“In the same manner if any nation wasted part of its wealth, or lost part of its trade, it could not retain the same quantity of circulating medium which it before possessed.”

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.

The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.

Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.

Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, has its natural and its market price.

Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.

The exchangeable value of all commodities rises as the difficulties of their production increase.

Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.

I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.

Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.

But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

But it is clear that the price of labour has no necessary connection with the price of food, since it depends entirely on the supply of labourers compared with the demand.

If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.