The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (the best motivational books .TXT) 📕

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The Wealth of Nations is economist Adam Smith’s magnum opus and the foundational text of what today we call classical economics. Its publication ushered in a new era of thinking and discussion about how economies function, a sea change away from the older, increasingly-irrelevant mercantilist and physiocratic views of economics towards a new practical application of economics for the birth of the industrial era. Its scope is vast, touching on concepts like free markets, supply and demand, division of labor, war, and public debt. Its fundamental message is that the wealth of a nation is measured not by the gold in the monarch’s treasury, but by its national income, which in turn is produced by labor, land, and capital.

Some ten years in the writing, The Wealth of Nations is the product of almost two decades of notes, study, and discussion. It was released to glowing praise, selling out its first print run in just six months and going through five subsequent editions and countless reprintings in Smith’s lifetime. It began inspiring legislators almost immediately and continued to do so well into the 1800s, and influenced thinkers ranging from Alexander Hamilton to Karl Marx.

Today, it is the second-most-cited book in the social sciences that was published before 1950, and its legacy as a foundational text places it in the stratosphere of civilization-changing books like Principia Mathematica and The Origin of Species.

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England before he joined his relatives in Amsterdam. He became a partner with them, and on the death of Adrian Hope the conduct of the whole of the business of the firm devolved upon him. When the French invaded Holland in 1794 he retired to England. He died on 25th February, 1811, leaving £1,160,000 (Gentleman’s Magazine, March, 1811). ↩

Most modern editions are copied from the fourth edition. Thorold Rogers’ edition, however, though said in the preface to be copied from the fourth, as a matter of fact follows the third. In one instance, indeed, the omission of “so” before “as long as” here (in the present edition), Rogers’ text agrees with that of the fourth edition rather than the third, but this is an accidental coincidence in error; the error is a particularly easy one to make and it is actually corrected in the errata to the fourth edition, so that it is not really the reading of that edition. The fifth edition must not be confused with a spurious “fifth edition with additions” in 2 vols., 8vo, published in Dublin in 1793 with the “Advertisement” to the third edition deliberately falsified by the substitution of “fifth” for “third” in the sentence “To this third edition however I have made several additions.” It is perhaps the existence of this spurious “fifth edition” which has led several writers (e.g., Rae, Life of Adam Smith, p. 293) to ignore the genuine fifth edition. The sixth edition is dated 1791. ↩

Steuart’s Principles was “printed for A. Millar, and T. Cadell, in the Strand”: and the Wealth of Nations “for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell, in the Strand.” ↩

Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith. Reported by a student in 1763, and edited with an Introduction and Notes by Edwin Cannan, 1896, pp. 1, 3. ↩

Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, pp. 3, 4. ↩

Lectures, p. 154. ↩

See James Bonar, Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith, 1894. ↩

Lectures, p. 157. ↩

Lectures, p. 154. ↩

Lectures, p. 156. ↩

Lectures, p. 157. ↩

Lectures, p. 163. ↩

Lectures, pp. 172⁠–⁠3. ↩

Lectures, p. 178. ↩

Lectures, p. 182. ↩

Lectures, p. 192. ↩

Lectures, p. 195. ↩

Lectures, p. 196. ↩

Lectures, p. 197. ↩

Lectures, p. 199. ↩

Lectures, p. 200. ↩

Lectures, p. 204. ↩

Lectures, p. 206. ↩

Lectures, p. 207. ↩

Lectures, p. 209. ↩

Lectures, pp. 211⁠–⁠19. ↩

Lectures, pp. 219⁠–⁠22. ↩

Lectures, p. 222. ↩

Lectures, pp. 222⁠–⁠3. ↩

Lectures, pp. 223⁠–⁠36. ↩

Lectures, p. 253. ↩

Lectures, p. 254. ↩

Lectures, p. 255. ↩

Lectures, p. 256. ↩

Lectures, pp. 256, 257. ↩

Lectures, p. 258. ↩

Lectures, p. 236. ↩

Lectures, p. 239. ↩

Lectures, pp. 241, 242. ↩

Lectures, pp. 242, 243. ↩

Lectures, p. 243. ↩

Lectures, p. 245. ↩

Lectures, pp. 246, 247. ↩

Lectures, pp. 247⁠–⁠52. ↩

Lectures, p. 261. ↩

Lectures, p. 263. ↩

There is a reminiscence of them in the chapter on Rent, here through here. ↩

See above, here. ↩

See below, here and here, for a conjecture on this subject. ↩

See this endnote. ↩

Dugald Stewart, in his “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith,” read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1793 and published in Adam Smith’s posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 1795, p. xviii. See Rae, Life of Adam Smith, pp. 53⁠–⁠5. ↩

Rae, Life of Adam Smith, pp. 42⁠–⁠5. ↩

Stewart, in Smith’s Essays, pp. lxxx, lxxxi. ↩

Rae, Life of Adam Smith, pp. 43⁠–⁠4. ↩

W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 1900, pp. 210, 231. In the Introduction to Moral Philosophy, 1747, Civil Polity is replaced by “Œconomicks and Politicks,” but “Œconomicks” only means domestic law, i.e., the rights of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. i, pp. 288, 289. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. i, pp. 319⁠–⁠21. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. ii, p. 58. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 62, 63. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, pp. 71⁠–⁠2. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. ii, p. 73. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 318⁠–⁠21. ↩

System of Moral Philosophy, vol.