There are valuable special reports to Congress of commissioners on the tariff, shipping, and other subjects, published by the Government.
The report on the “International Monetary Conference of 1878” contains a vast quantity of material on monetary questions.
The British parliamentary documents contain several annual “Statistical Abstracts” of the greatest value, of which the one relating to other European states is peculiarly convenient and useful. These can always be purchased at given prices.
A. R. Spofford's “American Almanac” is an annual of great usefulness.
Preliminary Remarks.
Writers on Political Economy profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of Wealth, and the laws of its production and distribution; including, directly or remotely, the operation of all the causes by which the condition of mankind, or of any society of human beings, in respect to this universal object of human desire, is made prosperous or the reverse.
While the [Mercantile] system prevailed, it was assumed, either expressly or tacitly, in the whole policy of nations, [pg 048] that wealth consisted solely of money; or of the precious metals, which, when not already in the state of money, are capable of being directly converted into it. According to the doctrines then prevalent, whatever tended to heap up money or bullion in a country added to its wealth.
Whatever sent the precious metals out of a country impoverished it. If a country possessed no gold or silver mines, the only industry by which it