In a science like political economy, every new teacher endeavours to correct the mistakes of his predecessors, to supply their deficiencies, and generally to teach the science in its last stage of perfection. Some of Smith’s successors were themselves men of genius, and proved equal to the task of displacing their master for a few years. But those who have seen the rise and decline of Mill may well ask with Wakefield, who had seen Smith superseded by Malthus and Ricardo and M’Culloch: How is it that the _Wealth of Nations_, all these things notwithstanding, is still read and studied and quoted as if it had been published yesterday? How is it that British statesmen from Pitt to Gladstone should have sought authority in the same pages? After all, the question we are asking is a wider one. Why is this one of the great books of the world? We would like to say simply: It is the world’s verdict; take it or not as you like; but whether you like it or not, it stands. One cannot argue with universal consent. Still something may be due in extenuation of fame. In the first place, Adam Smith writes as one who has applied his mind to definite problems without neglecting a wider field of letters and learning. The store is rich and the steward is bounteous. So far from being an isolated study of abstract doctrines, political economy is treated from first to last as a branch of the study of mankind, a criticism of their manners and customs, of national history, administration, and law. Even when silencing a battery or throwing up a counterwork he is very seldom disputatious or doctrinal. “He appears,” says Wakefield, “to be engaged in composing not a theory, but a history of national wealth. He dwells indeed on principles, but nearly always, as it seems, for the purpose of explaining the facts which he narrates.” There is no scarecrow of thin abstractions and deterrent terminology flapping over the pages to warn men off a dismal science. The laws of wealth unfold themselves like the incidents in a well-laid plot. It was left for his successors to show how dull economics might be, and how suitable for the empty class-room of an endowed chair. Hume, as we have seen, on reading the _Wealth of Nations_ foretold that its curious facts would help to gain the public ear. Adam Smith was full of out-of-the-way learning. He collected stories of all the adventures in the New World, and loved to sift the wheat from the chaff of a traveller’s tale. Consequently his book abounds in oddities about his own and bygone ages, and a few of these with necessary abbreviations may be retailed:— There is at this day a village in Scotland, where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker’s shop or to the alehouse.