Regretting the meagre records of the life of Adam Smith, the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, M.P.,​[1] remarks:—“We think of him, in the main, and we think of him rightly, as the bosom friend of David Hume” (b. 1711, d. 1777). Naturally, incidents in the life of a philosopher are neither numerous nor stirring. It is unreasonable to expect them, and such stories as are handed down regarding great thinkers are best not to be accepted unreservedly. I leave Hume, therefore, to present his own picture as drawn in _My own Life_—the picture he wished posterity to have—which consequently follows this introduction, and is itself followed by Adam Smith’s celebrated letter to Mr. Strahan, Hume’s publisher, giving an account of Hume’s death. It is chiefly as a political economist that Hume concerns us here, as it is in the _Political Discourses_, first published in 1752, his economic principles are set forth. What the reader may expect to find in these _Discourses_ I prefer to let writers of renown tell. Thus Lord Brougham— “Of the _Political Discourses_ it would be difficult to speak in terms of too great commendation. They combine almost every excellence which can belong to such a performance. The reasoning is clear, and unencumbered with more words or more illustrations than are necessary for bringing out the doctrines. The learning is extensive, accurate, and profound, not only as to systems of philosophy, but as to history, whether modern or ancient. . . . The great merit, however, of these _Discourses_ is their originality, and the new system of politics and political economy which they unfold. Mr. Hume is, beyond all doubt, the author of the modern doctrines which now rule the world of science, which are to a great extent the guide of practical statesmen, and are only prevented from being applied in their fullest extent to the affairs of nations by the clashing interests and the ignorant prejudices of certain powerful classes.” Thus, again, J. Hill Burton,​[2] Hume’s biographer— “These _Discourses_ are in truth the cradle of political economy; and much as that science has been investigated and expounded in later times, these earliest, shortest, and simplest developments of its principles are still read with delight even by those who are masters of all the literature of this great subject. But they possess a quality which more elaborate economists have striven after in vain, in being a pleasing object of study not only to the initiated, but to the ordinary popular reader, and of being admitted as just and true by many who cannot or will not understand the views of later writers on political economy. They have thus the rarely conjoined merit that, as they were the first to direct the way to the true sources of this department of knowledge, those who have gone farther, instead of superseding them, have in the general case confirmed their accuracy.”