§ 33 

I have tried in every way to analyse one single little branch of trade and in my imagination to prescribe the Statutes that should be laid down for it, but as soon as I have not been led by selfconceit, I have everywhere met with insuperable obstacles and therefore I have made no progress, especially on account of the reasons mentioned in § 11 and the following sections.

When I consulted experience, I soon realised that the more liberty had been allowed to reign in a trade, the greater was always its increase, and vice versa, and the more evenly this liberty was distributed, the more naturally were the trades balanced against each other.

The way in which other States treated trades also taught me that the liberty granted was always the measure of their greatness. But wherever I turned I saw selfishness so well entrenched behind the Statutes that it was everywhere difficult to exterminate it, but in most places it was quite invincible.

The more I began to measure our trades by liberty, the more I seemed to see the possibility of encouraging them; I was spared my trouble about the preference of the trades and various Statutes about them. A subject which, I am convinced, is far above human understanding and which Nature carries out so easily itself.

One single Statute, i.e. the one to reduce the number of our Statutes, has ever since been a pleasant subject of work to me, which I want to recommend highly as the very first and the most important before any new Statutes are invented.

The aim of this small treatise is to obtain some co-operation in this work. Opponents do not worry me at all. The truth I have been looking for is so pleasant that I am satisfied only with having told it to my Fellow-Citizens. It is immovable and not affrighted, though the waves splash their gall over it. It can stand burial by selfishness in the bottom gravel with which enraged waves cover it, yet in spite of all this it remains firm as a rock and irrevocable.