“Euge! Belle! Dear Mr. Smith,—I am much pleased with your performance; and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth, and solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts that it must at last take the public attention. It is probably much improved by your last abode in London. If you were here at my fireside, I should dispute some of your principles. I cannot think that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of the produce, but that the price is determined altogether by the quantity and the demand.” On the publication of the book Sir John Pringle observed to Boswell that Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject any more than a lawyer upon physic. Boswell passed this on to Johnson, who replied: “He is mistaken, sir; a man who has never been engaged in trade may undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there is nothing which requires more to be illustrated by philosophy than trade does.” Johnson added, as if he had already turned over with profit the pages of the new book, that trade promises what is more valuable than money, “the reciprocation of the peculiar advantages of different countries.” Gibbon was no less delighted than Hume with the new philosophy. “What an excellent work!” he exclaimed; “an extensive science in a single book, and the most profound ideas expressed in the most perspicuous language.” Gibbon’s judgment has been confirmed by the tribunals of Time, and the world places the _Wealth of Nations_ in the small library of masterpieces that receives, as the years roll by, so surprisingly few accessions.