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An Essay Upon Projects

by Daniel Defoe (?–1731)

  • Free to read
  • 3 hours to read
  • 18 chapters
  • Reading level: College-level

"An Essay Upon Projects" by Daniel Defoe is an essay collection published in 1697. As Defoe's first published volume, it presents his vision of England as a "Projecting Age" and proposes ambitious plans for the nation's economic and social improvement. The work includes chapters on banks, highways, insurance, and academies, featuring an early proposal for a national insurance scheme. Defoe examines various aspects of English society, from bankrupts to seamen, offering moral criticism alongside practical reforms for transforming his country.

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  • Finance · Great Britain
  • Great Britain · Economic conditions · 18th century
  • Economics · Early works to 1800

Read the opening

Sir

One of the Commission’s for Managing His majesty’s Duties on Glass, &c.

THIS preface comes directed to you, not as commissioner, &c., under whom I have the honour to serve his Majesty, nor as a friend, though I have great obligations of that sort also, but as the most proper judge of the subjects treated of, and more capable than the greatest part of mankind to distinguish and understand them.

Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of them; and to dedicate a book of projects to a person who had never concerned himself to think that way would be like music to one that has no ear.

And yet your having a capacity to judge of these things no way brings you under the despicable title of a projector, any more than knowing the practices and subtleties of wicked men makes a man guilty of their crimes.

The several chapters of this book are the results of particular thoughts occasioned by conversing with the public affairs during the present war with France. The losses and casualties which attend all trading nations in the world, when involved in so cruel a war as this, have reached us all, and I am none of the least sufferers; if this has put me, as well as others, on inventions and projects, so much the subject of this book, it is no more than a proof of the reason I give for the general projecting humour of the nation.

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Sir
  3. Author’s Introduction
  4. The History of Projects
  5. Of Projectors
  6. Of Banks
  7. Of the Highways
  8. Of Assurances
  9. Of Friendly Societies
  10. The Proposal Is for a Pension Office
  11. Of Wagering
  12. Of Fools
  13. A Charity-Lottery
  14. Of Bankrupts
  15. Of Academies
  16. Of a Court Merchant
  17. Of Seamen
  18. The Conclusion

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About this edition

This free edition of An Essay Upon Projects by Daniel Defoe comes from Project Gutenberg eBook #4087, released 2003-05-01. It is in the public domain in the United States, so you can read it here in full at no cost, on any phone, tablet or computer. Genre: Essays, Letters & Speeches, Politics, Economics, Teaching & Education.

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