says Smith would not have contended in France. He
would not have drawn this distinction between the taxation of a
necessary and the taxation of a luxury, and he only drew it in his
book to avert the clamour of offended interests, though against his
real convictions. The imputation of dissimulation, though explicitly
enough made, may be disregarded. The alternative of a real change of
opinion is quite possible, inasmuch as the position Smith has actually
reached on this question in his book is far from final or perfect; it
is obvious at a glance that in a community such as he supposes, where
the labourers are in the habit of consuming both necessaries and
luxuries, a tax on necessaries would have exactly the same effect as
he attributes to a tax on luxuries; it would force the labourer to
give up some of his luxuries. But there might be no real change of
opinion, and yet a good deal of apparent difference between the loose
statements of a speaker in a language of which he had only imperfect
command and his more complete and precise statements in a written
book. Dupont, it may be added, seems to think that Smith in his talks
with the French economists expressed much more unfavourable views of
the inconveniences, changes, and general evils of the English system
of taxation than would be gathered from the _Wealth of Nations_.

Before Smith left France he had occasion, unhappily, to resort to
Quesnay the physician as well as to Quesnay the economist. He had been
in the habit while in Paris of taking his pupils for excursions to
interesting places in the vicinity, as he had done from Toulouse, and
in August 1766 they went to Compiegne to see the camp and the military
evolutions which were to take place during the residence of the Court
there. In Compiegne the Duke of Buccleugh took seriously ill of a
fever,--the consequence of a fall from his horse while hunting, says
his aunt, Lady Mary Coke,--and, as will be seen from the following
letter, he was watched and nursed by his distinguished tutor with a
care and devotion almost more than paternal. The letter is written to
Charles Townshend, the Duke's step-father:--

COMPIEGNE, _26th August 1766_.

DEAR SIR--It is, you may believe, with the greatest concern
that I find myself obliged to give you an account of a
slight fever from which the Duke of Buccleugh is not yet
entirely recovered, though it is this day very much abated.
He came here to see