Political EconomyH. Holt, 1887 - 537 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith advantage agricultural amount applied bank become bushels capital cause cent circulation coin coinage commodity competition consideration consume consumption cost cultivation degree demand distribution division of labor doctrine duction economical economist effect employer England English entrepreneur equal exchange existing fact force gold greater human income increase individual labor power laboring class land landlord less limits Lord Overstone manufacturer matter medium of exchange ment metal natural nomic operations owner paid paper money payment perfect competition perhaps persons Political Economy population portion principle product of industry production of wealth Prof profits progressive taxation purchase quantity question rate of interest reason rent respect result revenue seaweed secure seigniorage sell silver social society soil subsistence supply suppose taxation tenant theory things tion trade usury wage-fund wages wheat writers
Popular passages
Page 26 - ... to demonstrate, that the most effectual plan for advancing a people to greatness, is to maintain that order of things which nature has pointed out...
Page 443 - 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.
Page 389 - The ordinary progress of a society which increases in wealth, is at all times tending to augment the incomes of landlords ; to give them both a greater amount and a greater proportion of the wealth of the community, independently of any trouble or outlay incurred by themselves. They grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.
Page 437 - In former days, when the household was vast, and the supply scanty and precarious, the royal purveyors, sallying forth from under the Gothic portcullis, to purchase provision with power and prerogative instead of money, brought home the plunder of an hundred markets, and all that could be seized from a flying and hiding country, and deposited their spoil in an hundred caverns, with each its keeper.
Page 312 - The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old: and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old: if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.
Page 178 - The judicious operations of banking, by providing, if I may be allowed so violent a metaphor, a sort of...
Page 61 - That the master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different processes, each requiring different degrees of skill and force, can purchase exactly that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious, of the operations...
Page 20 - The true labour of philosophy resembles hers, for it neither relies entirely or principally on the powers of the mind, nor yet lays up in the memory the matter afforded by the experiments of natural history and mechanics in its raw state, but changes and works it in the understanding.
Page 294 - Though the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of those wages being generally restored, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed.
Page 349 - This bank received both foreign coin, and the light and worn coin of the country, at its real intrinsic value in the good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as was necessary for defraying the expense of coinage, and the other necessary expense of management. For the value which remained, after this small deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books. This credit was called bank money...