This book is a key example of the emergence of public choice theory by an economist who was to become one of its major exponents. It combines a detailed, critical study of the Monopolies Commission, with an analysis of the economic issues involved in monopoly supervision and control.

This book offers an analytic history of Britannia (first England and Wales and then Great Britain) over eight hundred years of political turmoil, intermingled with economic stagnation, followed by the engine of the industrial revolution.