h them
successfully for this purpose. I shall not say more upon
this till I see you, which I shall do the first moment I can
get out of this Town.

I am much honoured by Mr. Eden's remembrance of me. I beg
you will present my most respectful compliments to him, and
that you will believe me to be, my dear Lord, most
faithfully yours,

ADAM SMITH.

_1st November 1779._

I cannot explain the allusion in the closing parts of the letter to
the writer's personal experience of the ease with which the opposition
of manufacturers to proposed measures of public policy could be
averted by sagacious management and a little expenditure of money. Nor
can I say what persons he had in view to recommend as likely to do
this work successfully; but his advice seems to imply that he agreed
with the political maxim that the opposition of the pocket is best met
through the pocket.

He takes no notice of Dundas's suggestion of a union with Great
Britain, but we know from the _Wealth of Nations_ that he was a strong
advocate of a union--not, of course, on Dundas's ground that a union
would better enable the English Parliament to counteract the effects
of the competition of Irish pauper labour, but for a reason which will
sound curiously perhaps in the middle of our present agitations, that
a union would deliver the Irish people from the tyranny of an
oppressive aristocracy, which was the great cause of that kingdom
being then divided into "two hostile nations," to use his words to
Lord Carlisle, "the oppressors and the oppressed." He avers in the
_Wealth of Nations_ that "without a union with Great Britain the
inhabitants of Ireland are not likely for many ages to consider
themselves one people."[306]

FOOTNOTES:

[304] Morrison MSS.

[305] The Lord Advocate is usually addressed as My Lord.

[306] Book V. chap. iii.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE "WEALTH OF NATIONS" ABROAD AND AT HOME

While these communications with leading statesmen were showing the
impression the _Wealth of Nations_ had made in this country, Smith was
receiving equally satisfactory proofs of its recognition abroad. The
book had been translated into Danish by F. Draebye, and the translation
published in two volumes in 1779-80. Apparently the translator was
contemplating the publication of a second edition, for he communicated
with Smith through a Danish friend, desiring to know what alterations
Smith proposed to m