Conversations on Political Economy: In which the Elements of that Science are Familiarly Explained |
Common terms and phrases
accumulation Adam Smith advantage afford agriculture amongst augmentation better bills bills of exchange branch of industry bread capitalist CAROLINE certainly circulating circulating capital civilisation cloth lettered commerce commodities consequence considered consumed corn cost of production cultivation demand for labour depreciation derived diminish distress division of labour Edition effect employed enable England equal exchangeable value expense export farm farmer foreign gold and silver improvement income increase inferior soils interest J. C. LOUDON labouring classes landed property landlord laws less luxury machinery maintenance manufactures means ment merchants natural value necessary observed obtain plenty political economy poor population Portugal possession procure proportion proprietor purchase quantity raise the price rate of profit rate of wages raw produce render rent rich rise Russia savage scarce scarcity sell shillings specie subsistence supply suppose surplus things tion tivation trade true value of money vols wealth whilst workmen
Popular passages
Page 63 - 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 ; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations ; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another ; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper ; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct...
Page 63 - Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently...
Page 62 - But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades.
Page 142 - And while he sinks without one arm to save, The country blooms — a garden and a grave ! Where then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.
Page 392 - The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth Has robb'd the neighbouring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green...
Page 62 - ... the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.