The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, Volume 9

Front Cover
A. and C. Black, 1890 - Authors, English - 444 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 203 - IN making labour the foundation of the value of commodities, and the comparative quantity of labour which is necessary to their production, the rule which determines the respective quantities of goods which shall be given in exchange for each other, we must not be supposed to deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the actual or market price of commodities from this, their primary and natural price.
Page 326 - ... and it was not until the latter half of the seventeenth century that the cramping effects of monopoly were experienced.
Page 285 - Four times, and not twice, because the half-yearly dividends fall at one period for certain stocks, at a different period for other stocks ; by which means the disturbance, though reiterated more frequently, is lightened for each operation. Such is the fact, — what is the consequence ? " These demands for money, being only temporary, seldom affect prices; they are generally surmounted by the payment of a large rate of interest."— (P. 415.) Now, would it not be monstrous to urge that casual tilt...
Page 230 - ... properly drained and manured, and advantageously divided by hedges, fences and walls, while the other had none of these advantages, more remuneration would naturally be paid for the use of one, than for the use of the other ; yet in both cases this remuneration would be called rent.
Page 93 - And again at p. 343 of the same edition, after exposing at some length the circumstances which disqualify "any commodity or all commodities together" from performing the office of a standard of value, he again states the indispensable condition which must be realized in that commodity which should pretend to such an office; and again he adds immediately — "of such a commodity we have no knowledge.
Page 428 - WHATSOEVER difference there may be in our notions of the freedom of the will metaphysically considered, it is evident that the manifestations of this will, viz. human actions, are as much under the control of universal laws of nature as any other physical phenomena.
Page 2 - Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe, and a century of thought, had failed even to advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents ; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, a priori...
Page 433 - The play of these two tendencies unfolds talents of every kind, and by gradual increase of light a preparation is made for such a mode of thinking as is capable of " exalting a social concert that had been pathologically extorted from the mere necessities of situation, into a moral union founded on the reasonable choice." Hence the highest problem for man is the establishment of a universal civil society, founded on the empire of political justice ; and " the history of the human species as a whole...
Page 228 - is that portion of " the produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the " use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.
Page 140 - D's latent presence. Yet D is so far from exerting any positive force, that the retirement of D from all agency whatever on the price — this it is which creates as it were a perfect vacuum, and through that vacuum U rushes up to its highest and ultimate gradation.

Bibliographic information