nd the progress of luxury.

Smith thought very poorly of those ill-founded speculations, and even
of their author generally, and he appears to have called Eden's
attention to a population return relative to Scotland which furnished
a sounder basis for a just estimate of the numbers of the people than
the statistics on which Price relied. This was a return of the number
of examinable persons in every parish of Scotland which had been
obtained in 1755 by Dr. Alexander Webster, at the desire of Lord
President Dundas, for the information of the Government. Public
catechisings were then, and in many parishes are still, part of the
ordinary duties of the minister, who visited each hamlet and district
of his parish successively for the purpose every year, and
consequently every minister kept a list of the examinable persons in
his parish--the persons who were old enough to answer his questions on
the Bible or Shorter Catechism. None were too old to be exempt.
Webster procured copies of these lists for every parish in Scotland,
and when he added to each a certain proportion to represent the number
of persons under examinable age, he had a fairly accurate statement of
the population of the country. He appears to have procured the lists
for 1779 as well as those for 1755, and to have ascertained from a
comparison of the two that the population of Scotland had remained
virtually stationary during that quarter of a century, the increase in
the commercial and manufacturing districts being counterbalanced by a
diminution in the purely agricultural districts, due to the
consolidation of farms. That, at least, was the impression of the
officials of the Ministers' Widows' Fund, through whom the
correspondence on the subject with the ministers had been
conducted; and they threw doubt on an observation of a contrary
import--apparently to the effect that the population of Scotland was
increasing--which Smith heard Webster make in one of those hours of
merriment for which that popular and useful divine seems destined to
be remembered when his public services are forgotten.

Smith's first letter runs thus:--

SIR--I have been so long in answering your very obliging
letter of the 8th inst. that I am afraid you will imagine I
have been forgetting or neglecting it. I hoped to send one
of the accounts by the post after I received your letter,
but some difficulties have occurred which I was not aware
of, and you