in London was continuous I cannot say, but it would almost appear so from the circumstance that nothing remains to indicate the contrary. Those three years were spent upon the _Wealth of Nations_. Much of the book as we know it must have been written in London. When he went up to London he had no idea that any fresh investigations he contemplated instituting there would detain him so long. He wrote Pulteney, as we have seen, even in the previous September that the book would be finished in a few months, and he led not only Hume but Adam Ferguson also to look for its publication in 1773. In a footnote to the fourth edition of his _History of Civil Society_, published in that year, Ferguson says, "The public will probably soon be furnished (by Mr. Smith, author of the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_) with a theory of national economy equal to what has ever appeared on any subject of science whatever." But the researches the author now made in London must have been much more important than he expected, and have occasioned extensive alterations and additions, so that Hume, in congratulating him on the eventual appearance of the work in 1776, writes, "It is probably much improved by your last abode in London." Whole chapters seem to have been put through the forge afresh; and on some of them the author has tool-marked the date of his handiwork himself. A very circumstantial account of Smith's London labours at the book comes from America. Mr. Watson, author of the _Annals of Philadelphia_, says: "Dr. Franklin once told Dr. Logan that the celebrated Adam Smith when writing his _Wealth of Nations_ was in the habit of bringing chapter after chapter as he composed it to himself, Dr. Price, and others of the literati; then patiently hear their observations and profit by their discussions and criticisms, sometimes submitting to write whole chapters anew, and even to reverse some of his propositions."[232]