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'no more than to let her alone, and give her fair play in the pursuit of her 'ends, that she may establish her own designs.'-And in another passage: 'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from 'the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration 'of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into 'another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a 'particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.'-'A great part of the opinions (he observes) enume'rated in this paper, is treated of at length in some lectures which I have 'still by me, and which were written by the hand of a clerk who left my 'service six years ago. They have all of them been the constant subjects of my lectures since I first taught Mr. Craigie's class, the first winter I spent in Glasgow, down to this day, without any considerable variation. They had 'all of them been the subjects of lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter 'before I left it, and I can adduce innumerable witnesses, both from that place 'and from this, who will ascertain them sufficiently to be mine.'

After all, perhaps, the merit of such a work as Mr. Smith's is to be estimated less from the novelty of the principles it contains, than from the reasonings employed to support these principles, and from the scientific manner in which they are unfolded in their proper order and connection. General assertions with respect to the advantages of a free commerce may be collected from various writers of an early date. But in questions of so complicated a nature as occur in political economy, the credit of such opinions belongs of right to the author who first established their solidity, and followed them out to their remote consequences; not to him who, by a fortunate accident, first stumbled on the truth.

Besides the principles which Mr. Smith considered as more peculiarly his own, his Inquiry exhibits a systematical view of the most important articles of political economy, so as to serve the purpose of an elementary treatise on that very extensive and difficult science. The skill and the comprehensiveness of mind displayed in his arrangement, can be judged of by those alone who have compared it with that adopted by his immediate predecessors. And perhaps, in point of utility, the labour he has employed in connecting and methodizing their scattered ideas, is not less valuable than the results of his own original speculations for it is only when digested in a clear and natural order, that truths make their proper impressions on the mind, and that erroneous opinions can be combated with success.

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It does not belong to my present undertaking (even if I were qualified for such a task) to attempt a separation of the solid and important doctrines of Mr. Smith's book from those opinions which appear exceptionable or doubtful. I acknowledge, that there are some of his conclusions to which I would not be understood to subscribe implicitly; more particularly in that chapter, where he treats of the principles of taxation; a subject, which he has certainly examined in a manner more loose and unsatisfactory than most of the others which have fallen under his review.

It would be improper for me to conclude this section without taking notice of the manly and dignified freedom with which the author uniformly delivers his opinions, and of the superiority which he discovers throughout to all the little passions connected with the factions of the times in which he wrote. Whoever takes the trouble to compare the general tone of his composition with the period of its first publication cannot fail to feel and acknowledge the force of this remark. It is not often that a disinterested zeal for truth has so soon met with its just reward. Philosophers (to use an expression of Lord Bacon's) are 'the servants of posterity;' and most of those who have devoted their talents to the best interests of mankind, have been obliged, like Bacon, to

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'bequeath their fame' to a race yet unborn, and to console themselves with the idea of sowing what another generation was to reap:

Infere Daphni pyros, carpent tua poma nepotes.

Mr. Smith was more fortunate; or rather, in this respect, his fortune was singular. He survived the publication of his work only fifteen years; and yet, during that short period, he had not only the satisfaction of seeing the opposi tion which it at first excited gradually subdue, but to witness the practical influence of his writings on the commercial policy of his country.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ADAM SMITH,
LL.D., F.R.S.

ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkcaldy, June 5, 1723, and was a sickly child. When about three years old he was carried off by tinkers or gipsies from the house of his aunt Douglass, but was soon recovered from them. At the school of Kirkcaldy he made rapid progress, and showed extraordinary powers of memory. He was of friendly temperament but absent in manner, and had a habit of speaking to himself when alone. In 1737 he became a student at Glasgow University, and in 1740 went to Balliol College, Oxford, enjoying an exhibition on the Snell foundation. At Glasgow,, his favourite studies were mathematics and natural philosophy, and the political history of mankind, and his ruling passion was to contribute to the happiness and improvement of society. To his knowledge of Greek may be due the clearness and fulness with which he states his political reasonings.

After a residence at Oxford of seven years, he returned to Kirkcaldy, and lived two years with his mother, an ardent student but without any fixed plan for his future life. He had been destined for the Church of England, but preferred to live in Scotland. Removing to Edinburgh in 1748, he read lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, under the patronage of Lord Kames.

In 1751, he was elected Professor of Logic in the University of Glasgow; and the year following, he became Professor of Moral Philosophy there. In delivering his lectures, Mr. Smith trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution. His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected, and he never failed to interest his hearers. His reputation filled his class rooms; those branches of science taught by him became fashionable, and his opinions were discussed in the clubs and literary societies of Glasgow. While he became thus eminent as a lecturer, he was preparing for the press his System of Morals; and the first edition of his Essays appeared in 1757, under the title The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the foundation of his literary reputation.

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Towards the close of 1763, Mr. Smith arranged to visit the continent with the Duke of Buccleugh, returning to London in 1766. For the next ten years he lived with his mother at Kirkcaldy; and in 1776, accounted to the world for his long retreat, by the publication of his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.' In 1778, Mr. Smith was appointed a Commissioner of Customs in Scotland. In 1784, he lost his mother; in 1788, his cousin, Miss Douglass, died, to whom he had been strongly attached; and in July, 1790, he died, having a short while before, in conversation with his friend Riddell, regretted that 'He had done so little?

[Above biographic notes and literary opinions have been abridged from a paper on 'The Life and Writings of Adam Smith,' by Professor Dugald Stewart, of Edinburgh, 1793.-A.M]

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INQUIRY

INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK.

THE annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniencies for which it has occasion.

But this proportion must, in every nation, be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances.

The abundance or scantiness of this supply, too, seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniencies of life, for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great

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