gative, on the ground that we often approve of the
actions of people with whom we have no sympathy, our enemies for
example, and his pupil's contribution to the discussion was an
ingenious attempt to surmount that objection by the theory of sympathy
with an impartial spectator.

Hutcheson's name occurs in no history of political economy, but he
lectured systematically on that subject--as Smith himself subsequently
did--as a branch of his course on natural jurisprudence, a discussion
of contracts requiring him to examine the principles of value,
interest, currency, etc., and these lectures, though fragmentary, are
remarkable for showing a grasp of economic questions before his time,
and presenting, with a clear view of their importance, some of Smith's
most characteristic positions. He is free from the then prevailing
mercantilist fallacies about money. His remarks on value contain what
reads like a first draft of Smith's famous passage on value in use and
value in exchange. Like Smith, he holds labour to be the great source
of wealth and the true measure of value, and declares every man to
have the natural right to use his faculties according to his own
pleasure for his own ends in any work or recreation that inflicts no
injury on the persons or property of others, except when the public
interests may otherwise require. This is just Smith's system of
natural liberty in matters industrial, with a general limitation in
the public interest such as Smith also approves. In the practical
enforcement of this limitation he would impose some particular
restraints which Smith might not, but, on the other hand, he would
abolish other particular restraints which Smith, and even Quesnay,
would still retain, _e.g._ the fixing of interest by law. His doctrine
was essentially the doctrine of industrial liberty with which Smith's
name is identified, and in view of the claims set up on behalf of the
French Physiocrats that Smith learnt that doctrine in their school, it
is right to remember that he was brought into contact with it in
Hutcheson's class-room at Glasgow some twenty years before any of the
Physiocrats had written a line on the subject, and that the very first
ideas on economic subjects which were presented to his mind contained
in germ--and in very active and sufficient germ--the very doctrines
about liberty, labour, and value on which his whole system was
afterwards built.

Though Smith was a mere lad of sixteen at that ti