Book Description

Excerpt from Revised Report of the Proceedings at the Dinner of 31st May, 1876, Held in Celebration of the Hundredth Year of the Publication of the Wealth of Nations I do not pretend to account for the fact how it should be that Political Economy may boast of this prevision or pre diction, which has been denied to the cognate arts or sciences whether it be that the exceptions from the rule, that men act according to their own interest as they under stand it, are so slight, as mathematicians say, that they may be altogether neglected, or whether it be that in some degree men err in different directions so as to cancel each other but I apprehend nothing is more certain than that the main truths of Political Economy do not rest upon d posteriori arguments, but that they rest upon assumptions with regard to what mankind will do in particular circum stances, which assumptions experience has verified and shown to be true. And without reference to anything that Adam Smith may have accomplished for the benefit of the human race otherwise, I call your attention to this as a most remarkable achievement, one perfectly unique in the history of mental science, and which alone ought, in my opinion, to raise him to the very highest rank among those who have cultivated the more abstruse parts of knowledge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.