Editor’s Note

This is the complete text of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the edition from which our Korean translation was made. It is set from a public-domain transcription of Smith’s revised text: it includes Book IV, Chapter VIII, “Conclusion of the Mercantile System,” which Smith added in the third edition of 1784, and so follows that edition or a later one. Smith’s notes appear within the text in braces, as in the source, and his tables of the price of wheat and of the herring bounty are set as in the source.

Spelling and punctuation are those of the source (labour, conveniencies). Headings have been set in title case rather than capitals; book and chapter numbers are those of the source. The text is divided across pages as in our Korean edition, so that the two can be read side by side; where a chapter runs on to a new page its heading is repeated with “(continued).” Fifteen errors of transcription have been corrected, all of a letter or two: Walter Raleigh (for “Waiter,” twice), part (“past”), from (“front”), £18,000 (“£18;000”), republican (“re publican”), seem (“sewn,” and once “seen”), much less (“touch less”), of a factory (“or a factory”), any part (“my part”), Quesnai (“Qttesnai”), Sea-sticks (“Sea-sricks”), and (“add”), and be (“he”). Smith’s own slips of fact or arithmetic are not corrected.

Removed from the source: the transcription’s header and license, its table of contents, and all distributor notices.