en like
Hume, but also admitted him to intercourse with a group of business men
whose liberal sentiments on commerce undoubtedly strengthened, if they
did not originate, his own liberal views. At Glasgow, too, in 1759, he
published his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, written with sufficient
power of style to obscure its inner poverty of thought. The book brought
him immediately a distinguished reputation from a public which exalted
elegance of diction beyond all literary virtues. The volatile Charles
Townshend made him tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, through whom Smith
not only secured comparative affluence for the rest of his days, but
also a French tour in which he met at its best the most brilliant
society in Europe. The germ of his _Wealth of Nations_ already lay
hidden in those Glasgow lectures which Mr. Cannan has so happily
recovered for us; and it was in a moment of leisure in France that he
set to work to put them together in systematic fashion. Not, indeed,
that the Frenchmen whom he met, Turgot, Quesnay and Dupont de Nemours,
can be said to have done more than confirm the truths he had already
been teaching. When he returned to Scotland and a competence ten years
of constant labor were necessary before the _Wealth of Nations_ was
complete. After its publication, in 1776, Adam Smith did little save
attend to the administrative duties of a minor, but lucrative office in
the Customs. Until the end, indeed, he never quite gave up the hope,
foreshadowed first in the _Moral Sentiments_ of completing a gigantic
survey of civilized institutions. But he was a slow worker, and his
health was never robust. It was enough that he should have written his
book and cherished friendships such as it is given to few men to
possess. Hume and Burke, Millar the jurist, James Watt, Foulis the
printer, Black the chemist and Hutton of geological fame--it is an
enviable circle. He had known Turgot on intimate terms and visited
Voltaire on Lake Geneva. Hume had told him that his book had "depth and
solidity and acuteness"; the younger Pitt had consulted him on public
affairs. Few men have moved amid such happy peace within the very centre
of what was most illustrious in their age.

We are less concerned here with the specific economic details of the
_Wealth of Nations_ than with its general attitude to the State. But
here a limitation upon criticism must be noted. The man of whom Smith
writes is man in search of wealth; by definition the