free trade doctrine. One of
them is the recommendation of a tax on the export of wool; but then
the tax was to take the place of the absolute prohibition of the
export which then existed, and it was not to be imposed for
protectionist reasons, but for the simple financial purpose of raising
a revenue. Smith thought few taxes would yield so considerable a
revenue with so little inconvenience to anybody. The other supposed
contravention of free trade doctrine is the sanction he lends to
temporary commercial monopolies; but then this is avowedly a device
for an exceptional situation in which a project promises great
eventual benefit to the public, but the projectors might without the
monopoly be debarred from undertaking it by the magnitude of the risk
it involved. He places this temporary monopoly in the same category
with authors' copyrights and inventors' patents; it was the easiest
and most natural way of recompensing a projector for hazarding a
dangerous and expensive experiment of which the public was afterwards
to reap the benefit.[315] It was only to be granted for a fixed term,
and upon proof of the ultimate advantage of the enterprise to the
public.

FOOTNOTES:

[307] _New York Evening Post_, 30th April 1887. Original in possession
of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Washington, U.S.A.

[308] Morellet, _Memoires_, i. 244.

[309] Roscher, _Geschichte_, p. 599.

[310] Gentz, _Briefe an Christian Garve_, p. 63.

[311] Gibbon's _Miscellaneous Works_, ii. 479.

[312] _New York Evening Post_, 30th April 1887. Original in possession
of Mr. Worthington C. Ford, Washington, U.S.A.

[313] Printed in a catalogue of a sale of autographs at Messrs.
Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge's on 26th and 27th November 1891.

[314] Add. MSS., 33,540.

[315] _Wealth of Nations_, Book V. chap. i.

CHAPTER XXV

SMITH INTERVIEWED

In his letter to Cadell Smith reproaches himself with his idleness
during his first few years in Edinburgh. He had bought a good many new
books in London, or new editions of old ones, and, says he, "The
amusement I found in reading and diverting myself with them debauched
me from my proper business, the preparing a new edition of the _Wealth
of Nations_." While he was engaged in this dissipation of
miscellaneous reading a young interviewer from Glasgow, who happened
to be much in his company in connection with business in the year
1780, elicited his opinions on most of the famous authors of the
w