d some part of the
long delay that took place in its composition is probably to be
explained by the fact that he would have possibly been a considerable
time at work before he determined to break his book in two, and push
on meanwhile with the section on policy revenue and arms, leaving to a
separate publication in the future his discussion of the theory of
jurisprudence.

The work was published in two vols. 4to, at the price of L1:16s. in
boards, and the author uses this time all his honours on the
title-page, describing himself as Adam Smith, LL.D. and F.R.S.,
formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow.
What was the extent of this edition, or the terms, as between author
and publisher, on which it was put out, is not exactly known. The
terms were not half-profits, for that arrangement is proposed by Smith
for the second edition as if it were a new one, and is accepted in the
same way by Strahan, who in a letter which I shall presently quote,
pronounces it a "very fair" proposal, "and therefore very agreeable to
Mr. Cadell and me"; nor was it printed for the author, for the
presentation copies he gave away were deducted from the copy money he
received. On the whole, it seems most probable that the book was
purchased from him for a definite sum, and as he mentions in his
letter of the 13th November 1776 that he had received, L300 of his
money at that time, and had still a balance owing to him, one may
reasonably conjecture that the full sum was L500--the same sum
Cadell's firm had paid for the last economic work they had undertaken,
Sir James Steuart's _Inquiry into the Principles of Political
Economy_.

The book sold well. The first edition, of whose extent, however, we
are ignorant, was exhausted in six months, and the sale was from the
first better than the publishers expected, for on the 12th of April,
when it had only been a month out, Strahan takes notice of a remark of
David Hume that Smith's book required too much thought to be as
popular as Gibbon's, and states, "What you say of Mr. Gibbon's and Dr.
Smith's book is exactly just. The former is the most popular work;
but the sale of the latter, though not near so rapid, has been more
than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and
reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to
peruse to any purpose."[244] The sale is the more remarkable because
it was scarce to any degree helped on by reviews, f