On the Strength of Nations, Volume 59

Front Cover
Smith, Elder, 1859 - 300 pages
 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 1 - When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace ; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.
Page 262 - ... the Spaniards comforted themselves with the belief, that they were devils, and not men, who had destroyed them in such a manner. So much a strong resolution of bold and courageous men can bring to pass, that no resistance...
Page 164 - Sandwich, among other things, that of all the old army now you cannot see a man begging about the streets ; but what ? You shall have this captain turned a shoemaker; the lieutenant, a baker ; this a brewer ; that a haberdasher ; this common soldier, a porter ; and every man in his apron and frock, &c., as if they never had done any thing else : whereas, the others go with their belts and swords, swearing, and cursing, and stealing; running into people's houses, by force oftentimes, to carry away...
Page 255 - ... a set of the greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw embarked together in one common cause...
Page 209 - My father was a yeoman and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.
Page 231 - But in other, and in but too many instances, the glens of the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish.
Page 119 - I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were, The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace...
Page 265 - He was the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable, and were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could rarely be hurt by them. He was the first that infused that proportion of courage into the seamen, by making them see by experience what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon...
Page 210 - He married my sisters with five pound, or twenty nobles apiece, so that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor. And all this he did of the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pound by year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor.
Page 195 - Secondly, taxes upon the necessaries of life have nearly the same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a poor soil and a bad climate.

Bibliographic information