PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. FOR JAMES THORNTON, THORNTON, OXFORD Cambridge: J. HALL & SON Edinburgh: MACLACHLAN & STEWART London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & Co. The Two Parts of this Analysis of the Wealth of Nations,' with additional Appendices and a complete Index, will shortly be issued in One Volume. PREFACE. THE present volume is intended as a companion and sequel to the Analysis of Books I. and II. of the "Wealth of Nations,' published in 1877, and whilst its predecessor was prepared with a view to the special wants of candidates for the Pass School, in the present work the needs of those more advanced students who present themselves in the Honour Schools of Modern History and Litera Humaniores, or as candidates for the Indian Civil Service, have received particular attention. The name of Jeremiah Joyce has been omitted from the title-page, not from any wish to conceal my obligations to that industrious man, whose book has been most useful as a base to work upon, but because it has been necessary completely to recast his work by the substitution of whole passages, sometimes my own, and sometimes derived from the paraphrases of other authors who have often pillaged the 'Wealth of Nations' without scruple. Content with having restored the stolen thoughts to their legitimate owner, I leave the particular instances to the perspicacity of my readers. The task of annotation has proved more difficult in the case of the three latter than in that of the two former books, owing to the greater variety and complexity of the facts with which the author deals; and if any obscurity overshadow the text of my abridgment from a similar cause, my readers will often find it at once dispelled by a reference to the original, which is quoted by the pages of the edition published at the Clarendon Press. In a few cases I have found myself obliged to differ from Adam Smith on such matters as the Colonies and India, &c., but in all these I venture to think that he lived too near the time of the events he treated to judge of them correctly. CHRIST CHURCH, May 1880. W. P. E. |