Political Economy |
Common terms and phrases
a-year Adam Smith additional labour advance advantages afford agricultural amount annual appears articles of wealth average capital capitalist causes cent circulating capital circumstances cloth commodities consequence consider consumed consumption corn cost of production cotton Country cultivation depends diminished division of labour duction effect employment England English equal evil exchange exertion existing expense fact families fertile France given quantity greater hundred quarters improvement increase inhabitants instruments of production Ireland labour and abstinence labour employed land landlord less limited in supply machinery maintenance of labour manufactures materials means natural agent necessary number of labourers number of persons object obtained occasion paid partly perhaps period Political Economy population portion principal proportion proposition proprietor purchase rate of profit rate of wages raw produce received remuneration rent revenue Ricardo rise Science subsistence supposed tendency term things thousand tion tithes trade twenty unproductive utility wages and profits whole words
Popular passages
Page 217 - One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head...
Page 73 - This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labor, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labor, and enable one man to do the work of many.
Page 73 - Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things. But in consequence of the division of labour...
Page 200 - ... first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.
Page 78 - A stock of goods of different kinds, therefore, must be stored up somewhere sufficient to maintain him, and to supply him with the materials and tools of his work, till such time, at least, as both these events can be brought about.
Page 45 - We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population, which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased.
Page 45 - ... there are few states in which there is not a constant effort in the population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of society to distress, and to prevent any great permanent melioration of their condition.
Page 116 - But land, in almost any situation» produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. The surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.
Page 63 - They are a sort of instruments of trade, and may be considered in the same light: Thirdly, of the improvements of land, of what has been profitably laid out in clearing, draining, enclosing, manuring, and reducing it into the condition most proper for tillage and culture.