This observation is from an obscure backwater of the Wealth of Nations. It is about companies that were archaic even in 1776: the Russian Company, the Eastland Company, the Hamburgh Company, chartered in Britain in the sixteenth century, and trading mainly in the Baltic. But the comments on regulated companies are a revealing epitome of Adam Smith’s thought. There is the artful language, and one can almost hear Smith’s ironic tone as he dictated these sentences. There is the analytic idiom, so characteristic of the Wealth of Nations, in the juxtaposition of large theories with the details of legal and economic history. There is, above all, the subject, which is also the largest object of inquiry in the Wealth of Nations, or the changing relationship between states and markets.

这一观察来自国富论的一个不起眼的死水。它讲述的是甚至在 1776 年就已经过时的公司：俄罗斯公司、伊斯特兰公司、汉堡公司，这些公司于 16 世纪在英国特许经营，主要在波罗的海进行贸易。但对受监管公司的评论是亚当·斯密思想的一个显着缩影。语言很巧妙，几乎可以听到史密斯口述这些句子时带有讽刺意味的语气。在大型理论与法律和经济史细节的并置中，有分析性的用语，这是《国富论》的特点。首先是主题，这也是《国富论》中最大的探究对象，或国家与市场之间不断变化的关系。