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
Ranks of the People.

CHAPTER I.

Of the Division of Labour.

CHAPTER II.

Of the Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour

CHAPTER III.

That the Division of Labour is limited by the Extent of the

Market

CHAPTER IV.

Of the real and nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in

18 V

23

30

Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and
Stock

PART I. Inequalities arising from the Nature of the
Employments themselves.

103

104

PART II. Inequalities occasioned by the Policy of Europe 124

CHAPTER XI.

Of the Rent of Land .

PART I. Of the Produce of Land which always affords

Rent
PART II. Of the Produce of Land which sometimes does
and sometimes does not afford Rent.
PART III. Of the Variations in the Proportion between
the respective Values of that sort of Produce which
always affords Rent, and of that which sometimes does
and sometimes does not afford Rent.

155

171

185

Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during

the course of the four last Centuries.

Page

Grounds of the suspicion that the Value of Silver still

continues to decrease

226

Different Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon

three different Sorts of rude Produce

First Sort

Second Sort

Third Sort

227

228

230

Conclusion of the Digression concerning the Variations in

the Value of Silver
Effects of the Progress of Improvement upon the real Price

250

256

Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock.

Of Money considered as a particular Branch of the general Stock
of the Society, or of the Expense of maintaining the National

Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of productive and unproductive

Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of
Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire.

CHAPTER III.

Of the Rise and Progress of Citics and Towns, after the Fall of the
Roman Empire.

CHAPTER IV.

How the Commerce of the Towns contributed to the Improvement

386

• 398

410

AN INQUIRY

INTO

THE NATURE AND CAUSES

OF THE

WEALTH' OF NATIONS.

T

INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK.

HE annual labour of every nation is the fund 2 which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

According therefore as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.

But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances: first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment

Smith does not defino wealth. Most economists limit it to such material objects as have been appropriated by labour, are in demand, and are subject to exchange. But labour, representing as it does capital invested in man, is as much wealth as any other material object. Adam Smith's equivalent expression, the annual produce of land and labour,' is faulty: first, because it puts the sources of wealth in place of those products in which everybody allows that wealth must consist; and next, because it omits to consider those accumulations of past time, which in all wealthy countries constitute a large and increasing part of the wealth which a community possesses. VOL. I.

B

Smith probably had before him the enumeration of Turgot :

'La totalité des richesses d'une nation -I. La somme des capitaux employés à toutes les entreprises de culture d'industrie et de commerce, et qui n'en doivent jamais sortir. 2. Toutes les avances en toute genre d'entreprise devant sans cesse rentrer aux entrepreneurs, pour être sans cesse renversées dans l'entreprise. 3. Tous les meubles, vêtements, bijoux,' &c.-Sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, 90.

Mr. Gibbon Wakefield rightly observes that labour is the agent, not the fund, and that the distinction is not merely verbal, but important.