Commercial society deforms human nature

READING SUMMARY

· Division of labour destroys intellectual, social and martial virtues unless government takes pains to prevent it, whereas in barbarous societies those virtues are kept alive by constant necessity. The education of the common people requires attention from the state more than that of people of rank and fortune, whose parents can look after their interests and who spend their lives in varied occupations chiefly intellectual, unlike the children of the poor. The state can encourage or insist on the general acquirement of reading, writing and arithmetic, by establishing parish schools, giving prizes, and requiring men to pass an examination before setting up in trade. In this way the Greeks and Romans maintained a martial spirit. Martial spirit in the people would diminish both the necessary size and the danger of a standing army. 

· The Greek and Roman institutions were more effectual than modern militias, which only include a small portion of the people. It is the duty of government to prevent the growth of cowardice, gross ignorance and stupidity.

· High earning of labour are an advantage to the society. Poverty doesn’t prevent births, but is unfavourable to the rearing of children, and so restrains, while the liberal reward of labour encourages it as the wear and tear of the free man must be paid for just like that of the slave, though not so extravagantly.

· High wages increase population. The progressive state is the best for the labouring poor.

· High wages encourage industry. The opinion that cheap years encourage idleness is erroneous. Wages are high in cheap years, and low in dear years, so that masters commend dear years.

· Writers who begin by including lands, houses and consumable goods in wealth often forget them later. Wealth being supposed to consist in gold and silver, political economy endeavored to diminish imports and encourage exports, by restraints upon importation and encouragements to exportation, which restraints and encouragements will be considered in the next 6 chapters.

· High duties and prohibitions giving a monopoly to a particular home industry are very common. They encourage the particular industry, but neither increase general industry nor give it the best direction. The number of persons employed cannot exceed a certain proportion to the capital of the society, and every man’s interest leads him to seek that employment of capital which is most advantageous to the society. 

· (1) He tries to employ it as near home as possible.

      (2) He endeavors to produce the greatest possible value. He can judge of this much better than the statesman.

· High duties and prohibitions direct people to employ capital in producing at home what they could buy cheaper from abroad. It is as foolish for a nation as for an individual to make what can be bought cheaper. Sometimes by such regulations a manufacture may be established earlier than it would otherwise have been but this would make capital accumulate slower, and the country might always be just as rich if it never acquired the manufacture. No one proposes that a country should strive against great natural advantages, but it is also absurd to strive against smaller advantages whether natural or acquired. Merchants and manufacturers get the most benefit from high duties and prohibitions.