154 ADAM SMITH. 



next of foreign commerce, as capital is safer in the first 

 than the second, and in the second than in the third em- 

 ployment. Secondly, the various discouragements to agri- 

 culture 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 improvement 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 improvement and purchase of his land, and intro- 

 duced a more regular police, as well as a freer state of 

 society generally. 



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 Mercan- 

 tile 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 completely 

 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 applications, 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, 

 prohibited the exportation of the precious metals ; but 

 this was found most vexatious to commerce, and therefore 



