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• Advertisement By the American Editor, to the Sixth Edition.
• Advertisement By the American Editor, to the Fifth Edition.
• Introduction
• Book I: Of the Production of Wealth.
• Book I, Chapter I.: Of What Is to Be Understood By the Term, Production.
• Book I, Chapter II.: Of the Different Kinds of Industry, and the Mode In Which They Concur In Production.
• Book I, Chapter III: Of the Nature of Capital, and the Mode In Which It Concurs In the Business of Production.
• Book I, Chapter IV: On Natural Agents That Assist In the Production of Wealth, and Specially of Land.
• Book I, Chapter V: On the Mode In Which Industry, Capital, and Natural Agents Unite In Production.
• Book I, Chapter VI: Of Operations Alike Common to All Branches of Industry.
• Book I, Chapter VII: Of the Labour of Mankind, of Nature, and of Machinery Respectively.
• Book I, Chapter VIII: Of the Advantages and Disadvantages Resulting From Division of Labour, and of the Extent to Which It May Be Carried.
• Book I, Chapter IX: Of the Different Methods of Employing Commercial Industry, and the Mode In Which They Concur In Production.
• Book I, Chapter X: Of the Transformations Undergone By Capital In the Progress of Production
• Book I, Chapter XI: Of the Formation and Multiplication of Capital.
• Book I, Chapter XII: Of Unproductive Capital
• Book I, Chapter XIII: Of Immaterial Products, Or Values Consumed At the Moment of Production.
• Book I, Chapter XIV: Of the Right of Property.
• Book I, Chapter XV: Of the Demand Or Market For Products.
• Book I, Chapter XVI: Of the Benefits Resulting From the Quick Circulation of Money and Commodities.
• Book I, Chapter XVII: Of the Effect of Government Regulations Intended to Influence Production.
• Book I, Chapter XVIII: Of the Effect Upon National Wealth, Resulting From the Productive Efforts of Public Authority.
• Book I, Chapter XIX: Of Colonies and Their Products.
• Book I, Chapter XX: Of Temporary and Permanent Emigration, Considered In Reference to National Wealth.
• Book I, Chapter XXI: Of the Nature and Uses of Money.
• Book I, Chapter XXII: Of Signs Or Representatives of Money.
• Book II: Of the Distribution of Wealth
• Book Ii, Chapter I: Of the Basis of Value; and of Supply and Demand.
• Book Ii, Chapter II: The Sources of Revenue.
• Book Ii, Chapter III: Of Real and Relative Variation of Price.
• Book Ii, Chapter IV: Of Nominal Variation of Price, and of the Peculiar Value of Bullion and of Coin.
• Book Ii, Chapter V: Of the Manner In Which Revenue Is Distributed Amongst Society.
• Book Ii, Chapter VI: Of What Branches of Production Yield the Most Liberal Recompense to Productive Agency.
• Book Ii, Chapter VII: Of the Revenue of Industry
• Book Ii, Chapter VIII: Of the Revenue of Capital.
• Book Ii, Chapter IX: Of the Revenue of Land.
• Book Ii, Chapter X: Of the Effect of Revenue Derived By One Nation From Another.
• Book Ii, Chapter XI: Of the Mode In Which the Quantity of the Product Affects Population.
• Book III: Of the Consumption of Wealth
• Book Iii, Chapter I: Of the Different Kinds of Consumption.
• Book Iii, Chapter II: Of the Effect of Consumption In General.
• Book Iii, Chapter III: Of the Effect of Productive Consumption.
• Book Iii, Chapter IV: Of the Effect of Unproductive Consumption In General.
• Book Iii, Chapter V: Of Individual Consumption—its Motives and Its Effects.
• Book Iii, Chapter VI: On Public Consumption
• Book Iii, Chapter VII: Of the Actual Contributors to Public Consumption.
• Book Iii, Chapter VIII: Of Taxation.
• Book Iii, Chapter IX: Of National Debt.
• Appendix A: a Table, Showing the Result of Value Lent to the State.

ADVERTISEMENT
by
THE AMERICAN EDITOR,
to the
SIXTH EDITION.

A NEW edition of this translation of the popular treatise of M. Say having been called for, the five previous American editions being entirely out of print, the editor has endeavoured to render the work more deserving of the favour it has received, by subjecting every part of it to a careful revision. As the translation of Mr. Prinsep was made in the year 1821, from an earlier edition of the original treatise, namely, the fourth, which had not received the last corrections and improvements of the author, wherever an essential principle had been involved in obscurity, or an error had crept in, which had been subsequently cleared up and removed, the American editor has, in this impression, reconciled the language of the text and notes to the fifth improved edition, published in 1826, the last which M. Say lived to give to the world. It has not, however, been deemed necessary to extend these alterations in the translation any further than to the correction of such discrepancies and errors as are here alluded to; and the editor has not ventured to recast the translation, as given by Mr. Prinsep, merely with a view to accommodate its phraseology, in point of neatness of expression or diction, to the last touches of the author. The translation of Mr. Prinsep, the editor must again be permitted to observe, has been executed with sufficient fidelity, and with considerable spirit and elegance; and in his opinion it could not be much improved by even remoulding it after the last edition. The translation of the introduction, given by the present editor, has received various verbal corrections; and such alterations and additions as were introduced by the author into his fifth edition, will now be found translated.

It is, moreover, proper to state, that at the suggestion of the American proprietors and publishers of this edition of the work, the French moneys, weights and measures, throughout the text and notes, have been converted into the current coins, weights and measures of the United States, when the context strictly required it by a rigorous reduction, and when merely assumed as a politico-arithmetical illustration, by a simple approximation to a nearly equivalent quantity of our own coins, weights or measures. This has been done to render the work as extensively useful as possible, and will, no doubt, make the author's general principles and reasonings more easily comprehended, as well as more readily remembered, by the American student of political economy.

Many new notes, it will be seen, have been added by the American editor, in further illustration or correction of those portions of the text which still required elucidation. The statistical data now incorporated in these notes, have been brought down to the most recent period, both in this country and in Europe. No pains have been spared in getting access to authentic channels of information, and the American editor trusts that the present edition will be found much improved throughout.

The death of M. Say took place, in Paris, during the third week of November, 1832, on which occasion, according to the statements in the French journals, such funeral honours were paid to his memory as are due to eminent personages, and Odilon-Barrot, de Sacy, de Laborde, Blanqui, and Charles Dupin, his distinguished countrymen and admirers, pronounced discourses at the interment in the cemetery of Pêre Lachaise.

The account of his decease, here subjoined, is taken from the London Political Examiner of the 25th of November, 1832, and is from the pen of its able editor, Mr. Fonblanque, one of the most powerful political writers in England. Mr. Fonblanque, it appears, was the personal friend, as well as the warm admirer, of the genius and writings of M. Say, and was well qualified to appreciate his high intellectual endowments, his profound knowledge and political wisdom, his manly independence, his mild yet dignified consistency of character, and above all, his rare and shining private virtues. There hardly could be a more interesting and instructive task assigned to the philosophical biographer, than a faithful portraiture of the life and labours of this illustrious man, which were so ardently and efficiently devoted to the advancement of the happiness and prosperity of his fellow-men. Perhaps the writings of no authors, however great their celebrity may be, are exerting a more powerful and enduring influence on the well-being of the people of Europe and America, than those of Adam Smith, and John Baptiste Say.

"France has this week lost another of her most distinguished writers and citizens, the celebrated political economist, M. Say. The invaluable branch of knowledge to which the greatest of his intellectual exertions were devoted, is indebted to him, amongst others, for those great and all-pervading truths which have elevated it to the rank of a science; and to him, far more than to any others, for its popularization and diffusion. Nor was M. Say a mere political economist; else had he been necessarily a bad one. He knew that a subject so 'immersed in matter,' (to use the fine expression of Lord Bacon,) as a nation's prosperity, must be looked at on many sides, in order to be seen rightly even on one. M. Say was one of the most accomplished minds of his age and country. Though he had given his chief attention to one particular aspect of human affairs, all their aspects were interesting to him; not one was excluded from his survey. His private life was a model of the domestic virtues. From the time when, with Chamfort and Ginguenê, he founded the Decade Philosophique, the first work which attempted to revive literary and scientific pursuits during the storms of the French Revolution—alike when courted by Napoleon, and when persecuted by him (he was expelled from the Tribunat for presuming to have an independent opinion); unchanged equally during the sixteen years of the Bourbons, and the two of Louis Philippe—he passed unsullied through all the trials and temptations which have left a stain on every man of feeble virtue among his conspicuous contemporaries. He kept aloof from public life, but was the friend and trusted adviser of some of its brightest ornaments; and few have contributed more, though in a private station, to keep alive in the hearts and in the contemplation of men, a lofty standard of public virtue. If this feeble testimony, from one not wholly unknown to him, should meet the eye of any one who loved him, may it, in so far as such things can, afford that comfort under the loss, which can be derived from the knowledge that others know and feel all its irreparableness!"

C. C. B.

Philadelphia, December, 1834.