ABSTRACT
‘The gross revenue of all the inhabitants of a great country’, we read in the Wealth of Nations, ‘comprehends the whole annual produce of their land and labour; the neat revenue, what remains free to them after deducting the expence of maintaining; first, their fixed; and secondly, their circulating capital; or what, without encroaching upon their capital, they can place in their stock reserved for immediate consumption’ (WN, II. ii. 5).
