Excerpt from The Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1 IN this new edition of an often-republished work no attempt has been made, as has generally been done, to bring it up to date by a vast accumulation of footnotes. The book has been regarded exclusively from the his torical side, in the belief that in that form it will be most useful to the student. Footnotes are given only when they have seemed absolutely necessary as correctives of the text; and the short introductory sketch of the history of political economy gives an outline of the development of the science, both before and after the epoch which was marked by the publication of this work. E. B. B. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.