disturb nature in the course of her operations on human
affairs, and it requires no more than to leave her alone and
give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends that she may
establish her own designs.... Little else is required to
carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the
lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable
administration of justice; all the rest being brought about
by the natural course of things. All governments which
thwart this natural course, which force things into another
channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of
society at a particular point, are unnatural, and, to
support themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and
tyrannical.... A great part of the opinions enumerated in
this paper is treated of at length in some lectures which I
have still by me, and which were written in the hand of a
clerk who left my service six years ago. They have all of
them been the constant subjects of my lectures since I first
taught Mr. Craigie's class the first winter I spent in
Glasgow down to this day without any considerable
variations. They had all of them been the subjects of
lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter before I left
it, and I can adduce innumerable witnesses both from that
place and from this who will ascertain them sufficiently to
be mine."[54]

The distinction drawn in the last sentence between _that_ place,
Edinburgh, and _this_ place, shows that the paper was read to a
society in Glasgow. Smith was a member of two societies there, of
which I shall presently have something more to say, the Literary
Society and a society which we may call the Economic, because it met
for the discussion of economic subjects, though we do not know its
precise name, if it had any. Now this paper of Smith's was not read to
the Literary Society--at least, it is not included in the published
list of papers read by it--and we may therefore conclude that it was
read to the Economic Society.

Nothing is now known of the precise circumstances in which the paper
originated, except what Stewart tells us, that Smith "was anxious to
establish his exclusive right" to "certain leading principles both
political and literary," "in order to prevent the possibility of some
rival claims which he thought he had reason to apprehend, and to which
his situation as a professor, ad