ABSTRACT
The theme of book three of the Wealth of Nations is ‘Of the different progress of opulence in different nations’. Smith carefully announces the purpose of his ‘Third Book’ in the ‘Introduction and plan of the work’ as a whole: ‘Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct and direction of it’ (WN [1].7). His focus will be ‘the policy of Europe’, in this respect, and somewhat ambitiously, ‘since the downfall of the Roman Empire’. Smith's ‘Third Book’ is composed of a series of chapters in which history (sometimes stylized) and narrative predominate. The content largely follows the theme of the sectoral pattern of investment and therefore follows on naturally from the last chapter in book two. This is concerned with the ‘Different employment of capitals’. Smith makes the link specific in the long final sentence of the last chapter in book two. The last chapter of book two becomes a foundation upon which books three and four are constructed. The section also deals with ‘natural’ conditions and with the potentially contrasting ‘human institutions’ and the results of the analytical reading in this chapter need to be put with the results of the analysis of Smith's writing on ‘primogeniture’ (the subject for textual analysis of Chapter 8).
