Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Recorded or compiled by others
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~120,000 words · 570 passages
Cite this work
- APAAdam Smith. (n.d.). Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/lectures-on-justice-police-revenue-and-arms
- MLAAdam Smith. Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/lectures-on-justice-police-revenue-and-arms.
- ChicagoAdam Smith. Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/lectures-on-justice-police-revenue-and-arms.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The lectures Smith gave at Glasgow around 1763, reconstructed from a student's notes and discovered in 1895: the bridge between his two books.
Context and history
Smith did not write this. It is a student's fair copy, found more than a century after his death, and it must be cited for what it is: second-hand testimony of what he said in the lecture room. That said, its value is great, for here is his theory of law and government, which he never published and which he ordered burnt with his papers. The four parts — justice, police, revenue and arms — cover property, contract, the family, public safety, taxation and the army; and in the part on 'police', which then meant the administration of provisioning, much of 'The Wealth of Nations' is already sketched, thirteen years before it appeared.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The objects of police are the cheapness of commodities, public security and cleanliness, if the two last were not too minute for a lecture of this kind. Under this head we will consider the opulence of a state. It is likewise necessary that the magistrate who bestows his time and labour in the business of the state should be compensated for it. For this purpose, and for defraying the expenses of government, some fund must be raised. Hence the origin of revenue. The subject of consideration under this head will be the proper means of levying revenue, 1 Neither the works of Heinrich, Freiherr von Cocceii, nor those of his son Samuel are wholly comprised in five folio volumes. The volumes referred to are probably Henrici de Cocceii sacrae regiae maiestati borussicae quondam a consiliis secretioribus Grothis illitsfrahis, Wratislaviae, folio, published with observations by Samuel Freiherr von Cocceii long after his father's death, and Satnuelis L. B. de Cocceii summi regni borussici cancellarii ministri status intiini . . . Introdiictio ad Henrici L. B. de Cocceii Grotinm illustratum, Halae, 1748, i vol. folio. These and no other folio works of either author appear in the 1776 catalogue of the Edinburgh Advocates' Library, and all except vol. iv of Grotius ilhtstratus are in Bonar, Catalogue of Adam Smith's Library. Dis sertations X and XI in the Introdiictio deal with ' some Ger man systems,' and the very lengthy Dissertation XII 'treats of laws.' 4 JURISPRUDENCE which must come from the people by taxes, duties, &c.…