This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... THE PRELIMINARIES OF POLITICAL ECONOM Y.1 Adam Smith began the Wealth of Nations about 1773, and finished it in 1776; and as our modern Political Economy really begins from that time, we may fairly say that it is now a hundred years old.2 In that century, especially in England, its career has been most remarkable. No form of philosophical speculation (some theologies excepted, which are not comparable) has ever had half or a thousandth part of the influence upon life and practice; no abstract doctrine was ever half as much quoted or half as much acted on. The whole legislation of England as to trade has been changed by the philosophy of trade, and the life of almost every one in England is, in consequence, different and better. Other countries, it is true, have not equally followed 1 It will be obvious that some of the leading ideas of the previous essays are repeated in this. There is, however, so much that is fresh in it, and so much danger of bungling in any attempt to disentangle the fresh matter from what was embodied in the two previous essays, that it has been thought better to run some little risk of repetition rather than to attempt any separation of the old and new by any other hand than the author"s. a Written in 1876 or earlier. this teaching, but they have continually, if not equally, discussed it. The highest class of cultivated intellects is in every civilised country more or less affected by it. When a little while ago M. Thiers began to talk and act in thorough opposition to the whole science, a shiver of wonder ran through Europe; it seemed an anachronism to find so able a mind in the pre-economic period, and a strange survival of extinct error, to hear him expounding the good of all which Political Economy showed to be...