shall be taken notice of the causes of the slow progress of opulence, both in ancient and modern times, which causes shall be shown either to affect agriculture or arts and manufactures: “Lastly, the effects of a commercial spirit, on the government, temper, and manners of a people, whether good or bad, and the proper remedies.”
Under the first of these heads he treated of natural and market price and of differences of wages, and showed “that whatever police tends to raise the market price above the natural, tends to diminish public opulence.” Among such pernicious regulations he enumerated taxes upon necessaries, monopolies, and exclusive privileges of corporations. Regulations which bring market price below natural price he regarded as equally pernicious, and therefore he condemned the corn bounty, which attracted into agriculture stock which would have been better employed in some other trade. “It is by far the best police to leave things to their natural course.”