Principles of Political Economy

„Systematic study for an understanding of the laws of political economy is to be found no farther back than the sixteenth century.”

„wealth really consists, not in money alone, but in an abundance of commodities”

„a country will be more prosperous if its neighbors are prosperous, and that nations have no interest in injuring each other.”

„since the facts of banking change and vary every day, no one can by induction alone reach any laws of banking; or, for example, the study of a panic from the concrete phenomena would be like trying to explain the bursting of a boiler without a theory of steam.”

„to mistake money for wealth is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway, which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.”

„Wealth, then, may be defined, all useful or agreeable things which possess exchangeable value; or, in other words, all useful or agreeable things except those which can be obtained, in the quantity desired, without labor or sacrifice.”

„Labor is either bodily or mental; or, to express the distinction more comprehensively, either muscular or nervous;”

„no one will give anything for what can be obtained gratis.”

„teachers are indirect laborers in producing almost every article in the market.”

„Labor is indispensable to production, but has not always production for its effect.”

„The labor of saving a friend's life is not productive, unless the friend is a productive laborer, and produces more than he consumes.”

„All material products consumed by any one while he produces nothing are so much subtracted, for the time, from the material products which society would otherwise have possessed.”

„If defect of skill in laborers, or of judgment in those who direct them, causes a misapplication of productive industry, labor is wasted.”

„Whoever contributes nothing directly or indirectly to production is an unproductive consumer.”

„consumption on pleasures or luxuries, whether by the idle or by the industrious, since production is neither its object nor is in any way advanced by it, must be reckoned Unproductive”

„It would be a great error to regret the large proportion of the annual produce, which in an opulent country goes to supply unproductive consumption. That so great a surplus should be available for such purposes, and that it should be applied to them, can only be a subject of congratulation.”

„a man may have capital without ever having any actual money in his possession”

those are richer who have made profit out of the money while it was being spent.

„To employ labor in a manufacture is to invest capital in the manufacture. This implies that industry can not be employed to any greater extent than there is capital to invest.”

„Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labor, but of past.”

people do not wholly pay their taxes from what they would have saved, but partly, if not chiefly, from what they would have spent.

„Every addition to capital gives to labor either additional employment or additional remuneration.”

„civilization is constantly leading us into new fields of enjoyment, and results in a constant differentiation of new desires.”

„people must have produced more than they used, or used less than they produced.”

To consume less than is produced is saving; and that is the process by which capital is increased; not necessarily by consuming less, absolutely.

„Everything which is produced is consumed—both what is saved and what is said to be spent—and the former quite as rapidly as the latter.”

The land subsists, and the land is almost the only thing that subsists.

Everything which is produced perishes, and most things very quickly. Most kinds of capital are not fitted by their nature to be long preserved.

„Capital is kept in existence from age to age not by preservation, but by perpetual reproduction; every part of it is used and destroyed, generally very soon after it is produced, but those who consume it are employed meanwhile in producing more.”

„For the production of wealth are required labor, capital, and land.”

„Whatever is spent can not but be drawn from yearly income. The whole and every part of the wealth produced in the country forms, or helps to form, the yearly income of somebody.”

„Mere exchange does not alter the quantity of commodities produced.”

„if there were no desires, there would be no demand, and so no production and employment of labor.”

„wealth paid out in wages, or advanced to producers, itself supports labor”

„production is correctly adapted to human desires.”

„the most important function of a successful business man is the adaptation of production to the market, that is, to the desires of consumers.”

„if there were not a demand for luxuries and comforts, many vast industries would cease to exist, and labor would be thrown out of employment”

„When the Government takes that wealth which was formerly capital, burns it up, or dissipates it in war, it ceases to exist any longer as a means of again producing wealth, or of employing labor.”

„Of the capital engaged in the production of any commodity, there is a part which, after being once used, exists no longer as capital; is no longer capable of rendering service to production, or at least not the same service, nor to the same sort of production.”

„The argument relied on by most of those who contend that machinery can never be injurious to the laboring-class is, that by cheapening production it creates such an increased demand for the commodity as enables, ere long, a greater number of persons than ever to find employment in producing it. The argument does not seem to me to have the weight commonly ascribed to it.”

„what the consumers save in the increased cheapness of one particular article enables them to augment their consumption of others, thereby increasing the demand for other kinds of labor. This is plausible, but, as was shown in the last chapter, involves a fallacy; demand for commodities being a totally different thing from demand for labor.”

„improvements are always introduced very gradually, and are seldom or never made by withdrawing circulating capital from actual production, but are made by the employment of the annual increase.”

„That the productiveness of the labor of a people is limited by their knowledge of the arts of life is self-evident, and that any progress in those arts, any improved application of the objects or powers of nature to industrial uses, enables the same quantity and intensity of labor to raise a greater produce.”

„Without some separation of employments, very few things would be produced at all.”

„a country will seldom have a productive agriculture unless it has a large town population, or, the only available substitute, a large export trade in agricultural produce to supply a population elsewhere.”

„If one kind of muscular or mental labor is different from another, for that very reason it is to some extent a rest from that other; and if the greatest vigor is not at once obtained in the second occupation, neither could the first have been indefinitely prolonged without some relaxation of energy.”

„Inventions tending to save labor in a particular operation are more likely to occur to any one in proportion as his thoughts are intensely directed to that occupation, and continually employed upon it.”

„the more economical distribution of labor by classing the work-people according to their capacity. Different parts of the same series of operations require unequal degrees of skill and bodily strength; and those who have skill enough for the most difficult, or strength enough for the hardest parts of the labor, are made much more useful by being employed solely in them.”

„Whenever it is essential to the greatest efficiency of labor that many laborers should combine, the scale of the enterprise must be such as to bring many laborers together, and the capital must be large enough to maintain them.”

„As a general rule, the expenses of a business do not increase by any means proportionally to the quantity of business.”

„Wherever there are large and small establishments in the same business, that one of the two which in existing circumstances carries on the production at greatest advantage will be able to undersell the other.”

„Production on a large scale is greatly promoted by the practice of forming a large capital by the combination of many small contributions; or, in other words, by the formation of stock companies.”

„Production is not a fixed but an increasing thing. When not kept back by bad institutions, or a low state of the arts of life, the produce of industry has usually tended to increase; stimulated not only by the desire of the producers to augment their means of consumption, but by the increasing number of the consumers.”

„The increase of labor is the increase of mankind; of population. The power of multiplication inherent in all organic life may be regarded as infinite.”

„In proportion as mankind rise above the condition of the beast, population is restrained by the fear of want, rather than by want itself.”

„In a very backward state of society, like that of Europe in the middle ages, and many parts of Asia at present, population is kept down by actual starvation. The starvation does not take place in ordinary years, but in seasons of scarcity.”

„There is a condition to which the laboring-people are habituated; they perceive that, by having too numerous families, they must sink below that condition, or fail to transmit it to their children; and this they do not choose to submit to.”

„Since all capital is the product of saving, that is, of abstinence from present consumption for the sake of a future good, the increase of capital must depend upon two things—the amount of the fund from which saving can be made, and the strength of the dispositions which prompt to it.”

„The unproductive consumption, however, of all classes—not merely that of the working-men—is the possible fund which may be saved. That being the amount which can be saved, how much will be saved depends on the strength of the desire to save.”

„A part of the motive to saving consists in the prospect of deriving an income from savings; in the fact that capital, employed in production, is capable of not only reproducing itself but yielding an increase. The greater the profit that can be made from capital, the stronger is the motive to its accumulation.”

„All accumulation involves the sacrifice of a present, for the sake of a future good.”

„it becomes the object of ambition to save not merely as much as will afford a large income while in business, but enough to retire from business and live in affluence on realized gains.”

„doubling the labor does not double the produce; or, to express the same thing in other words, every increase of produce is obtained by a more than proportional increase in the application of labor to the land.”

„Land may be inferior either in fertility or in situation. The one requires a greater proportional amount of labor for growing the produce, the other for carrying it to market.”

„when food is wanted, labor will always be applied to producing it in preference to anything else. But this labor is more effective for its end by being applied to fresh soil than if it were employed in bringing the soil already occupied into higher cultivation.”

„Good roads are equivalent to good tools.”

„Railways and canals are virtually a diminution of the cost of production of all things sent to market by them; and literally so of all those the appliances and aids for producing which they serve to transmit.”

„The intelligence of the workman is a most important element in the productiveness of labor. The carefulness, economy, and general trustworthiness of laborers are as important as their intelligence. Friendly relations and a community of interest and feeling between laborers and employers are eminently so.”

„All persons are not equally fit for all labor; and the same quantity of labor is an unequal burden on the weak and the strong, the hardy and the delicate, the quick and the slow, the dull and the intelligent.”

„It is yet to be ascertained whether the communistic scheme would be consistent with that multiform development of human nature, those manifold unlikenesses, that diversity of tastes and talents, and variety of intellectual points of view, which not only form a great part of the interest of human life, but, by bringing intellects into stimulating collision and by presenting to each innumerable notions that he would not have conceived of himself, are the mainspring of mental and moral progression.”

„the same person who has plowed and sown must be permitted to reap.”

__No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species.__

„in the case of land, no exclusive right should be permitted in any individual which can not be shown to be productive of positive good. Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think that all this is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with as if it concerned nobody but himself.”

„The custom of the country is the universal rule; nobody thinks of raising or lowering rents, or of letting land, on other than the customary conditions. Competition, as a regulator of rent, has no existence.”

„All professional remuneration is regulated by custom. The fees of physicians, surgeons, and barristers, the charges of attorneys, are nearly invariable. Not certainly for want of abundant competition in those professions, but because the competition operates by diminishing each competitor's chance of fees, not by lowering the fees themselves.”

„Capital which the owner does not employ in purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from the variations of trade, occasionally in this state.”

„Though capital should for a time double itself simultaneously with population, if all this capital and population are to find employment on the same land, they can not, without an unexampled succession of agricultural inventions, continue doubling the produce; therefore, if wages do not fall, profits must; and, when profits fall, increase of capital is slackened.”

„Wherever population is not kept down by the prudence either of individuals or of the state, it is kept down by starvation or disease.”

„it is a mistake to suppose that competition merely keeps down wages. It is equally the means by which they are kept up. When there are any laborers unemployed, these, unless maintained by charity, become competitors for hire, and wages fall; but when all who were out of work have found employment, wages will not, under the freest system of competition, fall lower.”

„Goods can only be lowered in price by competition to the point which calls forth buyers sufficient to take them off; and wages can only be lowered by competition until room is made to admit all the laborers to a share in the distribution of the wages-fund. If they fell below this point, a portion of capital would remain unemployed for want of laborers; a counter-competition would commence on the side of capitalists, and wages would rise.”

Society mainly consists of those who live by bodily labor; and if society, that is, if the laborers, lend their physical force to protect individuals in the enjoyment of superfluities, they are entitled to do so, and have always done so, with the reservation of a power to tax those superfluities for purposes of public utility; among which purposes the subsistence of the people is the foremost. Since no one is responsible for having been born, no pecuniary sacrifice is too great to be made by those who have more than enough, for the purpose of securing enough to all persons already in existence.

„Men are seldom found to brave the general opinion of their class, unless supported either by some principle higher than regard for opinion, or by some strong body of opinion elsewhere.”

„education is not compatible with extreme poverty. It is impossible effectually to teach an indigent population.”

„Honor makes a great part of the reward of all honorable professions.”

„The lowest rate of profit that can permanently exist is that which is barely adequate, at the given place and time, to afford an equivalent for the abstinence, risk, and exertion implied in the employment of capital. it must afford such an equivalent to the owner of the capital for forbearing to consume it as is then and there a sufficient motive to him to persist in his abstinence. after covering all losses, and remunerating the owner for forbearing to consume, there must be something left to recompense the labor and skill of the person who devotes his time to the business.”

„capital runs as surely and instantly where it is most wanted, and where there is most to be made of it, as water runs to find its level.”

„In general, then, although profits are very different to different individuals, and to the same individual in different years, there can not be much diversity at the same time and place in the average profits of different employments. the chance of greater success is balanced by a greater probability of complete failure.”

„The cause of profit is, that labor produces more than is required for its support; the reason why capital yields a profit is, because food, clothing, materials, and tools last longer than the time which is required to produce them. profit arises, not from the incident of exchange, but from the productive power of labor; and the general profit of the country is always what the productive power of labor makes it, whether any exchange takes place or not.”

„the rate of profits depends upon wages; rising as wages fall, and falling as wages rise. Instead of saying that profits depend on wages, let us say (what Ricardo really meant) that they depend on the cost of labor.”

„the cost of labor is frequently at its highest where wages are lowest. This may arise from two causes. (1.) In the first place, the labor, though cheap, may be inefficient. (2.) The other cause which renders wages and the cost of labor no real criteria of one another is the varying costliness of the articles which the laborer consumes.”

„The reason why land-owners are able to require rent for their land is, that it is a commodity which many want, and which no one can obtain but from them.”

„The rent, therefore, which any land will yield, is the excess of its produce, beyond what would be returned to the same capital if employed on the worst land in cultivation.”

„The rise of price enables measures to be taken for increasing the produce, which could not have been taken with profit at the previous price.”

„The rent of all land is measured by the excess of the return to the whole capital employed on it above what is necessary to replace the capital with the ordinary rate of profit.”

„for the production of wealth, two things are required, labor and land.”

„The word Value, when used without adjunct, always means, in political economy, value in exchange. Exchange value requires to be distinguished from Price.”

All things can not rise relatively to one another. A general rise or a general fall of prices is merely tantamount to an alteration in the value of money.”

„That a thing may have any value in exchange, two conditions are necessary. 1. It must be of some use; that is, it must conduce to some purpose, satisfy some desire. 2. But, secondly, the thing must not only have some utility, there must also be some difficulty in its attainment.”

The value at any particular time is the result of supply and demand, and is always that which is necessary to create a market for the existing supply. But unless that value is sufficient to repay the Cost of Production, and to afford, besides, the ordinary expectation of profit, the commodity will not continue to be produced.”

„Nobody willingly produces in the prospect of loss.”

__whenever there is a departure of the value from the normal cost, there is set in motion ipso facto a series of forces which automatically restores the value to that cost. A body possessing weight does not move downward under all circumstances (stones may be thrown upward), but the law of gravitation holds true, nevertheless.__”

„The supply of a commodity always tends to adapt itself to the demand at the normal price. by the normal price of a commodity I mean that price which suffices, and no more than suffices, to yield to the producers what is considered to be the average and usual remuneration on such sacrifices as they undergo.”

„What the production of a thing costs to its producer, or its series of producers, is the labor expended in producing it.”

„The return from abstinence is Profit.”

„The more productive an industry is, the higher its wages and profits may be, and it is exactly at this point that more attention should be given to the relations of labor and capital. If productiveness can be increased, higher wages as well as higher profits are possible.”

„Money is the medium of exchange. Whatever performs this function, does this work, is money, no matter what it is made of. That which does the money-work is the money-thing.”

„The thing which people would select to keep by them for making purchases must be one which, besides being divisible and generally desired, does not deteriorate by keeping.”

„There can not, in short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of society, than money; except in the character of a contrivance for sparing time and labor. It is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it; and, like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a distinct and independent influence of its own when it gets out of order.”

„The value of a thing is what it will exchange for; the value of money is what money will exchange for, the purchasing power of money. The value of money is inversely as general prices; falling as they rise, and rising as they fall.”

„If the whole money in circulation was doubled, prices would be doubled. If it was only increased one fourth, prices would rise one fourth.”

„The essential point is, not how often the same money changes hands in a given time, but how often it changes hands in order to perform a given amount of traffic. We must compare the number of purchases made by the money in a given time, not with the time itself, but with the goods sold in that same time.”

„money, no more than commodities in general, has its value definitely determined by demand and supply. The ultimate regulator of its value is Cost of Production.”

„Credit has a great, but not, as many people seem to suppose, a magical power; it can not make something out of nothing.”

„Money not in circulation has no effect on prices.”

„no one likes to part with ready money, or to postpone his claim to it.”

„A commercial crisis in one great money-center is felt at every other point in the world which has business connections with it.”

„A country is more subject to crises the more advanced is its economical development. There are certain maladies which attack only grown-up persons who have reached a certain degree of vigor and maturity.”

„prices do not depend on money, but on purchases. Money left with a banker, and not drawn against, or drawn against for other purposes than buying commodities, has no effect on prices, any more than credit which is not used. Money and credit are thus exactly on a par in their effect on prices.”

„To be able to pay off the national debt, defray the expenses of government without taxation, and, in fine, to make the fortunes of the whole community, is a brilliant prospect, when once a man is capable of believing that printing a few characters on bits of paper will do it. The philosopher's stone could not be expected to do more.”

„resolutions do not create wealth as fast as money can be printed.”

the speculators did not think they were growing rich because the high prices would last, but because they would not last, and because whoever contrived to realize while they did last would find himself, after the recoil, in possession of a greater number of [dollars], without their having become of less value.”

„for every person who thus gains more than usual, there is necessarily some other person who gains less.”

„every one dislikes to part with ready money, and many are anxious to procure it at any sacrifice.”

„it is a great error to suppose, with Sismondi, that a commercial crisis is the effect of a general excess of production. It is simply the consequence of an excess of speculative purchases.”

„A thing may sometimes be sold cheapest, by being produced in some other place than that at which it can be produced with the smallest amount of labor and abstinence.”

„persons do not usually remove themselves or their capitals to a distant place without a very strong motive.”

„The produce of the whole world would be greater, or the labor less, than it is, if everything were produced where there is the greatest absolute facility for its production.”

„Commerce is virtually a mode of cheapening production; and in all such cases the consumer is the person ultimately benefited; the dealer, in the end, is sure to get his profit, whether the buyer obtains much or little for his money.”

„Commerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another. It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race.”

„The value of a thing in any place depends on the cost of its acquisition in that place; which, in the case of an imported article, means the cost of production of the thing which is exported to pay for it.”

„The market is cheapest to those whose demand is small. A country which desires few foreign productions, and only a limited quantity of them, while its own commodities are in great request in foreign countries, will obtain its limited imports at extremely small cost.”

„all trade, either between nations or individuals, is an interchange of commodities, in which the things that they respectively have to sell constitute also their means of purchase: the supply brought by the one constitutes his demand for what is brought by the other.”

„All interchange is, in substance and effect, barter; whoever sells commodities for money, and with that money buys other goods, really buys those goods with his own commodities.”

„The rate of interest will be such as to equalize the demand for loans with the supply of them. If there is more offered than demanded, interest will fall; if more is demanded than offered, it will rise; and in both cases, to the point at which the equation of supply and demand is re-established.”

„An increase of the currency has in itself no effect, and is incapable of having any effect, on the rate of interest.”

„The Rate of Interest determines the price of land and of Securities.”

„the rate of interest determines the value and price of all those salable articles which are desired and bought, not for themselves, but for the income which they are capable of yielding. When interest is low, land will naturally be dear; when interest is high, land will be cheap.”

„High wages do not prevent one Country from underselling another.”

„General low wages do not cause low prices, nor high wages high prices, within the country itself.”

„Wages depend on the ratio between population and capital. when the check is not death by starvation or disease, wages depend on the prudence of the laboring people.”

„A rise of general wages falls on profits. There is no possible alternative.”

„Profits depend on the Cost of Labor. the rate of profit and the cost of labor vary inversely as one another, and are joint effects of the same agencies or causes.”

„In the leading countries of the world, and in all others as they come within the influence of those leading countries, there is at least one progressive movement which continues with little interruption from year to year and from generation to generation—a progress in wealth; an advancement in what is called material prosperity.”

__Our knowledge of the properties and laws of physical objects shows no sign of approaching its ultimate boundaries: it is advancing more rapidly, and in a greater number of directions at once, than in any previous age or generation, and affording such frequent glimpses of unexplored fields beyond as to justify the belief that our acquaintance with nature is still almost in its infancy.__

„the progress of civilized society, is (2) a continual increase of the security of person and property. Industry and frugality can not exist where there is not a preponderant probability that those who labor and spare will be permitted to enjoy.”

„The peculiar characteristic, in short, of civilized beings, is the capacity of co-operation; Works of all sorts, impracticable to the savage or the half-civilized, are daily accomplished by civilized nations, not by any greatness of faculties in the actual agents, but through the fact that each is able to rely with certainty on the others for the portion of the work which they respectively undertake.”

„the increasing power which mankind are constantly acquiring over nature increases more and more the efficiency of human exertion, or, in other words, diminishes cost of production.”

„As commerce extends, and the ignorant attempts to restrain it by tariffs become obsolete, commodities tend more and more to be produced in the places in which their production can be carried on at the least expense of labor and capital to mankind.”

„The prices of things are neither so much depressed at one time, nor so much raised at another, as they would be if speculative dealers did not exist.”

„when all things have fallen, nothing has really fallen, except nominally; and, even computed in money, the expenses of every producer have diminished as much as his returns.”

„Prices are not determined by the competition of the sellers only, but also by that of the buyers; by demand as well as supply.”

„As capital increased, population either would also increase, or it would not. If it did not, wages would rise, and a greater capital would be distributed in wages among the same number of laborers.”

„Toward what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?”

„It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement.”

„Instances of injustice arising from the relations of employers and employed will occur so long as human nature remains imperfect.”

„Land worth $500 to-day when bought by the savings of a laborer, besides the self-respect it gives him, will increase in value with the density of population, and become worth $600 or more without other sacrifice of his.”

„The manager's wages are payments of exactly the same nature as any laborer's wages. It makes no difference whether wages are paid for manual or mental labor.”

„Self-help must be stimulated, not deadened by stifling dependence on a class of superiors, or on the state. The extraordinary growth of co-operation is one of the most cheering signs of modern times.”

„1. The subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the government, as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities: that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

„2. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person.”

„3. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.”

„4. Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.”

„For what reason ought equality to be the rule in matters of taxation? For the reason that it ought to be so in all affairs of government. A government ought to make no distinction of persons or classes in the strength of their claims on it. Equality of taxation, therefore, as a maxim of politics, means equality of sacrifice.”

„Taxes are either direct or indirect. A direct tax is one which is demanded from the very persons who, it is intended or desired, should pay it. Indirect taxes are those which are demanded from one person in the expectation and intention that he shall indemnify himself at the expense of another.”

„A tax on profits, like a tax on rent, must, at least in its immediate operation, fall wholly on the payer.”

„As incomes below a certain amount ought to be exempt from income-tax, so ought houses below a certain value from house-tax, on the universal principle of sparing from all taxation the absolute necessaries of healthful existence.”

„When the cost of production is increased artificially by a tax, the effect is the same as when it is increased by natural causes.”

„Taxes on necessaries must thus have one of two effects: either they lower the condition of the laboring-classes, or they exact from the owners of capital, in addition to the amount due to the state on their own necessaries, the amount due on those consumed by the laborers.”

„A commodity is never permanently imported, unless it can be obtained from abroad at a smaller cost of labor and capital, on the whole, than is necessary for producing it. If, therefore, by a duty on the importation, it is rendered cheaper to produce the article than to import it, an extra quantity of labor and capital is expended, without any extra result. The labor is useless, and the capital is spent in paying people for laboriously doing nothing.”

„That country which has the strongest demand for the commodities of other countries as compared with the demand of other countries for its own commodities will pay the burden of the export duty.”

„A country can not be expected to renounce the power of taxing foreigners unless foreigners will in return practice toward itself the same forbearance.”

„A man dislikes not so much the payment as the act of paying. He dislikes seeing the face of the tax-collector, and being subjected to his peremptory demand.”

„No tax ought to be kept so high as to furnish a motive to its evasion.”

„a collective debt defrayed by taxes has, over the same debt parceled out among individuals, the immense advantage that it is virtually a mutual insurance among the contributors. If the fortune of a contributor diminishes, his taxes diminish; if he is ruined, they cease altogether, and his portion of the debt is wholly transferred to the solvent members of the community.”

„the importation of foreign commodities, in the common course of traffic, never takes place except when it is, economically speaking, a national good, by causing the same amount of commodities to be obtained at a smaller cost of labor and capital to the country.”

„The superiority of one country over another in a branch of production often arises only from having begun it sooner. nothing has a greater tendency to promote improvements in any branch of production than its trial under a new set of conditions.”