WEALTH OP NATIONS. 225 



the third employment. Secondly, the various discour- 

 agements to agriculture by the circumstances and the 

 barbarous policy of the European states after the fall 

 of the Roman empire. Thirdly, the rise and progress 

 of the towns in the dark ages. Fourthly, the improve- 

 ment promoted in the country by tHe progress of the 

 towns, which gave the agriculturist an increased market 

 for his produce, applied their capital to the improve- 

 ment and purchase of his land, and introduced a more 

 regular police, as well as a freer state of society gen- 

 erally. 



IV. The fourth book, the most important of the 

 ' Wealth of Nations,' is devoted to the consideration of 

 the two great systems of political economy, the Mer- 

 cantile and the Agricultural; the discussion of the 

 former occupies eight chapters, and one-fourth part of 

 the whole work ; that of the latter is comprised in a 

 single chapter of moderate extent. 



Part I. This elaborate, most able, and most com- 

 pletely satisfactory inquiry commences with showing 

 the popular mistake or confusion which lies at the 

 bottom of the mercantile system, runs through its 

 whole doctrines, and gives rise to all its practical ap- 

 plications, that gold and silver, being the instruments 

 of exchange and the ordinary measures of value, are 

 therefore wealth itself independent of their value as 

 instruments and measures, and that the great object of 

 statesmen should be to multiply them in any given 

 country, in order thereby to increase that country's 

 wealth. Rulers having begun upon this view, pro- 

 hibited the exportation of the precious metals ; but 

 this was found most vexatious to commerce, and there- 

 fore the traders urged the governments of different 

 countries to suffer the exportation, by which goods 

 might be obtained, the re-exportation of which would 

 restore with a profit the specie that had been sent to 

 buy these, and thus augment its whole mass. These 

 merchants, however, wholly adopting the fundamental 



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