ANEKAL ENTERED IN STATIONERS' HALL. Printed by Oliver & Boyd, Tweeddale Court, High Street, Edinburgh. HBIS •58 PREFACE. THE following Essay is an attempt to solve some yet disputed problems in Political Economy, and impart a more regular and systematic form to the elementary principles of that science. It professes to give merely the outlines of a theory, and has no pretensions to be considered a practical treatise. I might perhaps, without much impropriety, have entitled it the Physiology of Trade; for my design is rather to describe the laws which regulate the operations of trade, in its healthy and unfettered state, than to discuss the origin, symptoms, and cure of those derangements to which it is subject from the action of extrinsic causes. Throughout the entire argument I have taken for granted that commerce is free from external interference of 191787 |