Adam Smith’s very long paragraph: part 1 of 3

Last week (see here, here, here, and here), we retraced Adam Smith’s survey of three historic overseas trading firms — the Royal African, Hudson’s Bay, and South Sea companies — and saw a pattern began to emerge: Adam Smith is no friend of joint stock companies, especially those with large numbers of shareholders. With this background in mind, we now turn the last of part of Smith’s digression on joint stock companies — his lengthy survey of the English East India Company — the private company that conquered and ruled what would become the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire: the Indian subcontinent. Of the four firms in his survey of joint stock companies, Smith devotes the most ink to this one: five long paragraphs (paras. 26-30) spread across 12 pages (pp. 65-76) of the last part of his 1784 pamphlet (Smith 1784, Part #13). And of these five paragraphs, the first one (para. 26 of Part #13) is by far the longest. This one Jocycean paragraph alone contains over 2700 words…