132 ADAM SMITH. 



sound, liberal, and rational policy in all that regards 

 commerce and finance, had been gradually taking the 

 place of the old and narrow views upon which all countries 

 regulated their economical systems, and we have found 

 the improvement begun as early as the seventeenth 

 century. Towards the end of that, and in the earlier 

 part of the following, the alarms of the different states 

 which form the great European Commonwealth were so 

 much excited by the ambition of Louis XIV., that the 

 only subject which either interested statesmen or specu- 

 lative inquirers related to questions of military and foreign 

 policy. But the regency of a most able prince and wise 

 ruler, profligate though his private life might be, suc- 

 ceeded that splendid and mischievous 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 pro- 

 duced no permanent mischief, while it rather tended to 

 encourage speculations 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 1 720 

 and 1 770 in establishing the sound principles of which a 

 considerable portion had been anticipated nearly a hun- 

 dred 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 Econo- 

 mists 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 



