British Economics in 1904 |
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Common terms and phrases
abroad ad valorem Adam Smith Adam Smith's adverse balance aggregate agricultural amount authorities average bankers banks bills Board of Trade British Empire capital census cent century Cobden Cobden Club Cobdenite commercial treaties companies compared Corn Laws directors earnings economic employed England and Wales estimate excess of imports expenditure fact favoured female figures fiscal food imports foreign and colonial foreign food foreign trade free imports free trade freight Government half imports and exports income tax income tax assessments increase interest joint-stock labour larger less London manufactures ment mercial mile millions a-year millions sterling a-year money market nearly official organisation passenger political produce profits proportion prosperity quantity question railway rates raw materials régime revenue shareholders Sir Robert Giffen Sir Robert Peel statisticians statistics tariff textiles Thomas Sutherland tion to-day tons United Kingdom valorem wealth whole
Popular passages
Page 33 - Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and second, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.
Page 86 - But land, in almost any situation» produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. The surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.
Page 36 - It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest.
Page 29 - Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue as well as of all exchangeable value.
Page 28 - THE annual labour of every nation is the fund 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.
Page 86 - Countries are populous, not in proportion to the number of people whom their produce can cloath and lodge, but in proportion to that of those whom it can feed.
Page 37 - But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches.
Page 28 - EVERY man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.
Page 31 - The gross revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country comprehends the whole annual produce of their land and labour...
Page 87 - But when by the improvement and cultivation of land the labour of one family can provide food for two, the labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food for the whole. The other half, therefore, or at least the greater part of them, can be employed in providing other things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of mankind.