¹ An inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations, (hereafter: WN), Skinner, A. S. and Campbell, R. H. (eds.) in The works and correspondence of Adam Smith, (6 vols., Oxford, 1976–1983), WN, iv, ii, 43Google Scholar.

² Some historians have argued recently that at the time of its publication the chief scandal of the WN was Smith's uniquely uncompromising critique of existing restraints on trade of subsistence goods, especially of grain products. See Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M., ‘Needs and justice in the Wealth of Nations: an introductory essay’ in Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M.(eds.), Wealth and virtue: the shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet here too Smith never expected his views would receive acceptance or careful consideration. Laws governing the corn trade, he observed, ‘may everywhere be compared to the laws concerning religion’. Because most people ‘feel themselves so much interested in what relates either to their subsistence in this life, or their happiness in a life to come’, governments usually yield to popular prejudice and so maintain controls in order to preserve the public peace. Whatever the logical strength of an argument for a free market in grain, Smith conceded his liberal ideas here flew too radically in the face of conventional wisdom. At the time he published WN, popular acceptance of his views from ‘below’ seemed to Smith even more unlikely than official recognition from ‘above.’ See WN, IV, V, b., 40.

³ See Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M., ‘Needs and justice…’, pp. 8–26Google Scholar and Winch, D., ‘Science and the legislator: Adam Smith and after’, Economic Journal, XCIII (1983), 501–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for two careful examinations of the distinctive features of Smith's critique of the Corn Laws. Seventy years passed before others who shared Smith's views on grain trade managed to persuade the British parliament to repeal the Corn Laws, and yet even that action can be accounted a triumph of his views only in the broadest sense. A full survey of the legislation can be found in Barnes, D. G., A history of the Corn Laws from 1660 to 1846 (London, 1930)Google Scholar, Hilton, Boyd, Com, cash, and commerce (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, provides a detailed study of considerations that influenced policy makers in the period 1815 to 1830.

⁴ Among a vast number of works that either assert or assume the WN had an immediate impact on its time, see Schumpeter, J., History of economic analysis (New York, 1963), pp. 184–5Google Scholar; Davis, D. B., The problem of slavery in the age of revolution (Ithaca, 1975), p. 351Google Scholar; Tribe, K., Land, labour and economic discourse (London, 1978), p. 110Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, G., The idea of poverty: England in the early industrial age (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; and Raphael, D. D., Adam Smith (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar. Despite absence of any clear evidence that might prove the point, the view that the WN was an immediate success remains one of the enduring clichés in Western historiography.

⁵ Willis, Kirk, ‘The role in parliament of the economic ideas of Adam Smith’, History of political economy (1979), pp. 505–44Google Scholar; Rashid, Salim, ‘Adam Smith's rise to fame: a reexamination of the evidence’, The Eighteenth Century, XXIII (1982), 64–85Google Scholar. Also see Tribe, Keith, ‘Cameralism and the science of government’, Journal of Modern History, LVI (1984), 263–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which challenges the conventional notion that WN was immediately influential among German economic thinkers. Tribe shows that very little response to Smith's book can be found before the first decades of the nineteenth century.

⁶ Sowell, T., ‘Adam Smith in theory and practice’, in O'Driscoll, G. P. (ed.), Adam Smith and modern political economy, (Ames, Iowa, 1979), p. 3Google Scholar.

⁷ Schumpeter, J., History of economic analysis, pp. 184–5Google Scholar. The familiar view that Edmund Burke was a ‘disciple’ of Adam Smith has been reasserted recently in Himmelfarb, , The idea of poverty, pp. 66–73Google Scholar. But for a more detailed (and sceptical) study of the supposed connexions between Burke and Smith, see Winch, D., ‘The Burke-Smith problem and late eighteenth-century political and economic thought’, Historical Journal, XXVIII (1985), 231–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ For a powerful critique of the use of influence-models in intellectual history, see Q, Skinner, ‘The limits of historical explanation’, Philosophy, XLI (1966), 199–215Google Scholar, and ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’, History and Theory, VIII (1969), esp. 24–7Google Scholar. My approach to the issue of the ‘reception’ of the WN derives, in part, from the recent work of ‘reader-response’ literary critics. For a survey of this field, see Suleiman, S. R. and Crosman, I. (eds.), The reader in the text: Essays on audience and interpretation (Princeton, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the issue of ‘reception,’ see esp. Jauss, Hans Robert, ‘Literary history as a challenge to literary theory’, New Literary History, II (1970), 7–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Iser's, W.The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response (Baltimore, 1979)Google Scholar. For intellectual historians, perhaps the chief insight of this school of textual interpretation is its forceful and sophisticated reminder that texts assume historical significance only when they are actually read, and largely in terms of how readers happen to respond to texts. Seen in this light, the work of intellectual historians exploring the reception of a particular text is not to uncover a single overarching meaning in the text itself, but ‘to reveal the conditions that bring about its various possible effects’, Iser, W., Act of reading, p. 18Google Scholar.

⁹ The correspondence of Adam Smith (hereafter: Correspondence), Mossner, E. C. and Ross, I. S. (eds.) (Oxford, 1977), in Works and correspondence, VI, 251Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Coleman, D. C., ‘Mercantilism revisited’, Historical Journal, XXIII (1980), 773–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a more detailed account of Smith's attack on the ‘mercantile system’ and of its influential role in the subsequent history of Western economic thought.

¹¹ William Strahan's printing ledgers, maintained to 1785 and thereafter by his son Andrew, contain no information about the first edition. They do show, however, that five hundred copies were printed in the second edition, and one thousand in the third. So it seems unlikely that more than one thousand copies were printed in the first edition. See the ‘general introduction’ of WN, pp. 61–6, for a brief publishing history of the London editions of WN published between 1776–91. (On ledgers, Strahan's, see ‘general introduction’, WN, p. 61Google Scholar, n. 2.)

¹² Quoted in Rae, John, Life of Adam Smith (London, 1895), p. 286Google Scholar.

¹³ Annual Register (London), 1776, pp. 241–3Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Annual Register (London), 1776, pp. 241–3Google Scholar; Monthly Review (London), 01–06 1776, pp. 299–308, 455–65Google Scholar; Monthly Review, July 1776, pp. 16–27, 81–93. Also see Critical Review (London), 03 1776, pp. 193–200Google Scholar; April 1776, pp. 258–64; May 1776, pp. 361–9; June 1776, pp. 425–33. On Enfield, see Nagle, B. C., The Monthly Review first series, 1749–1789: indexes of contributors and articles (Oxford, 1934), pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See Correspondence, letters 150–5, pp. 186–94.

¹⁶ By 1801, six editions of translations of the WN had appeared in France. But the first French translation of the Wealth of Motions by Abbé André Morellet (1727–1819) in 1776 was never published. See Murray, D., French translations of the ‘Wealth of Motions’ (Glasgow, 1905)Google Scholar. The first Danish translation appeared in 1779–80. See Correspondence, p. 248, n. 4. On the reception of WN in Germany, see Tribe, K., ‘Cameralism and the science of government’, pp. 277–84Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Hugh Blair, for example, noted that future editions of WN would benefit by the addition of an index. But he also stressed that book would become far more accessible to a general audience if Smith composed ‘a Syllabus of the whole; expressed in short independent Propositions, like the Syllabus's we are in use to give of our College Lectures’. See Correspondence, letter 151, p. 189. A very sketchy index was added to the 3rd edition of WN in 1784; the suggestion regarding a ‘Syllabus’ was ignored.

¹⁸ Conkin, Paul K., Prophets of prosperity: America's first political economists (Bloomington, 1980), p. 17Google Scholar. McCoy, D., The elusive republic: political economy in Jeffersonian America (New York, 1982)Google Scholar offers a subtle and persuasive account of the significance of ‘free trade’ in the ideological origins of the American revolution. But he provides no evidence to justify the important role he assigns to Adam Smith in shaping American economic thinking in the 1770s and 1780s.

¹⁹ See Crowe, Charles, ‘Bishop James Madison and the republic of virtue’, Journal of Southern History, XXX (1964), 58–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Osborne, Ruby P., ‘The College of William and Mary in Virginia, 1800–29’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, College of William and Mary, 1981), pp. 241–2Google Scholar. While President of William and Mar y from 1777–1812, James Madison (1749–1812) began teaching ‘political economy’ in 1784 and apparently used WN as his text.

²⁰ On Webster, see Dorfman, J., The economic mind in American civilization, 1606–1865 (New York, 1946), I, pp. 227–8Google Scholar; Foner, E., Tom Paine and revolutionary America, p. 170Google Scholar; and McCoy, D., The elusive republic, pp. 84–5Google Scholar. In one of a series of essays published in the summer of 1779, Webster, wrote: ‘Take off every restraint and limitation from our commerce. Let trade be as free as air’: An essay on free trade and finance… (Philadelphia, 1779), p. 18Google Scholar. It should be noted that Smith never resorted to the language of formulaic exhortation to present his case for ‘free trade’.

²¹ McCoy, , The elusive republic, pp. 90–100Google Scholar. On Smith's views concerning the American colonies, see Stevens, D., ‘Adam Smith and the Colonial Disturbances’ in Essays on Adam Smith, Skinner, A. and Wilson, T. S. (eds.) (Oxford, 1976), pp. 202–17Google Scholar; Winch, D., Classical political economy and colonies (London, 1965) and Adam Smith's politics, pp. 146–63Google Scholar.

²² Shortly after Smith's, death, Dugald Stewart stressed that propounding ‘free trade’ was the central concern of the WN, see his Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith (1793)Google Scholar as reprinted in Essays on philosophical subjects, edited by Wightman, W P D and Bryce, J C in Works and correspondence, III, 309–24Google Scholar Also see Bagehot, W, ‘Adam Smith as a person’ in Hutton, R H (ed), Biographical studies, (London, 1881), p 280Google Scholar

²³ Monthly Review (London), 08 1776, p 92Google Scholar, Critical Review (London), 03 1776, p 193Google Scholar, Annual Register (London), 1776, p 241Google Scholar, Correspondence, letter 153, pp 192–3

²⁴ The following two paragraphs summarize a reading of WN I have developed at greater length in my ‘Free trade’ and moral philosophy rethinking the sources of Adam Smith's ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Durham, N C, 1985), pp 154–69Google Scholar

²⁵ WN, IV. V. b., 3 & 7. Also see Winch, , ‘Science and the legislator’, pp. 505–11Google Scholar, and Hont, and Ignatieff, , ‘Needs and justice…’, pp. 20–6Google Scholar.

²⁶ In Scotland, WN also played a minor role in a debate surrounding a bid for Scots militia legislation. A militia bill was under consideration by parliament when the book first appeared in March, 1776. Smith's view was that well-regulated standing armies were always superior to militias. On this controversy, see Sher, Richard B., Church and university in the Scottish Enlightenment (Princeton, 1985), pp. 235–9Google Scholar.

²⁷ Pownall was also a relatively well-known author, who published works on a great variety of topics. There are no references to Pownall's writings in the WN, but his Administration of British colonies (1764) and his Present state of affairs between the old and new world (1780) were in Smith's library. See Mizuta, H., Adam Smith's library (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar. On Pownall, see Schutz, J., Thomas Pownall: British defender of American liberty (Glendale, 1951)Google Scholar.

²⁸ A letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith… (London, 1776), as reprinted in Correspondence, appendix A, pp. 338, 375.

²⁹ Ibid pp 356–7

³⁰ Ibid. pp. 357, 366–8.

³¹ Ibid. pp. 358–66.

³² Ibid pp 362–4

³³ Ibid pp 366–8

³⁴ Monthly Review (London), 01 –06 1777, pp 117 20Google Scholar, Critical Review (London), 11 1776, p 388Google Scholar, Essays commercial and political (London, 1777)Google Scholar

³⁵ On Stewart, see Collini, S., Winch, D., and Burrow, J., ‘That Noble Science of Politics’: A study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 23–61Google Scholar, and Fontana, B., Rethinking the politics of commercial society: The Edinburgh Review 1802–32 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 96–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ In England, ‘political economy’ was not taught as a distinct academic subject before 1805, when Malthus was appointed ‘Professor of General History, Politics, Commerce, and Finance’ at the newly established East India College at Haileybury. But it should be noted that Haileybury was not a university, and many of its own teachers mocked use of the term ‘professor’. See James, Patricia, Population Malthus: his life and times (London, 1979), pp. 168–84Google Scholar.

³⁷ On Scottish grain prices, see Mitchison, R., ‘The movements of Scottish corn prices in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XVIII (1965), 278–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Memorial for the merchants, traders, and manufacturers of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1777)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Essay on the Corn-Laws (Edinburgh, 1777), pp. 6–22Google Scholar; CORN-BILL Hints in answer to the memorial for the merchants, traders, and manufacturers of the city of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1777), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ COUN-BILL Hints, pp. 17–20.

⁴¹ CORN-BILL Hints, pp. 16–18; Considerations on our Corn-Laws (Aberdeen, 1777), p. 17Google Scholar. Another observer who saw a connexion between the Glasgow Memorial and WN was SirSteuart, James, then still the largely unknown author of An inquiry into the principles of political oeconomy (1767)Google Scholar. ‘Smith has printed in favour of free importation’, Steuart remarked in private correspondence of October, 1777. The word ‘Smith’ is underlined twice in MS; in context of his letter, it is clear that Steuart saw Smith as a maverick on this issue. The letter is reprinted as Appendix B in Principles of political oeconomy, Skinner, A. S. (ed.) (vol. II, Chicago, 1966), pp. 737–8Google Scholar.

⁴² Anderson, J., Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of national industry (Edinburgh & London, 1777; reprinted 1779), pp. 309–39Google Scholar.

⁴³ Anderson, J., An enquiry into the nature of the corn-laws: with a view to the new Corn-Bill proposal for Scotland (Edinburgh, 1777), p. 4Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ On Anderson's criticism and Smith's, reply, see WN, PP. 515–16Google Scholar, n. 28 and Correspondence, letter 208, pp. 249–52. On Pownall, , see Correspondence, letter 182, p. 224Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Correspondence, letter 208, p. 251.

⁴⁶ On Smith's dealings with North, see Rae, , Life of Adam Smith, pp. 294, 310, 320Google Scholar; Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, pp. 524–8Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ See Correspondence, letter 187, pp. 228–9.

⁴⁸ See Correspondence, letter 203, pp. 244–6. Also see Anderson, G. M., Shughart, W. F. II and Tollison, R. D., ‘Adam Smith in the customhouse’, Journal of Political Economy, XCIII (1985), 740–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides a very close look at Smith's service as customs commissioner. But the relationship between that service and the WN as a whole is never clearly spelled out.

⁴⁹ See Winch, D., ‘Science and the legislator’, pp. 501–11Google Scholar, for a thoughtful analysis of Smith's advisory style. On the significance of statesmen and legislators in Smith's thinking, see Winch, D., Adam Smith's politics: an essay in historiography revision (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haakonssen, K., The science of a legislator: the natural jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ On the agitation for ‘free trade’ in Ireland, see Rae, , Life of Adam Smith, pp. 346–56Google Scholar; O'Brien, G., ‘The Irish Free Trade Agitation of 1779’, English Historical Review, XXXVIII (1923), 564–81 and XXXIX (1924), 95–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, pp. 527–8Google Scholar.

⁵¹ The twelve opinions are reprinted in full in G. O'Brien, ‘The Irish free trade agitation of 1779’.

⁵² Ibid. p. 104.

⁵³ Correspondence, letter 201, pp. 241–2.

⁵⁴ WN, iv, ii, 44.

⁵⁵ Ibid. iv, ii, 43.

⁵⁶ Correspondence, letter 201, p. 242.

⁵⁷ Rae, , Life of Adam Smith, p. 349Google Scholar. This mistaken view also appears in Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, p. 527Google Scholar. But it would be equally misleading to suggest that Ireland simply was unaware of Adam Smith and his book. A private edition of the WN in three volumes was printed in Dublin in 1776.

⁵⁸ Hutchinson, J. H., The commercial restraints of Ireland considered… (London, 1779), pp. vi, 108, 111Google Scholar; Four letters to the Earl of Carlisle from William Eden, esq. (London, 1779), p. 141Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Correspondence, letter 203, pp. 244–7. Also see Winch, D., ‘Adam Smith's “enduring particular result”: a political and cosmopolitan perspective’, in Wealth and virtue, pp. 268–9Google Scholar, and Teichgraeber, , ‘Free Trade’ and moral philosophy, pp. 157–69Google Scholar, on the originality of the WN.

⁶⁰ Correspondence, letter 206, p. 248.

⁶¹ See Ehrman, J., The British government and commercial negotiations with Europe, 1783–1793 (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 29, 44–50, 178–81Google Scholar; Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, pp. 537–41Google Scholar; Henderson, W. O., ‘The Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. X (1957), 104–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² Ehrman, , British government and commercial negotiations, p. 48Google Scholar.

⁶³ Four letters to the Earl of Carlisle…, p. 131.

⁶⁴ WN, iv, iii, c. 12.

⁶⁵ Quoted in Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, p. 509Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Quoted in Ehrman, J., The Younger Pitt: the years of acclaim (London, 1969), p. 267, n. IGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁷ Willis, , ‘Ideas of Smith in parliament’, p. 510Google Scholar, argues that Smith ran ‘a poor ninth or tenth in comparison with other economic authorities’. Willis provides a useful survey of evidence, but he also approaches the WN with some very questionable assumptions. First of all, there is no evidence to support Willis's view that Smith's chief intention was to give ‘cohesion’ and ‘respectability’ to political economy, nor to support his contention that Smith saw political economy as a new ‘popular’ discipline that could be easily understood. Also, the story of Smith's life after 1776 throws into question Willis's portrayal of him as a ‘deeply committed reformer’.

⁶⁸ Bentham, J., Defence of usury: showing the impolicy of the present legal restraints (1787)Google Scholar as reprinted in Correspondence, p. 403; Hawlett, J., The insufficiency of the causes (1788), p. 47Google Scholar; Ruggles, T., The history of the poor (1793), I, 127; II, 8–9Google Scholar. My thanks to Professor Thomas Home for drawing my attention to these last two references.

⁶⁹ Gentleman's Magazine (London), 07 1790, p. 673Google Scholar; Stewart, , Account of the life and writings of Adam Smith, pp. 311, 315Google Scholar; European Magazine (London), 08 1790, pp. 202–3Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ There were also those who belittled Smith's achievement. ‘Being in a commercial town’, observed the anonymous writer of Smith's, obituary in The Times (24 07 1790)Google Scholar, Smith yielded to the temptation of changing ‘the Chair of Moral Philosophy into a professorship of trade and finance’. Others had only a slippery grasp of Smith's significance – e.g. the obituary in The Universal Magazine (London), 1790, p. 54Google Scholar, spoke of Smith's book on ‘The Importance of the Wealth of Nations’.

⁷¹ Anderson's, Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of national industry (1777)Google Scholar appeared in several editions before his death in 1808. It is likely that during the period 1776–1800 Smith's views on the Corn Laws were known to many largely by way of Anderson's criticisms of those views in the Observations.

⁷² Stewart, , Account of Adam Smith, p. 311Google Scholar; Horner, F., ‘Playfair's edition of the Wealth of Nations’, Edinburgh Review, 7 (01 1806), 470–1Google Scholar. Stewart and Horner, however, were not uncritical in their admiration of the WN. For Stewart, Smith's chief error was a narrowing in the focus of ‘political economy’; for Horner, the WN had ‘a specious appearance of system’ and Smith would have done better to develop his views in ‘detached essays’. See Fontana, B., Rethinking the politics of commercial society, chs. 2 & 3Google Scholar.

⁷³ The question of exactly what ‘political economy’ meant to Adam Smith, for example, has been glossed over by most of the contributors to Wealth and virtue. While both David Hume and Smith were deeply concerned with the meaning of the commercialization of Western society, it is by no means clear that their ideas here took shape as a new science of ‘political economy’. Indeed, the phrase ‘political economy’ never appeared in Hume's writing; it first appeared in WN only at the start of book IV.

⁷⁴ Recent work in this area largely ignores the period 1776–90, and seems to assume that the significance of the WN was widely recognized and clearly understood at the time of Smith's death. See especially Himmelfarb, Idea of poverty.