The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2 [of 2]Shelley, Percy Bysshe
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The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2 [of 2]
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
English prose literature
I. But it would be almost impossible to build your city in such a
situation that it would need no imposts?--Impossible.--Other persons
would then be required, who might undertake to conduct from another
city those things of which they stood in need?--Certainly.--But the
merchant who should return to his own city, without any of those
articles which it needed, would return empty-handed. It will be
necessary, therefore, not only to produce a sufficient supply, but
such articles, both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to
remunerate those who conduct the imports. There will be needed then
more husbandmen, and other artificers, in our city. There will be
needed also other persons who will undertake the conveyance of the
imports and the exports, and these persons are called merchants. If the
commerce which these necessities produce is carried on by sea, other
persons will be required who are accustomed to nautical affairs. And,
in the city itself, how shall the products of each man’s labour be
transported from one to another; those products, for the sake of the
enjoyment and the ready distribution of which, they were first induced
to institute a civil society?--By selling and buying, surely.--A
market and money, as a symbol of exchange, arises out of this
necessity?--Evidently.--When the husbandman, or any other artificer,
brings the produce of his labours to the public place, and those who
desire to barter their produce for it do not happen to arrive exactly
at the same time, would he not lose his time, and the profit of it,
if he were to sit in the market waiting for them?--Assuredly.--But,
there are persons, who, perceiving this, will take upon themselves the
arrangement between the buyer and the seller. In constituted civil
societies, those who are employed on this service, ought to be the
infirm, and unable to perform any other; but, exchanging on one hand
for money, what any person comes to sell, and giving the articles thus
bought for a similar equivalent to those who might wish to buy.
II. Description of a frugal enjoyment of the goods of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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