David Hume is known for his philosophical writings, but he also wrote on politics, history, and economics. This eBook contains 7 economic essays which were first published in Hume's Political Discourses (1752) and republished in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Volume 1 (1758, 1777). One essay has been praised by the Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who said in his newspaper column: "... Hume also helped found economics: his 'Of the Balance of Trade', published 34 years before The Wealth of Nations, was arguably the first example of modern economic reasoning, based on what amounts to a stylized model, albeit one without any equations or diagrams."