The Industrial Revolution - Paul Mantoux

This is a book to be read by all students in Economics and persons involved in Development Economics. The central thrust is how liberal economic policies, free trade and a low tax regime assisted in one of the greatest social transformations the world has ever seen - that which happenned on a small island off Europe.

Here is an excerpt of one paragraph that I particularly liked: "Boulton formulated his opinion (of William Pitt's fiscal policy) in terms which Adam Smith might have made his own: ' Let taxes be laid upon luxuries, upon vices, and if you like upon property; tax riches when got, and the expenditure of them, but not on the means of getting them. Of all things don't cut open the hen that lays the golden eggs.*

* p 389