A Treatise on Political Economy: Or, The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Wealth

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J. Grigg, 1827 - 455 páginas

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Página iv - District, has deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the words following, to wit...
Página 118 - The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
Página 192 - Equal quantities of labour at all times and places may be said to be of equal value to the labourer. In his ordinary state of health, strength and spirits, in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity he must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness.
Página 296 - A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low ; in England, for example, than in Scotland ; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote country places.
Página 33 - ... life it has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those manufactures are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring.
Página 34 - ... the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.
Página xv - ... binds together, by one common tie of interest and intercourse, the universal society of nations throughout the civilised world.
Página 118 - No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone...
Página 192 - Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which purchases them.
Página xv - Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole. By stimulating industry, by rewarding ingenuity, and by using most efficaciously the peculiar powers bestowed by nature, it distributes labour most effectively and most economically : while, by increasing the general mass of productions, it diffuses general...

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