206 ADAM SMITH. 



private life might be, succeeded that splendid and mis- 

 chievous reign, and the greatest, indeed the only, 

 error of the Duke of Orleans, his confidence in a clever 

 and unprincipled projector, however hurtful to his 

 country for the moment, yet produced no permanent 

 mischief, while it rather tended to encourage specula- 

 tions connected with money and trade and taxation. 

 Accordingly, both in France and Italy, those subjects 

 occupied "the attention of learned men during the first 

 half of the eighteenth century, and we have seen how 

 great a progress was made between 1720 and 1770 in 

 establishing the sound principles of which a consider- 

 able portion had been anticipated nearly a hundred 

 years before. In England, Mr. Hume had contributed 

 more largely to the science than all the other inquirers 

 who handled these important subjects. In France the 

 Economists had reduced them to a system, though they 

 mingled them with important errors, and enveloped 

 them in a style exceedingly repulsive, and not well 

 calculated to instruct even the few readers whom it 

 suffered the importance of the subject matter to attract. 

 But it remained to give a more ample exposition of 

 the whole subject ; to explain and to illustrate all the 

 fundamental principles, many of which had been left 

 either assumed or ill defined, and certainly not clearly 

 laid down nor exhibited in their connexion with the 

 other parts of the inquiry; to purge the theory of the 

 new errors which had replaced those exploded; to 

 expound the doctrines in a more catholic and less sec- 

 tarian spirit than the followers of Quesnay displayed, 

 and in a less detached and occasional manner than 

 necessarily prevailed in the Essays of Hume, though 

 from his admirably generalizing mind no series of sepa- 

 rate discourses ever moulded themselves more readily 

 into a system. This service of inestimable value Dr. 

 Smith's great work rendered to science ; and it like- 

 wise contained many speculations, and many deductions 

 of fact upon the details of economical inquiry, never 



