ation of the rate of interest,
and from this conversation with Adam there seems to be some ground for
thinking that the book had the very unusual controversial effect of
converting the antagonist against whom it was written. Smith's reason
for wanting to fix the legal rate of interest at a maximum just a
little above the ordinary market rate was to prevent undue facilities
being given to prodigals and projectors; but Bentham replied very
justly that, whatever might be said of prodigals, projectors at any
rate were one of the most useful classes a community could possess,
that a wise government ought to do all it could to encourage their
enterprise instead of thwarting it, and that the best policy therefore
was to leave the rate of interest alone. In conducting his polemic
Bentham wrote as an admiring pupil towards a venerated master, to whom
he said he owed everything, and over whom he could gain no advantage
except, to use his own words, "with weapons which you have taught me
to wield and with which you have furnished me; for as all the great
standards of truth which can be appealed to in this line owe, as far
as I can understand, their establishment to you, I can see scarce any
other way of convicting you of an error or oversight than by judging
you out of your own mouth."[357]

Smith was touched with the handsome spirit in which his adversary
wrote, and candidly admitted to Adam the force of his assaults. The
conversation is preserved in a letter written to Bentham on the 4th
December 1789 by another friend and fellow-barrister, George Wilson,
as he apparently had the story from Adam's own lips.

"Did we ever tell you," writes Wilson, "what Dr. Adam Smith said to
Mr. William Adam, the Council M.P., last summer in Scotland? The
Doctor's expressions were that 'the _Defence of Usury_ was the work of
a very superior man, and that tho' he had given him some hard knocks,
it was done in so handsome a way that he could not complain,' and
seemed to admit that you were right."[358] This admission, though
apparently not made in so many words by Smith, but rather inferred by
Adam from the general purport of the conversation, is still not far
removed from the confession so definitely reported that his position
suffered some hard knocks from the assaults of Bentham. After that
confession it is reasonable to think that if Smith had lived to
publish another edition of his work, he would have modified his
position on the rate of in