FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
1776
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AN |
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INQUIRY | |
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INTO THE | |
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NATURE AND CAUSES | |
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OF THE | |
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WEALTH OF NATIONS; | |
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BY ADAM SMITH, LL.D. | |
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AND F.R.S. OF LONDON AND EDINBURGH: FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW | |
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IN FOUR VOLUMES | |
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EDINBURGH: 1776 |
The Adam Smith Institute is proud to present the full text of Adam Smith's great book, The Wealth of Nations, online. This remarkable book was published in 1776, at a time when the power of free trade and competition as stimulants to innovation and progress was scarcely understood. Governments granted monopolies and gave subsidies to protect their own merchants, farmers and manufacturers against 'unfair' competition. The guilds operated stern local cartels: artisans of one town were prevented from travelling to another to find work. Local and national laws forbade the use of new, labour-saving machinery. And, not surprisingly to us today, poverty was accepted as the common, natural, and inevitable lot of most people. Adam Smith railed against this restrictive, regulated, 'mercantilist' system, and showed convincingly how the principles of free trade, competition, and choice would spur economic development, reduce poverty, and precipitate the social and moral improvement of humankind. To illustrate his concepts, he scoured the world for examples that remain just as vivid today: from the diamond mines of Golconda to the price of Chinese silver in Peru; from the fisheries of Holland to the plight of Irish prostitutes in London. And so persuasive were his arguments that they not only provided the world with a new understanding of the wealth-creating process; they laid the intellectual foundation for the great era of free trade and economic expansion that dominated the Nineteenth Century. The Wealth of Nations changed our understanding of the economic world just as Newton's Principia changed our understanding of the physical world and Darwin's Origin of Species. And now, it is here online, for you to read, and enjoy. |