Introduction
Eighteenth-century Britain was by comparison with most of Europe a remarkably free and stable society, and also a driving force behind industrial innovation and economic growth. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon regarded this as cause and effect: countries where government is quiet will be busier, more prosperous and internationally more friendly, and they explained why this will always be so.
WHERE there is Liberty, there are Encouragements to Labour, because People labour for themselves and no one can take from them the Acquisitions they make by their Labour: There will be the greatest Numbers of People, because they find Employment and Protection; there will be the greatest Stocks, because most is to be got, and easiest to be got, and safest when it is got, and those Stocks will be always encreasing by a new Accession of Money acquired elsewhere, where there is no Security of enjoying it; there People will be able to work cheapest, because less Taxes will be put upon their Work, and upon the Necessaries which must support them whilst they are about it; and there the Interest of Money will be lower, and the Security of possessing it greater, than it ever can be in Tyrannical Governments. Under those Governments, few People can have Money, and they that have must lock it up, or bury it to keep it, and dare not engage in large Designs, when the Advantages may be reaped by their rapacious Governors, or given up by them in a senseless and wicked Treaty.
Précis
The authors of the ‘Cato Letters’, writing in the 1720s, traced a link between light regulation and national prosperity. In free countries, they said, those who work hard knew their profits would not be taken from them in arbitrary seizures, high taxes or costly trade deals, and investors were not afraid to take risks or make ambitious plans. (58 / 60 words)
The authors of the ‘Cato Letters’, writing in the 1720s, traced a link between light regulation and national prosperity. In free countries, they said, those who work hard knew their profits would not be taken from them in arbitrary seizures, high taxes or costly trade deals, and investors were not afraid to take risks or make ambitious plans.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, because, may, ought, since, until, whether.
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