If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.

It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.

In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.

Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.

A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted.

The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.

A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.