vi which Johnson presided. In 1778 he was appointed one of the Commissioners of Customs for Scotland, and accordingly removed to Edinburgh, where he dwelt until his death in I 790. Of the Wealth of Nations five editions appeared during his lifetime; it has been frequently reprinted since; and it has been translated into all the chief languages of Europe. It has been edited and annotated by, among others, McCulloch (1828, 1850), Thorold Rogers (1869), and Professor Nicholson (1884). The materials for his life are meagre, and recent accounts are based chiefly upon Dugald Stewart's Memoir, written in 1793. There is a brief Life by Mr. R. B. Haldane (1887), which contains a kind of abstract of the Wealth of Nations with a running criticism; and there is appended to it a useful Bibliography. The Catalogue of Adam Smith's Library, edited by Mr. James Bonar (1894), contains also his will, the reproduction of an autograph, a plan of his house and garden at Kirkcaldy, and a critical account of the various extant portraits. The portions here printed make up between a sixth and a fifth of the book. They have not been selected as containing necessarily the most interesting or well-written or important parts of the treatise; the intention has been, rather, to present in a brief compass a general view of the whole of Adam Smith's economic philosophy. Accordingly, not only have many illustrations been pared away, but whole sections of the book, for instance those describing the colonial policy of England and the action of the East India Company, have been omitted. Thus the 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. CONTENTS.1 Introduction and Plan of the Work BOOK I. 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 I. Of the Division of Labour PAGE II. Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour 16 III. That the Division of Labour is limited by the Extent of the 20 IV. Of the Origin and the Use of Money . V. Of the real and nominal Price of Commodities, or of their 24 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 PART I. Inequalities arising from the Nature of the PART II. Inequalities occasioned by the Policy of PART I. Of the Produce of Land which always affords 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. CHAPTER XI. (Cont.) [PART II. Of the Produce of Land which sometimes [PART III. Of the Variations in the Proportion between the respective Values of that sort of Produce which [Variations in the Proportion between the respective [Grounds of the Suspicion that the Value of Silver may [Different Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon [Conclusion of the Digression concerning the Variations Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon the real PAGE OF THE NATURE, ACCUMULATION, AND EMPLOYMENT OF STOCK. Introduction I. Of the Division of Stock [II. Of Money considered as a particular Branch of the general Stock of the Society, or of the Expense of maintaining the National Capital.] III. Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of productive and unpro ductive Labour IV. Of Stock lent at Interest V. Of the different Employment of Capitals BOOK III. 139 140 146 149 160 OF THE DIFFERENT PROGRESS OF OPULENCE IN DIFFERENT NATIONS. I. Of the natural Progress of Opulence. [II. Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of Europe, after the Fall of the Roman Empire.] 189 |