vii

treatise is, perhaps, made to assume a more exclusively theoretic character than the perusal of the original might lead some to attach to it. Those who wish to study contemporary conditions as they appeared to Adam Smith, or to form a complete estimate of his intellectual interests, must have recourse to the original. But the present selection omits, it is believed, nothing that enters into the real structure of Adam Smith's argument; it may serve to show that the historical and descriptive passages were, after all, only illustrations, and quite subsidiary; and it may bring out more clearly the relation of his work to that of subsequent English economists.

The text here given is that of the first edition. The few passages omitted in the third edition, that of 1784, are placed within round brackets; those there added, within square brackets.

Introduction and Plan of the Work

BOOK I.

OF THE CAUSES OF IMPROVEMENT IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF LABOUR, AND OF THE ORDER ACCORDING TO WHICH ITS PRODUCE IS NATURALLY DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE DIFFERENT RANKS OF THE PEOPLE.

CHAPTER

CONTENTS.1

I. Of the Division of Labour

II. Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of

Labour

III. That the Division of Labour is limited by the Extent of the

Market

IV. Of the Origin and the Use of Money.

V.

Of the real and nominal Price of Commodities, or of their
Price in Labour and their Price in Money
VI. Of the component Parts of the Price of Commodities
VII. Of the natural and market Price of Commodities

VIII. Of the Wages of Labour

IX. Of the Profits of Stock.

X.

Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour
and of Stock .

XI. Of the Rent of Land

PART I. Inequalities arising from the Nature of the
Employments themselves

PART II. Inequalities occasioned by the Policy of
Europe

PART I. Of the Produce of Land which always affords
Rent

131

1 The original table of contents is prefixed to indicate the relation of the selected chapters and passages to the whole treatise. Chapters entirely unrepresented here are bracketed.

ECONOMIC CLASSICS

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