Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Volume 1Colonial Press, 1899 - Economics |
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Common terms and phrases
accumulation acres Adam Smith advantage agricultural amount Arthur Young capital capitalist cause circulating capital commodities competition condition considerable consumed consumption cost of production cottier cultivation degree demand depends diminished duction Economy of France effect employment England equal exertion existing expense farmer favorable fertility fixed France funds greater habits human hundred quarters improvement increase individual industry interest Ireland kind laboring classes land landlord less limited mankind manufactures manure material means ment métayer mode natural necessary obtained occupation operations paid peasant properties peasant proprietors permanent persons political economy Poor Law population portion possession present principle productive labor profit proportion quantity quired rate of profit remuneration render rent saving Sismondi slavery small farms society soil subsistence sufficient supply suppose taxes tenant things tion tivation Tuscany unless unproductive wages wealth whole
Popular passages
Page 197 - It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.
Page 273 - Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden ; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.
Page 420 - every speculation respecting the economical interests of a society thus constituted implies some theory of Value : the smallest error on that subject infects with corresponding error all our other conclusions ; and anything vague or misty in our conception of it creates confusion and uncertainty in everything
Page 122 - ... the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.
Page 293 - The landlord is no doubt liable in the end to suffer from their poverty, by being forced to make advances to them, especially in bad seasons ; and a foresight of this ultimate inconvenience may operate beneficially on such landlords as prefer future security to present profit.
Page 335 - The condition of the class can be bettered in no other way than by altering that proportion to their advantage ; and every scheme for their benefit which does not proceed on this as its foundation, is, for all permanent purposes, a delusion.
Page 311 - ... of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.
Page 235 - This is partly intelligible, if we consider that only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science.
Page 288 - ... to the most effective use of the powers of the soil ; that no other existing state of agricultural economy has so beneficial an effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and prudence of the population, nor tends on the whole so much to discourage an improvident increase of their numbers ; and that no existing state, therefore, is on the whole so favourable, both to their moral and their physical welfare.
Page 371 - A mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls of his customers. He is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion.