In an undated letter to Strahan, who was now a partner in Millar’s publishing firm, about the title-page to this volume, the author desired to be called “simply Adam Smith, without any addition either before or behind.” He had received the honorary degree of LL.D. before leaving Glasgow, but he did not like to be called Dr. Smith, and seldom used the title. But politics, which had just taken a strange turn, soon commanded his attention; and a curious letter from Smith to Shelburne (February 12, 1767) raises for a moment the curtain that divides the spectator from the actors, and allows us to survey the scene behind which the most enlightened member of the Government was working to introduce common sense into the colonial policy of Great Britain. It was a scene, too, in the greatest political drama of Adam Smith’s lifetime, which left deep, decipherable marks on the pages of the _Wealth of Nations_. While Smith was discussing the new principles with the philosophers of Paris, an active spirit of dissatisfaction had been spreading in distant communities of men. The spirit of liberty seemed to have walked forth over the face of the earth and to threaten revolutions in every part. The Georgians under the valiant Heraclius had revolted against their ignominious tribute to the Turkish seraglios. The tyrannies of a French governor had provoked insurrections in St. Domingo. The first tramp of a revolutionary march was heard in the Spanish dominions of South America; above all, the long and smouldering discontent in our own American colonies had suddenly been fanned into a blaze. But Europe, whose policy had been the source of all these woes, was for once in a peaceful mood. The Empress of Russia was busy entertaining her savants. The Swede was occupied at home, and the tall Pomeranian was content to drill. A financial crisis in France and England made the two Governments friendly; and though there were bloody feuds and insurrections in Turkey, Poland, and Spain, the historian of Europe, surveying the year 1766 and comparing it with its predecessors, marked it with a white chalk and fancied he could at last spell a drift towards peace in the hollow states and bankrupt empires of the old world. Ambition indeed seldom stoops to calculations, but the most acquisitive imperialist seeing multitudes of unemployed, food at famine prices, and manufactures at a standstill, began to wonder whether after all the conquests of the war had been worth such a price. For once the governing classes were sobered and were ready to make some grudging atonement for one of their worst blunders. The same commercial stress which constrained the French King to pacify his parliaments inclined the parliament of Great Britain to appease the colonial assemblies.