This was an important epoch in Hume's literary history; in 1751, he produced the work which he himself considered the most meritorious of all his efforts; in 1752, he published that which obtained the largest amount of contemporary popularity, the "Political Discourses."[354:1] After a series of literary disappointments, borne with the spirit of one who felt within him the real powers of an original thinker and an agreeable writer, and the assurance that the world would some day acknowledge the sterling greatness of his qualifications, he now at last presented them in a form, in which they received the ready homage of the public. 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.[354:2] 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 who will not understand the views of later writers on political economy.[355:1] 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. Political economy is a science of which the advanced extremities are the subject of debate and doubt, while the older doctrines are admitted by all as firm and established truths. It may be slippery ground, but it is not a tread-mill, and no step taken has ever to be entirely retraced. It is owing to this characteristic of the science that those who oppose the doctrines of modern economists do not think of denying those of David Hume; and thus, while in these essays the economist finds some of the most important doctrines of his peculiar subject set forth with a clearness and elegance with which he dare not attempt to compete, the ordinary reader, who has a distaste of new doctrines and innovating theories, awards them the respect due to old established opinion.