Foreign commerce and manufactures ... gradually furnished the great 
proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus 
produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without 
sharing it either with tenants or retainers.  All for ourselves, and nothing 
for the people, seems, in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim 
of the masters of mankind.  As soon, therefore, as they could find a method 
of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no 
disposition to share them with other persons.  For a pair of diamond buckles 
perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the 
maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance of a 
thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it 
could give them.  [Smith 1776, III.iv.10, pp. 418-19] 
--  
Michael Perelman 
Economics Department 
California State University 
Chico, CA 95929 
 
Tel. 916-898-5321 
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