Investing

If the pension of such a person was paid to him, not in gold, but in a weekly bill for a guinea, his revenue surely would not so properly consist…

Though the weekly or yearly revenue of all the different inhabitants of any country, in the same manner, may be, and in reality frequently is, paid…

Money, therefore, the great wheel of circulation, the great instrument of commerce, like all other instruments of trade, though it makes a part,…

Thirdly, and lastly, the machines and instruments of trade, etc. which compose the fixed capital, bear this further resemblance to that part of the…

It is sufficiently obvious, and it has partly, too, been explained already, in what manner every saving in the expense of supporting the fixed…

If they employ it in purchasing goods in one foreign country, in order to supply the consumption of another, or in what is called the carrying trade,…

If they employ it in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, they may either, first, purchase such goods as are likely to be consumed by…

So far as it is employed in the second way, it promotes industry; and though it increases the consumption of the society, it provides a permanent…

When we compute the quantity of industry which the circulating capital of any society can employ, we must always have regard to those parts of it…

The quantity of industry which any capital can employ, must evidently be equal to the number of workmen whom it can supply with materials, tools, and…

When paper is substituted in the room of gold and silver money, the quantity of the materials, tools, and maintenance, which the whole circulating…

It is chiefly by discounting bills of exchange, that is, by advancing money upon them before they are due, that the greater part of banks and bankers…

Over and above the expenses which are common to every branch of trade, such as the expense of house-rent, the wages of servants, clerks, accountants,…

Had every particular banking company always understood and attended to its own particular interest, the circulation never could have been overstocked…

What a bank can with propriety advance to a merchant or undertaker of any kind, is not either the whole capital with which he trades, or even any…

When a bank discounts to a merchant a real bill of exchange, drawn by a real creditor upon a real debtor, and which, as soon as it becomes due, is…

In a country where the ordinary profits of stock, in the greater part of mercantile projects, are supposed to run between six and ten per cent. it…

In 1697, the bank was allowed to enlarge its capital stock, by an ingraftment of £1,001,171:10s. Its whole capital stock, therefore, amounted at this…

In pursuance of the 7th Anne, c. 7, the bank advanced and paid into the exchequer the sum of £400,000; making in all the sum of £1,600,000, which…

By a call of fifteen per cent. in 1709, there was paid in, and made stock, £ 656,204:1:9d.; and by another of ten per cent. in 1710, £501,448:12:11d.…

The dividend of the bank has varied according to the variations in the rate of the interest which it has, at different times, received for the…

It were better, perhaps, that no bank notes were issued in any part of the kingdom for a smaller sum than £5. Paper money would then, probably,…

A paper money, consisting in bank notes, issued by people of undoubted credit, payable upon demand, without any condition, and, in fact, always…

It would be otherwise, indeed, with a paper money, consisting in promissory notes, of which the immediate payment depended, in any respect, either…

In the paper currencies of Yorkshire, the payment of so small a sum as 6d. sometimes depended upon the condition, that the holder of the note…

A paper currency which falls below the value of gold and silver coin, does not thereby sink the value of those metals, or occasion equal quantities…

That part of the annual produce of the land and labour of any country which replaces a capital, never is immediately employed to maintain any but…

Whatever part of his stock a man employs as a capital, he always expects it to be replaced to him with a profit. He employs it, therefore, in…

The proportion, therefore, between the productive and unproductive hands, depends very much in every country upon the proportion between that part of…

In the opulent countries of Europe, great capitals are at present employed in trade and manufactures. In the ancient state, the little trade that was…

That part of the annual produce, therefore, which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers, is…

The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness. Wherever capital…

Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive…

This expense, it may be said, indeed, not being in foreign goods, and not occasioning any exportation of gold and silver, the same quantity of…

The effects of misconduct are often the same as those of prodigality. Every injudicious and unsuccessful project in agriculture, mines, fisheries,…

The only people to whom stock is commonly lent, without their being expected to make any very profitable use of it, are country gentlemen, who borrow…

Almost all loans at interest are made in money, either of paper, or of gold and silver; but what the borrower really wants, and what the lender…

A capital lent at interest may, in this manner, be considered as an assignment, from the lender to the borrower, of a certain considerable portion of…

In proportion as that share of the annual produce which, as soon as it comes either from the ground, or from the hands of the productive labourers,…

Mr Locke, Mr Lawe, and Mr Montesquieu, as well as many other writers, seem to have imagined that the increase of the quantity of gold and silver,…

No law can reduce the common rate of interest below the lowest ordinary market rate at the time when that law is made. Notwithstanding the edict of…

Though all capitals are destined for the maintenance of productive labour only, yet the quantity of that labour which equal capitals are capable of…

Unless a capital was employed in manufacturing that part of the rude produce which requires a good deal of preparation before it can be fit for use…

The persons whose capitals are employed in any of those four ways, are themselves productive labourers. Their labour, when properly directed, fixes…

The capital of the retailer replaces, together with its profits, that of the merchant of whom he purchases goods, and thereby enables him to continue…

The capital of the wholesale merchant replaces, together with their profits, the capitals of the farmers and manufacturers of whom he purchases the…

The capitals employed in the agriculture and in the retail trade of any society, must always reside within that society. Their employment is confined…

When the capital of any country is not sufficient for all those three purposes, in proportion as a greater share of it is employed in agriculture,…

It is thus that the same capital will in any country put into motion a greater or smaller quantity of productive labour, and add a greater or smaller…

All wholesale trade, all buying in order to sell again by wholesale, maybe reduced to three different sorts: the home trade, the foreign trade of…

The capital employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption, when this purchase is made with the produce of domestic industry, replaces,…

But the returns of the foreign trade of consumption are very seldom so quick as those of the home trade. The returns of the home trade generally come…

The extent of the home trade, and of the capital which can be employed in it, is necessarily limited by the value of the surplus produce of all those…

In countries, on the contrary, where there is either no uncultivated land, or none that can be had upon easy terms, every artificer who has…

The public services to which the yeomanry were bound, were not less arbitrary than the private ones. To make and maintain the high roads, a servitude…

At first, the farm of the town was probably let to the burghers, in the same manner as it had been to other farmers, for a term of years only. In…

First, by affording a great and ready market for the rude produce of the country, they gave encouragement to its cultivation and further improvement.…

When the great proprietors of land spend their rents in maintaining their tenants and retainers, each of them maintains entirely all his own…

It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove, that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases,…

The two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country…