Renowned economic historian and clergyman William Cunningham (1849–1919) published this work in 1896, which is considered a companion volume to his seminal Essay on Western Civilisation. Educated at Edinburgh, Cambridge and Tübingen, Cunningham wrote widely on theology and economics. He was a Cambridge lecturer and fellow at Trinity, Professor of Economics at King's College London, a teacher at Harvard, a founding fellow of the British Academy, and President of the Royal Historical Society. Favouring historical empiricism over deductive theory, his work, labelled neo-mercantilist, was against laissez-faire and favoured economic regulation, social religion, and conservative incremental change. This book outlines these views as part of an analysis of the basic units of economic life – exchange, possessions, money, credit, selling, price, labour, trade, profit, interest, rent, wages – and how these interact within capitalism. The work strongly influenced contemporary thought and remains relevant in the historiography of economics.