwise with necessaries. Their real price, the quantity of labour which they can purchase or command, rises in times of poverty and distress, and sinks in times of opulence and prosperity, which are always times of great abundance.”
p 275 “Since the discovery of America, the greater part of Europe has been much improved.”
p 276 “Even Mexico and Peru […] their inhabitants were much more ignorant than the Tartars of the Ukraine are at present. […] All the ancient arts of Mexico and Peru have never furnished one single manufacture to Europe.”
p 279 “The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is by all accounts much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in Europe.”
p 288 “The whole quantity of a cheap commodity brought to market, is commonly not only greater, but of greater value, than the whole quantity of a dear one. […] There are so many more purchases for the cheap than for the dear commodity, that, not only a greater quantity of it, but a greater value, can commonly be disposed of.”
p 291 “Though it is not very profitable, that any part of a tax which is not only imposed upon one of the most proper subjects of taxation, a mere luxury and superfluity, but which affords so very important a revenue, as the tax upon silver, will ever be given up as long as it is possible to pay it; yet the same impossibility of paying it, which in 1736 made it necessary to reduce it from one-fifth to one-tenth, may in time make it necessary to reduce it still further.”
p 321 “The discovery of new mines […] is a matter of the greatest uncertainty, and such as no human skill or industry can ensure. All indications, it is acknowledged, are doubtful […] In this search there seem to be no certain limits either to the possible success, or to the possible disappointment of human industry […] Whether the one or the other of those two events may happen to take place, is of very little importance to the real wealth and prosperity of the world […] its real value, [of land and labour] would be precisely the same [regardless of the amount of gold and silver]. The cheapness and abundance of gold and silver plate, would be the sole advantage which the world could derive from the one event, and the dearness and scarcity of those trifling superfluities the only inconveniency it could suffer from the other.”
p 322 – 323 “the increase of [Europe’s] manufacturers and agriculture […] has arisen […] from the fall of the feudal system, and from the establishment of a government which afforded to industry the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour.”
p 326 “The land constitutes by far the greatest, the most important, and the most durable part of the wealth of every extensive country.”
p 327 “If [a] rise in the price of some sorts of provisions be owing to a fall in the value of silver, [the] pecuniary reward [of the inferior public servants], provided it was not too large before, ought certainly to be augmented in proportion to the extent of this fall. If it is not augmented, their real recompense will evidently be so much diminished.”
p 337 – 339 “The interest of [landlords] is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of the society. […] proprietors of land can never misled [the public] with a view to promote the interest of their own particular order; at least, if they have any tolerable knowledge of that interest […] [However, their] indolence, which is the natural effect of [^.. their] revenue cost[ing] them neither labour nor care […] [; that is] the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind which is necessary in order to foresee and understand the consequences of any public regulation. […] The wages of the labourer […] are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising […] The order of proprietors may, perhaps, gain more by the prosperity of the society, than that of labourers: but there is no order that suffers so cruelly from its decline. But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connexion with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed. In the public deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own particular purposes. […] The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit […] is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of [employers] has not the same connexion with the general interest of the society as that of the other two. Merchants and master manufacturers are […] the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of the public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding […] Their superiority over [landlords] is, not […] in their knowledge of the public interest, as in […] their own interest. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon is generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest and not his, was the interest of the public. […] The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” p 361 “A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands, whether it be his own or borrowed of other people, in some [combination of immediate consumption, fixed capital and circulating capital].”
p 366 “The undertaker of some great manufactory who employs a thousand a-year in the maintenance of his machinery, if he can reduce this expense to five hundred, will naturally employ the other five hundred in purchasing an additional quantity of materials to be wrought up by an additional number of workmen.”
p 371 “Money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade, though it makes a part and a very valuable part of the capital, makes no part of the revenue of the society to which it belongs; and though the metal pieces of which it is composed, in the course of their annual circulation, distribute to every man the revenue which properly belongs to him, they make themselves no part of that revenue.”
P 373 – 375 “When a banker sends money abroad to be exchanged for goods, either to supply the consumption of another country, in which case the profit will be an addition to the net revenue of the country, or to supply consumption (1) of luxuries, (2) of materials, tools and provisions […] If to supply luxuries, prodigality and consumption are increased […] and is in every respect hurtful to the society. […] if to supply materials, &c, a permanent fund for supporting consumption is provided.”
p 387 “A bank ought not to advance more than the amount which merchants would otherwise have to keep by them in cash.”
p 388 “It only advances to him a part of the value which he would otherwise be obliged to keep be obliged to keep by him unemployed and in ready money for answering occasional demands. [^.. p 384] Let us suppose that all the paper of a particular bank, which the circulation of the country can easily absorb and employ, amounts exactly to forty thousand pounds; and that for answering occasional demands, this bank is obliged to keep at all times in its coffers ten thousand pounds in gold and silver. Should this bank attempt to circulate fourty-four thousand pounds, the four thousand pounds which are over and above what the circulation can easily absorb and emply, will return upon it almost as fast as they are issued. For answering occasional demands, therefore, this bank ought to keep at all times in its coffers, not ten thousand pounds only, but fourteen thousand pounds. It will thus gain nothing by the interest of the four thousand pounds excessive circulation; and it will lose the whole expence of continually collecting four thousand pounds in gold and silver, which will be continually going out of its offers as fast as they are brought into them.”
p 414 “those exertions of natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments;”
p 420 “If bankers are restrained from issuing any circulating bank notes or notes payable to the bearer, for less than a certain sum; and if they are subjected to the obligation of an immediate and unconditional payment of such bank notes as soon as presented, their trade may, with safety to the public, be rendered in all other respects perfectly free. The late multiplication of banking companies […] obliges all of them to be more circumspect in their conduct, and […] to guard themselves against those malicious runs, which the rivalship of so many competitors is always ready to bring upon them. It restrains the circulation of each particular company within a narrower circle, and reduces their circulating notes to a smaller number. By dividing the whole circulation into a greater number of parts, the failure of any one company, an accident which, in the course of things, must sometimes happen, becomes of less consequence to the public.”
p 428 “Our ancestors were idle for want of a sufficient encouragement to industry.”
p 430 – 431 “Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness. […] Parsimony, by increasing the fund which is destined for the maintenance of productive hands, tends to increase the number of those hands whose labour adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed.”
p 490 fideicommisses p 505 demesnes p 523 allodially
p 491 “It seldom happens […] that a great proprietor is a great improver.”
p 492 “To improve land with profit, like all other commercial projects, requires an exact attention to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very seldom capable.”
p 525 “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons. […] for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority.”
p 534 “The capital, however, that is acquired to any country by commerce and manufactures, is all a very precarious and uncertain possession, till some part of it has been secured and realised in the cultivation and improvement of its land. A merchant, […] is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. […] a very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and together with it all the industry which it supports, from one country to another.”
p 563 “By opening a new and inexhaustible market to all commodities of Europe, [the discovery of America] gave occasion to new divisions of labour and improvements of art, […] The productive powers of labour were improved, and its produce increased in all the different countries of Europe […] The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.”
p 572 – 573 “What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”
p 581 – 583 “There are two cases which are exceptional [regarding laying a burden upon foreign industry for the encouragement of domestic industry], 1) when a particular industry is necessary for the defence of the country, like shipping, which is properly encouraged by the act of navigation, a wise act though dictated by animosity, […] As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England. [^..] and 2) when there is a tax on the produce of the like home manufacture.”
p 591 “Let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of industry they please, be restored to all his majesty’s subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers and seamen; that is, break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship”
p 591 “To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.”
p 592 “The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance.”
p 621 – 622 “nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbors. Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of any body but themselves. That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine, cannot be doubted; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it.”
p 642 – 643 “[Corn] regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain him and his family […] By regulating the money price of all other parts of the rude produce of land, it regulates that of the materials of almost all manufacturers. By regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing art and industry. And by regulating both, it regulates that of the complete manufacture. The money price of labour, and of every thing that is the produce either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or fall in proportion to the money price of corn [^..] though this proportion is different in different periods.”
p 648 – 650 “The corn bounty acts in the same way; it discourages manufactures without much benefiting farmers and country gentlemen. It is essentially serviceable only to the corn merchants. The country gentlemen established the duties on the importation of corn, and the bounty, in imitation of the manufacturers, without attending to the essential difference between corn and other goods. […] Through the world in general that value [of corn] is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain, […] Woolen or linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of all other commodities must be finally measured and determined; corn is. […] The real value of corn does not vary with those variations in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to another. It is the real value of silver which varies with them.”
p 651 “A bounty on production would be more effectual than one on exportation and would lower the price of the commodity, but such bounties have been rare, owing to the interest of merchants and manufacturers.”
p 707 avidity
p 715 “The colony of a civilized nation which takes possession either of a waste country, or of one so thinly inhabited, that the natives easily give place to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to wealth and greatness than any other human society.”
p 722 “The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.”
p 728 “The sums spent upon the reception of a new viceroy of Peru, for example, have frequently been enormous. Such ceremonials are not only real taxes paid by the rich colonists upon those particular occasions, but they serve to introduce among them the habit of vanity and expence upon all other occasions. They are not only very grievous occasional taxes, but they contribute to establish perpetual taxes of the same kind still more grievous; the ruinous taxes of private luxury and extravagance.”
p 729 “Of all the expedients that can well be contrived to stunt the natural growth of a new colony, that of an exclusive company is undoubtedly the most effectual.”
p 743 “Under all absolute governments there is more liberty in the capital than in any other part of the country.”
p 745 “In Roman history, the first time we read of the magistrate interposing to protect the slave from the violence of his master, is under the emperors. When Vedius Pollio, in the presence of Augustus, ordered one of his slaves, who had committed a slight fault, to be cut into pieces and thrown into his fish pond in order to feed his fishes, the emperor commanded him, with indignation, to emancipate immediately, not only that slave, but all the others that belonged to him.”
p 747 “Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which presided over and directed the first project of establishing those colonies; the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first adventurers with every mark of kindness and hospitality.”
p 761 “Our merchants frequently complain of the high wages of British labour as the cause of their manufactures being undersold in foreign markets; but they are silent about the high profits of stock. They complain of the extravagant gain of other people; but they say nothing of their own. The high profits of British stock, however, may contribute towards raising the price of British manufactures in many cases as much, and in some perhaps more, than the high wages of British labour.”
p 762 – 763 “The most advantageous employment of any capital to the country to which it belongs, is that which maintains there the greatest quantity of productive labour, and increases the most the annual produce of the land and labour of that country.”
p 765 “In a trade of which the returns are very distant, the profit of the merchant may be as great or greater than in one in which they are very frequent or near; but the advantage of the country in which he resides, the quantity of the productive labour constantly maintained there, the annual produce of land and labour must always be much less.”
p 768 “The industry of Great Britain, instead of being accommodated to a great number of small markets, has been principally suited to one great market. Her commerce, instead of running in a great number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. But the whole system of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure; the whole state of her body politic less healthful, than it otherwise would have been.”
p 770 “Such are the unfortunate effects of all the regulations of the mercantile system! They not only introduce very dangerous disorders into the state of the body politic, but disorders which it is often difficult to remedy, without occasioning, for a time at least, still greater disorders.”
p 782 “No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expence which is occasioned. Such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest, are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it, who would thereby be deprived of the disposal of many places of trust and profit, of many opportunities of acquiring wealth and distinction, which the possession of the most turbulent, and, the great body of the people, the most unprofitable province seldom fails to afford.”
p 790 “They are very weak who flatter themselves that, in the state to which things have come, our colonies will be easily conquered by force alone.”
p 793 “Such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population and improvement, that in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of American might exceed that of British taxation. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to the general defence and support of the whole.”
p 795 “The colonies of Spain and Portugal, for example, give more real encouragement to the industry of other countries than to that of Spain and Portugal. […] the [great] consumption of those colonies […] is almost entirely supplied by France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany. Spain and Portugal furnish but a small part of it.”
p 801 “Since the establishment of the English East India company, for example, the other inhabitants of England, over and above being excluded from the trade, must have paid in the price of the East India goods which they have consumed, not only for all the extraordinary profits which the company may have made upon those goods in consequence of their monopoly, but for all the extraordinary waste which the fraud and abuse, inseparable from the management of the affairs of so great a company, must necessarily have occasioned.”
p 809 – 810 “But a company of merchants are, it seems, incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such. Trade, or buying in order to sell again, they still consider as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity, regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchant, as something which ought to be made subservient to it, […] As sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. As merchants, their interest is directly opposite to that interest.”
p 818 “[Our great master manufacturers] are as intent to keep down the wages of their own weavers, as the earnings of the poor spinners, and it is by no means for the benefit of the workman, that they endeavor either to raise the price of the complete work, or to lower that of the rude materials. It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed.”
p 839 “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. […] But in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.”
p 857 “Mr. Quesnai […] seems not to have considered that in the political body, the natural effort which every man is continually making to better his own condition, is a principle of preservation capable of preventing and correcting, in many respects, the bad effects of a political economy, in some degree both partial and oppressive. Such a political economy, though it no doubt retards more or less, is not always capable of stopping altogether the natural progress of a nation towards wealth and prosperity, and still less of making it go backwards. If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered.”
p 874 “According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to […] first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of society from the injustice of oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.”
p 892 “Should the war in America drag out through another campaign, the American militia may become in every respect a match for that standing army, of which the valour appeared, in the last war, at least not inferior to that of the hardiest veterans of France and Spain.”
p 924 “In the progress of despotism the authority of the executive power gradually absorbs that of every other power in the state, and assumes to itself the management of every branch of revenue which is destined for any public purpose.”
p 950 “The miserable effects of which the [old East India Company] complained, were the cheapness of consumption and the encouragement given to production, precisely the two effects which it is the great business of political economy to promote.”
p 983 “law never seems to have grown up to be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. […] particularly Athens, the ordinary courts of justice consisted of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of people […] The ignominy of an unjust decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a thousand, of fifteen hundred people […] could not fall very heavy upon any individual. At Rome […] a single judge, or a small number of judges, […] could not fail to be very much affected by any rash or unjust decision [^..], especially as they always deliberated in public. […] In doubtful cases, such courts, from their anxiety to avoid blame, would naturally endeavor to shelter themselves under the example, or precedent, of the judges who had sat before them.”
p 984 – 985 “In the attention which the ancient philosophers excited […] they appear to have been much superior to any modern teachers. In modern times, the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted by the circumstances, which render them more or less independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions. Their salaries too put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. […] The privileges of graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least extremely convenient to most men of learned professions; […] But those privileges can be obtained only by attending the lectures of the public teachers. […] The endowments of schools and colleges have, in this manner, not only corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones.”
p 986 – 990 “In some cases the state of the society necessarily places a greater part of individuals in such situations as naturally form in them, without any attention of government, almost all the abilities and virtues which that state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases the state of the society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations, and some attention of government is necessary in order to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of people. In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understanding of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigor and perseverance, in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly called, of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of manufactures, and the extension of foreign commerce. In such societies the varied occupations of every man oblige every man to exert his capacity; and to invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those barbarous societies […] every man […] is a warrior. Every man too is in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interest of the society, and the conduct of those who govern it. How far their chiefs are good judges in peace, or good leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of almost every single man among them. In such a society indeed, no man can well acquire that improved and refined understanding, which a few men sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude society there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of every individual, there is not a great deal in those of the whole society. Every man does, or is capable of doing, almost every thing which any other man does; or is capable of doing. Every man has a considerable degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and invention; but scarce any man has a great degree. The degree, however, which is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state, on the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupation of the greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite variety in those of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite variety of objects to the contemplation of those few, who, being attached to no particular occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to examine the occupation of other people. The contemplation of so great a variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings, in an extraordinary degree, both acute and comprehensive. Unless those few, however, happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their great abilities, though honorable to themselves, may contribute very little to the good government or happiness of their society. Notwithstanding the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be, in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people. […] The employments too in which people of some rank or fortune spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like those of the common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of them extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The employments of people of some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which they may perfect themselves in every branch either of useful or ornamental knowledge of which they may have laid the foundation, or for which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life. It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them even in infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade too is generally so simple and uniform as to give little exercise to the understanding; while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or even to think of any thing else.”
p 990 – 991 “But though though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life, that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations, have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. The public can facilitate this acquisition by establishing in every parish or district a little school, where children may be taught for a reward so moderate, that even a common labourer may afford it; the master being partly, but not wholly paid by the public; because, if he was wholly, or even principally paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect his business.”
p 1036 “The government of Pennsylvania, without amassing any treasure, invented a method of lending, not money indeed, but what is equivalent to money, to its subjects […] it raised a moderate revenue, which went a considerable way towards defraying […] the whole ordinary expence of that frugal and orderly government.”
p 1042 “Lands, for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are everywhere considered as causes of expence, not as sources of revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy, ought to belong to the crown. […] it remains that [the] expence [of public lands and public stock] must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one kind or another.” p 1043 “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expence of government to the individuals of a great nation, is like the expence of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate.”
p 1065 “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
p 1067 – 1068 “Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. […] Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign […] Nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the state, should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds, towards the support of that government.”
p 1073 – 1074 “the quantity and value of the land which any man possesses can never be a secret, and can always be ascertained with great exactness. But the whole amount of the capital stock which he possesses is almost always a secret, and can scarce ever be ascertained with tolerable exactness. […] An inquisition into every man’s private circumstances, and […] which […] watched over all the fluctuations of his fortune, would be a source of such continual and endless vexation as no people could support. Secondly, land is a subject which cannot be removed, whereas stock easily may. […] The proprietor of stock […] is not necessarily attached to any particular country. He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexation inquisition […] and would remove his stock to some other country.”
p 1098 “The emoluments of officers […] do not […] always bear a just proportion to what the nature of the employment requires. They are, perhaps, in most countries, higher than it requires; the persons who have the administration of government being generally disposed to reward both themselves and their immediate dependents rather more than enough. […] a tax upon [the] emoluments [^.. of] persons […] who enjoy public offices […] is always a very popular tax.”
p 1110 “There is nothing so absurd, says Cicero, which has not sometimes been asserted by some philosophers.”
p 1123 “So far as the free importation of the necessaries of life reduced their average money price in the home market, it would reduce the money price of labour, but without reducing in any respect its real recompence. The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.”
p 1133 “When it has been proposed to lay any new tax upon sugar, our sugar planters have frequently complained that the whole weight of such taxes fell, not upon the consumer, but upon the producer; they never having been able to raise the price of their sugar after the tax, higher than it was before. The price had, it seems, before the tax been a monopoly price; and the argument adduced to shew that sugar was an improper subject of taxation, demonstrated, perhaps, that is was a proper one; the gains of monopolists, whenever they can be come at, being certainly of all subjects the most proper.”
p 1136 “When they are advanced by the merchant or manufacturer, the consumer, who finally pays them, soon comes to confound them with the price of the commodities, and almost forgets that he pays any tax.”
p 1156 “The taste for some sort of pageantry, for splendid buildings, at least, and other public ornaments, frequently prevails as much in the apparently sober senate-house of a little republic, as in the dissipated court of the greatest king. The want of parsimony in time of peace, imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When war comes, there is no money in the treasury but what is necessary for carrying on the ordinary expence of the peace establishment.”
p 1165 “To relieve the present exigency is always the object which principally interests those immediately concerned in the administration of public affairs. The future liberation of the public revenue, they leave to the care of posterity.”
p 1169 “The expedient which will raise most money, is almost always preferred to that which is likely to bring about in the speediest manner the liberation of the public revenue.”
p 1170 – 1171 “The ordinary expence of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes, they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expence. They are unwilling, for fear of offending the people, who by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable, from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion.”
p 1171 “In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war. The return of peace, indeed, seldom relieves them from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war.”
p 1172 “During the most profound peace, various events occur which require an extraordinary expence, and government finds it always more convenient to defray this expence by misapplying the sinking fund than by imposing a new tax. Every new tax is immediately felt more or less by the people. It occasions always some murmur, and meets some opposition. […] A momentary suspension of the payment of debt is not immediately felt by the people, and occasions neither murmur nor complaint.”
p 1172 – 1173 “The more the public debts may have been accumulated, the more necessary it may have become to study to reduce them, the more dangerous, the more ruinous it may be to misapply any part of the sinking fund; the less likely is the public debt to be reduced to any considerable degree, the more likely, the more certainly is the sinking fund to be misapplied towards defraying all the extraordinary expences which occur in time of peace.”
p 1173 “When a nation is already overburdened with taxes, nothing but the necessities of a new war, nothing but either the animosity of national vengeance, or the anxiety for national security, can induce the public to submit, with tolerable patience, to a new tax.”
p 1180 – 1181 “In the payment of the interest of the public debt, it has been said, it is the right hand which pays the left. The money does not go out of the country. [… This] supposes […] that the whole public debt is owing to the inhabitants of the country, which happens not to be true”
p 1182 – 1183 “The practice of funding has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it. […] Is it likely that in Great Britain alone a practice, which has brought either weakness or desolation into every other country, should prove altogether innocent?”
p 1184 “Great Britain seems to support with ease, a burden which, half a century ago, nobody believed her capable of supporting. Let us not, however, upon this account rashly conclude that she is capable of supporting any burden; nor even to be too confident that she could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than what has already been laid upon her.”
p 1184 “When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy, sometimes by an avowed one, but always be a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment.”
p 1185 – 1187 “When it becomes necessary for a state to declare itself bankrupt, […] a fair, open, and avowed bankruptcy is always the measure which is both least dishonourable to the debtor, and least hurtful to the creditor. The honour of a state is surely very poorly provided for, when, in order to cover the disgrace of a real bankruptcy, it has recourse to a juggling trick of this kind, so easily seen through, and at the same time so extremely pernicious. […] So sudden and so great a bankruptcy, we should in the present times be apt to imagine, must have occasioned a very violent popular clamour. It does not appear to have occasioned any. The law […] was probably a very popular law. […] the poor people were constantly in debt to the rich and the great […] In order to satisfy the people, the rich and the great were, upon several different occasions, obliged to consent to laws both for abolishing debts, and for introducing new tables.”