Quiz: New Principles of Political Economy

11 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. Why, according to Sismondi, does one very rich family encourage national industry less than a hundred comfortable ones with the same total revenue? It buys foreign, not national, goods It keeps no servants and employs no artisans It pays higher taxes, which go to the state rather than to industry It saves all its revenue instead of spending it
2. Where did Sismondi prepare the second edition? In Tuscany In England In Geneva In Paris
3. Which manufacture does Sismondi think suits an opulent town like Geneva? Watches and jewellery Lace, linen and silk ribbons Coarse woollens and blankets Cotton spinning
4. What, according to Sismondi, sustained the boom in English manufactures before 1825? Wartime orders from the Holy Alliance, which clothed and armed its armies in English goods Loans by English lenders to the new American republics, spent on English goods A rise in English wages, which enlarged the home market for cotton and woollen goods The repeal of the Corn Laws, which let foreign nations pay for English goods in grain
5. What does Sismondi say happens to the younger sons and daughters of the great English landed families? They inherit equal shares of the family estates under the common law They enter Parliament in their brother’s place and live on its salary They are sacrificed to the eldest and often grow old unmarried They emigrate to manage colonial plantations
6. In Sismondi’s account of Plato’s Republic, what does the growth of society finally require? The abolition of slavery among the Greeks A class of merchants and sailors trading abroad A population of guardians maintained by the rest A common treasury for the whole city
7. What measure does Sismondi suggest in response to labour-saving inventions? Taxing steam engines and frames Banning new machines by law Paying public rewards to inventors Abolishing inventors’ patents
8. Which branch of the science of government seeks man’s moral happiness? Civil jurisprudence High politics Political economy Finance
9. What name for the science of riches does Sismondi admire in Aristotle? Catallactics Oeconomics Chrematistics Plutonomy
10. Whose travels does Sismondi cite as evidence of glutted markets in the United States? Mr Birkbeck’s Mr Cobbett’s Mr Fearon’s Mr de Tocqueville’s
11. What does Sismondi call a nation in which no one suffers but no one has leisure to think deeply? Half civilised Barbarous and idle Perfectly happy and free Enslaved to a few

0 of 11 answered