Discourses Upon Trade : Principally Directed to the Cases of the Interest, Coynage, Clipping, Increase of Money

Sir Dudley North (1641-1691) was an English economist. His ability and knowledge of commerce attracted the attention of the government. His Discourses Upon Trade (1691) is one of the earliest attempts to theorize as a whole the workings of a market economy in England. In this thorough-going and emphatic assertion of the free-trade doctrine against the system of prohibitions which had gained strength by the Revolution, North shows that wealth may exist independently of gold or silver, its source being human industry, applied either to the cultivation of the soil or to manufacturing.