deal about the colonial trade; but colonial policy did not become the question of the day until after he left, and in the lectures there is nothing about the colonies. We may conjecture that the idea of devoting a large section of the book to the history and economics of colonial dominions did not strike him until after his return from France. The great debates of 1766 and of the early seventies, the intimate acquaintance with British policy and finance in large outline and in official detail, which his friendships with Burke and Franklin, with Oswald, Pulteney, and Shelburne helped him to acquire, and his eagerness to prevent war and to discredit expenditure on colonial establishments, or indeed upon any provinces which could not support themselves, conspired to make colonial policy and imperial expenditure large and imposing themes in the _Wealth of Nations_. CHAPTER IX THE _WEALTH OF NATIONS_ AND ITS CRITICS In February 1776 Hume wrote to Smith: “By all accounts your book has been printed long ago, yet it has never been so much as advertised. What is the reason? If you wait till the fate of America be decided, you may wait long.” Declining health made him anxious to accelerate his friend’s return. “Your chamber in my house is always unoccupied.” In the same letter there are a few words about the war with the American colonies. The two friends were at one in condemning the war and the colonial policy which provoked it. But Smith was more deeply moved by the impending disaster, and was eagerly endeavouring to induce the Government to adopt means of conciliation before it was too late. He was therefore—so the Duke of Buccleuch had informed Hume—“very zealous” in American affairs. “My notion,” writes Hume, cool as ever where only national interests were concerned, “is that this matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. If I be mistaken, I shall probably correct my error when I see you, or read you. Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures. Should London fall as much in size as I have done, it will be the better. It is nothing but a hulk of bad and unclean humours.” At last, on the 9th of March, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ was published in two sumptuous quarto volumes. The price was thirty-six shillings, and the first edition, probably of a thousand copies, was sold out in six months; though the second, a reprint with some few corrections and additions, was not issued till 1778. The publishers were Strahan and Cadell. Smith is said to have received £500 for the first edition, the sum paid by the same firm to Steuart for his _Principles of Political Economy_ (1767). The first volume of Gibbon’s _History_ came out at the same time. Hume was immensely taken with both performances. He told Gibbon that he should never have expected such a work from the pen of an Englishman. To Smith he wrote:—