Excerpt from Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1 The history oi_ any progressive nation reveals great difierences in the variety and the amount of its wealth at different times; it shows fundamental changes in the methods of production, distribution, and exchange. A comparison of existing nations, scattered over 'the w01ld, furnishes living examples of the records of the past. Religion, art, government, morality, and other forces have influenced, and continue to influence, nations both as re gards the nature and the causes of their wealth; but that the phenomena of wealth are capable of separate classifica tion, and the causes of separate investigation, the extensive literature of political economy gives abundant testimony. With the Wealth of Nations more than a century old, it is absurd to go about to prove that it could not have been written. 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.