1776是乾隆41年. 此时的中国进入了康乾盛世的后期. 当时的中国从外表上看是十分强大的. 乾隆24年统一新疆之后，中国的疆域达到了1453万平方公里。在他退位做太上皇的乾隆60年时，人口也达到了近3亿. 这是中国皇权体系下最后一个强盛时期. 亁隆爷十分得意，他撰写了《十全记》，记述一生的“十全武功”，乾隆帝因此被称为“十全老人”.
对这样一个盛世，万里之外生活在同一时代的经济学家亚当斯密如何看？ 下面摘录几段他在“富国论“中对当时乾隆治下的天朝上国的观察与分析.
首先在“劳工工资“这一章里他记录了他的观察:”China has been long one of the richest, …. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultiva-
tion, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. “ . 从他之前的马可. 波罗对元代中国的描述到他那个时代的旅行者对乾隆年间天朝的描述几乎相同这一点，他看出这500年间中国是停滞不前的(long stationary).
当时的劳工如何奔波找工作养家糊口？“The accounts of all travellers, …，agree in the low wages of labour, and in the difficulty which a labourer finds in bringing up a family in China. If by digging the ground a whole day he can get what will purchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. The condition of artificers is, if possible, still worse. Instead of waiting indolently in their work-houses for the calls of their customers, as in Europe, they are continually running about the streets with the tools of their respective trades, offering their services, and, as it were, begging employment. “
下面这段文字记录了底层民众的极贫状态. 这里写的水上人家一直存在到二百多年后的现代.
The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton, many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing-boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty, that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries.
弃婴与溺婴.（读这些描述真是让人很心疼）
Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns, several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence.
在“资本利润“这一章. 他谈到当时中国对对外贸易的抗拒性，对穷人的压制等会在经济上造成什么后果. 当时社会流行利率是12%.
“China seems to have been long stationary, and had, probably, long ago acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. But this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation, might admit of. A country which neglects or despises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessel of foreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot transact the same quantity of business which
it might do with different laws and institutions.
In a country, too, where, though the rich, or the owners of large capitals, enjoy a good deal of security, the poor, or the owners of small capitals, enjoy scarce any, but are liable, under the pretence of justice, to be pillaged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarins, the quantity of stock employed in all the different branches of business transacted within it, can never be equal to what the nature and extent of that business might admit. In every different branch, the oppression of the poor must establish the monopoly of the rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make very large profits. Twelve per cent. accordingly, is said to be the common interest of money in China, and the ordinary profits of stock must be sufficient to afford this large interest.”
不管各位同不同意亚当斯密的观察与分析. 重要的是在大约二百五十年前，这些人已经可以系统地看待与分析一个遥远国度的国情.
