Pre-Classical and Classical Flashcards
The purpose of exporting money is to enlarge our trade by enabling us to bring in more forraign wares, which being sent out again will in due time much increase our Treasure. For although in this manner wee do yearly multiply our importations to the maintenance of more Shipping and Mariners, improvement of His Majesties Customs and other benefits: yet our consumption of those forraign wares is not more than it was before; so that all the said increase of commodities…doth in the end become an exportation unto us of a far greater value.
Thomas Mun. England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade. 1664
«Instead of using only comparative and superlative words, and intellectual arguments, I have taken the course…to express my self in terms of number, weight or measure; to use only arguments of sense, and to consider only such causes, as have visible foundations in nature.»
William Petty. Political Arithmetick. 1690.
«Productive expenditure is employed in agriculture, grasslands, pastures, forests, mines, fishing, etc., in order to perpetuate wealth in the form of corn, drink, wood, livestock, raw materials for manufactured goods, etc. Sterile expenditure is on manufactured commodities, house-room, clothing, interest on money, servants, commercial costs, foreign produce, etc.»
Francois Quesnay. Tableau Economique. 1758.
«[M]anufactures encrease the power of the state only as they store up so much labour, and that of a kind to which the public may lay claim, without depriving any one of the necessaries of life. The more labour, therefore, is employed beyond mere necessaries, the more powerful is any state; since the persons engaged in that labour may easily be converted to the public service. In a state without manufactures, there may be the same number of hands; but there is not the same quantity of labour, nor of the same kind. All the labour is there bestowed upon necessaries, which can admit of little or no abatement.»
David Hume. Political Discourses. of Commerce. 1752.
«Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce; but only the instrument which men have agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity for another. It is none of the wheels of trade: It is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy. If we consider any one kingdom by itself, it is evident, that the greater or less plenty of money is of no consequence; since the prices of commodities are always proportioned to the plenty of money, and a crown in Harry VII ’s time served the same purpose as a pound does at present.»
David Hume. Political Discourses. of Money. 1752.
«The nature of demand is to encourage industry. And when, it is regularly made, the effect of it is, that the supply for the most part is found to be in proportion to it, and then the demand is commonly simple. It becomes compound from other circumstances. As when it is irregular, that is, unexpected, or when the usual supply fails;… [this] occasions a competition among the buyers, and raises the current, that is, the ordinary prices.»
Sir James Steuart. Principles. of Trade and Industry. 1767.
«The principle of self-interest will serve as a general key to this inquiry; and it may, in one sense, be considered as the ruling principle of my subject, and may therefore be traced throughout the whole. This is the main spring, and only motive which a statesman should make use of, to engage a free people to concur in the plans which he lays down for their government… [w]ere every one to act for the public, and neglect himself, the statesman would be bewildered, and the supposition is ridiculous.»
Sir James Steuart. Principles. of Trade and Industry. 1767.
