The hand not so invisible

For all those of us who are generally too busy to read The Wealth of Nations before deploying Adam Smith in public discussion, here's a handy bulleted list of the areas of public life (hat tip to Economist's View) in which this otherwise laissez-faire thinker thought it appropriate for governments to get involved:

• Sterling marks on plate and stamps on linen and woollen cloth
  
• Enforcement of contracts by a system of justice
  
• Wages to be paid in money, not goods;
• Regulations of paper money in banking
  
• Obligations to build party walls to prevent the spread of fire
• The Navigation Acts, blessed by Smith under the assertion that ‘defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence’
• Rights of farmers to send farm produce to the best market (except ‘only in the most urgent necessity’)
• ‘Premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen and woollen industries’
  
• ‘Police’, or preservation of the ‘cleanliness of roads, streets, and to prevent the bad effects of corruption and putrifying substances’;
• Ensuring the ‘cheapness or plenty [of provisions]’
  
• Patrols by town guards and fire fighters to watch for hazardous accidents
  
• erecting and maintaining certain public works and public institutions intended to facilitate commerce (roads, bridges, canals and harbours)
  
• Coinage and the mint
  
• The Post office
  
• Regulation of institutions, such as company structures (joint- stock companies, co-partneries, regulated companies and so on)
  
• Temporary monopolies, including copyright and patents, of fixed duration
  
• Education of youth (‘village schools’, curriculum design and so on)
  
• Education of people of all ages (tythes or land tax)
  
• Encouragement of ‘the frequency and gaiety of publick diversions’
• The prevention of ‘leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive disease’ from spreading among the population
  
• Encouragement of martial exercises
  
• Registration of mortgages for land, houses and boats over two tons
  
• Government restrictions on interest for borrowing (usury laws) to overcome investor ‘stupidity’
  
• Laws against banks issuing low-denomination promissory notes
  
• Natural liberty may be breached if individuals ‘endanger the security of the whole society’
  
• Limiting ‘free exportation of corn’ only ‘in cases of the most urgent necessity’ (‘dearth’ turning into ‘famine’)
  
• Moderate export taxes on wool exports for government revenue.