Review: On the Wealth of Nations

This volume of contemporary responses to Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations of 1776 (henceforth the Wealth of Nations, 'Glasgow Edition', Oxford University Press, 1976) is part of the Key Issues titles. This series of documents, letters and reviews of some of the historic texts of political, economic and social thought has already covered such luminaries as Hobbes, Locke and Mill, and an earlier volume also covered Adam Smith's classic study The Theory of Mora l Sent iments . The present volume contains twenty-six responses to Smith's 'commercial code of nations' (see the letter from Hugh Blair, p.5), which range from personal letters to the author, through published reviews and, most interesting of all, to the early adoption of some of Smith's ideas in Britain, continental Europe and in America. Though there is a great deal of material in this volume which might interest the less committed, unfortunately the pieces by German, French and Italian writers are in their natural languages, suggesting that this text is principally aimed towards scholars of the subject.