The Encyclopædists’ doctrine of the perfectibility of man was the rational basis of Smith’s incurable optimism, but he did not share the opinion of the French School that an absolute monarchy is the most hopeful if not the only vehicle of human progress. Quesnai and his disciples never dreamed that people could govern themselves; they conjured up an ideal monarch who would let his people live in a state of natural liberty. Adam Smith had faith in men as well as in philosophy, and therefore his politics were not for his own age only but for the time to come. A Whig in practice and a Republican in theory, he was not likely to sympathise with the idea that natural liberty is to be enjoyed under a despot. One critic expresses surprise that so close an observer had not the sagacity to anticipate the downfall of the French Monarchy. But Turgot’s dismissal, which first made Voltaire despair of a peaceful reformation, occurred two months after the publication of the _Wealth of Nations_, and ten years after its author’s return to England. Nay, at the time when the finishing touches were being given to that work, it might have been a fair question whether Turgot’s reforms were less likely to save France than Lord North’s policy to enslave England. In any case, it was not for a foreigner to play Cassandra to the Bourbons. But it will be shown that the author of the _Wealth of Nations_ was under no illusions as to the wretched state of the French peasant, the misgovernment of the kingdom, and its fiscal disorganisation.