112 ADAM SMITH. 



Mr. Wickhain's opinion) ; the society was polished and 

 not dissipated, commerce and manufactures having some- 

 what unaccountably never established themselves in a 

 city which seems well-suited to both from its central 

 position and the neighbourhood of the canal, as well as 

 from the fertility of the surrounding country. It is not 

 doubtful that Dr. Smith obtained, by his residence in 

 this ancient and flourishing city, and his intercourse with 

 the well-informed and polished circles of its society, 

 much of that accurate information respecting French 

 affairs which plainly appears in his writings, and which, 

 as he habitually distrusts the statements of political 

 authorities, was the result of his own inquiries and 

 observations'*. From Toulouse they went to Geneva, 

 where they passed two months, and then remained ten 

 months in Paris. Here he enjoyed an intimate acquain- 

 tance with all the most eminent men of science and of 

 letters, particularly D'Alembert, Necker, Marmontel, 

 Helvetius, Morellet, Turgot, and above all, Quesnay, 

 whose tastes and pursuits so much resembling his own 

 formed the bond of a strong attachment. Though differ- 

 ing in opinion upon some fundamental points, he re- 

 garded his system as "the nearest approximation to 

 truth that had ever been made in economical science, 



* He has preserved in his 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' an 

 anecdote, which, unless it is to be found in the earlier editions, I 

 should imagine him to have heard at Toulouse ; that when the 

 unhappy Galas was murdered by the law, and among other tor- 

 ments a monk was sent to obtain his confession, the wretched 

 sufferer, already broken on the wheel, exclaimed, "Can you, your- 

 self, father, believe me guilty?" (I., 303.) The paragraph certainly 

 is in one of the chapters which he says was altered in the edition of 

 1788. 



