The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Key to Abbreviations and References
• General Introduction
• The Text and Apparatus
• Advertisement a
• Advertisement to the Fourth Edition
• Introduction and Plan of the Work
• [i] Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement In the Productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order According to Which Its Produce Is Naturally Distributed Among the Different Ranks of the People
• [i.i] Chapter I: Of the Division of Labour
• [i.ii] Chapter II: Of the Principle Which Gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
• [i.iii] Chapter III: That the Division of Labour Is Limited By the Extent of the Market 1
• [i.iv] Chapter IV: Of the Origin and Use of Money 1
• [i.v] Chapter V: Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, Or of Their Price In Labour, and Their Price In Money
• [i.vi] Chapter VI: Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
• [i.vii] Chapter VII: Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities 1
• [i.viii] Chapter VIII: Of the Wages of Labour
• [i.ix] Chapter IX: Of the Profits of Stock
• [i.x.a] Chapter X: Of Wages and Profit In the Different Employments of Labour and Stock
• [i.x.b] Part I: Inequalities Arising From the Nature of the Employments Themselves
• [i.x.c] Part II: Inequalities Occasioned By the Policy of Europe
• [i.xi.a] Chapter XI: Of the Rent of Land
• [i.xi.b] Part I: Of the Produce of Land Which Always Affords Rent
• [i.xi.c] Part II: Of the Produce of Land Which Sometimes Does, and Sometimes Does Not, Afford Rent
• [i.xi.d] Part III: Of the Variations In the Proportion Between the Respective Values of That Sort of Produce Which Always Affords Rent, and of That Which Sometimes Does, and Sometimes Does Not, Afford Rent
• Digression Concerning the Variations In the Value of Silver During the Course of the Four Last Centuries
• [i.xi.e] First Period
• [i.xi.f] Second Period
• [i.xi.g] Third Period
• [i.xi.h] Variations In the Proportion Between the Respective Values of Gold and Silver
• [i.xi.i] Grounds of the Suspicion That the Value of Silver Still Continues to Decrease
• [i.xi.j] Different Effects of the Progress of Improvement Upon the Real Price of Three Different Sorts of Rude Produce
• [i.xi.k] First Sort
• [i.xi.l] Second Sort
• [i.xi.m] Third Sort
• [i.xi.n] Conclusion of the Digression Concerning the Variations In the Value of Silver
• [i.xi.o] Effects of the Progress of Improvement Upon the Real Price of Manufactures
• [i.xi.p] Conclusion of the Chapter
• [ii] Book II: Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock
• Introduction
• [ii.i] Chapter I: Of the Division of Stock
• [ii.ii] Chapter II: Of Money Considered As a Particular Branch of the General Stock of the Society, Or of the Expence of Maintaining the National Capital
• [ii.iii] Chapter III: Of the Accumulation of Capital, Or of Productive and Unproductive Labour
• [ii.iv] Chapter IV: Of Stock Lent At Interest
• [ii.v] Chapter V: Of the Different Employment of Capitals
• [iii] Book III: Of the Different Progress of Opulence In Different Nations
• [iii.i] Chapter I: Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
• [iii.ii] Chapter II: Of the Discouragement of Agriculture In the Antient State of Europe After the Fall of the Roman Empire 1
• [iii.iii] Chapter III: Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, After the Fall of the Roman Empire
• [iii.iv] Chapter IV: How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country
• [iv] Book IV: Of Systems of Political Oeconomy
• Introduction
• [iv.i] Chapter I: Of the Principle of the Commercial, Or Mercantile System 1
• [iv.ii] Chapter II: Of Restraints Upon the Importation a From Foreign Countries of Such Goods a As Can Be Produced At Home
• [iv.iii] Chapter III: Of the Extraordinary Restraints Upon the Importation of Goods of Almost All Kinds, From Those Countries With Which the Balance Is Supposed to Be Disadvantageous
• [iv.iii.a] Part I: Of the Unreasonableness of Those Restraints Even Upon the Principles of the Commercial System a
• [iv.iii.b] Digression Concerning Banks of Deposit, Particularly Concerning That of Amsterdam 1
• [iv.iii.c] Part II: Of the Unreasonableness of Those Extraordinary Restraints Upon Other Principles a
• [iv.iv] Chapter IV: Of Drawbacks
• [iv.v.a] Chapter V: Of Bounties
• [iv.v.b] Digression Concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws a – a

First Sort

1The first sort of rude produce of which the price rises in the progress of improvement, is that which it is scarce in the power of human industry to multiply at all. It consists in those things which nature produces only in certain quantities, and which being of a very perishable nature, it is impossible to accumulate together the produce of many different seasons. Such are the greater part of rare and singular birds and fishes, many different sorts of game, almost all wild–fowl, all birds of passage in particular, as well as many other things. When wealth and the luxury which accompanies it increase, the demand for these is likely to increase with them, and no effort of human industry may be able to increase the supply much beyond what it was before this increase of the demand. The quantity of such commodities, therefore, remaining the same, or nearly the same, while the competition to purchase them is continually increasing, their price may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to be limited by any certain boundary. If woodcocks should become so fashionable as to sell for twenty guineas a–piece, no effort of human industry could increase the number of those brought to market, much beyond what it is at present. The high price paid by the Romans, in the time of their greatest grandeur, for rare birds and fishes, may in this manner easily be accounted for. These prices were not the effects of the low value of silver in those times, but of the high value of such rarities and curiosities as human industry could not multiply at pleasure. The real value of silver was higher at Rome, for some time before and after the fall of the republick, than it is through the greater part of Europe at present. Three sestertii, equal to about sixpence sterling, was the price which the republick paid for the modius or peck of the tithe wheat of Sicily.1 This price, however, was probably below the average market price, the obligation to deliver their wheat at this rate being considered as a tax upon the Sicilian farmers. When the Romans, therefore, had occasion to order more corn than the tithe of wheat amounted to, they were bound by capitulation to pay for the surplus at the rate of four sestertii, or eight–pence sterling the peck;2 and this had probably been reckoned the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average contract price of those times; it is equal to about one–and–twenty shillings the quarter. Eight–and–twenty shillings the quarter was, before the late years of scarcity,3 the ordinary contract price of English wheat, which in quality is inferior to the Sicilian, and generally sells for a lower price in the European market. The value of silver, therefore, in those antient times, must have been to its value in the present, as three to four inversely, that is, three ounces of silver would then have purchased the same quantity of labour and commodities which four ounces will do at present.4 When we read in Pliny, therefore, that Seius*5 bought a white nightingale, as a present for the empress Agrippina, at the price of six thousand sestertii, equal to about fifty pounds of our present money; and that Asinius Celer†6 purchased a surmullet at the price of eight thousand sestertii equal to about sixty–six pounds thirteen shillings and four–pence of our present money; the extravagance of those prices, how much soever it may surprise us, is apt, notwithstanding, to appear to us about one–third less than it really was. Their real price, the quantity of labour and subsistence which was given away for them, was about one–third more than their nominal price is apt to express to us in the present times. Seius gave for the nightingale the command of a quantity of labour and subsistence, equal to what 66l. 13s. 4d. would purchase in the present times; and Asinius Celer gave for the surmullet the command of a quantity equal to what 88l. 17s. 9⅓d. would purchase. What occasioned the extravagance of those high prices was, not so much the abundance of silver, as the abundance of labour and subsistence, of which those Romans had the disposal, beyond what was necessary for their own use. The quantity of silver, of which they had the disposal, was a good deal less than what the command of the same quantity of labour and subsistence would have procured to them in the present times.

[1 ]The same figures are cited above, I.xi.b.12. cf. Steuart, Principles, II.xxx. ‘Quest. 3’.

[2 ]‘There were two kinds of purchase to be carried out, the first of a tithe, the second an additional purchase to be distributed fairly among the various communities. . . . The price fixed was 3 sesterces a peck for the tithe corn and 3½ sesterces a peck for the requisitioned corn’. (Cicero, Verrine Orations, iii.70, translated by L. H. G. Greenwood in Loeb Classical Library (1935), ii.200–1.)

[3 ]See above, I.xi.g.17.

[4 ]Further examples are provided below, IV.ix.47.

[a * ]Lib.x.c.29.a

[5 ]‘I know of one bird, a white one it is true, which is nearly unprecedented, that was sold for 600,000 sesterces to be given as a present to the emperor Claudius’s consort Agrippina.’ (Pliny, Natural History, X.xliii, translated by H. Rackham in Loeb Classical Library (1950), iii.347.)

[b † ]Lib.ix.c.17.b

[6 ]‘With a fish of this kind one of the proconsulur body, Asinius Celer, in the principate of Gaius, issued a challenge—it is not so easy to say who won the match—to all the spend–thrifts by giving 8,000 sesterces for a mullet.’ (Ibid. IX.xxxi, trans. Rackham, iii.207.)

[a * ]Lib.x.c.29.a

[b † ]Lib.ix.c.17.b

[a]2–6

[b]2–6