To sum up, it may be said that the Wealth of Nations cer tainly operated powerfully through the harmony of its critical side with the tendencies of the half-century which followed its publication to the assertion of personal freedom and "natural rights." It discredited the economic policy of the past, and pro moted the overthrow of institutions which had come down from earlier times, but were unsuited to modern society. As a theoretic treatment of social economy, and therefore as a guide to social reconstruction and practice in the future, it is provisional, not definitive. But when the study of its subject comes to be sys tematized on the basis of a general social philosophy more com plete and durable than Smith's, no contributions to that final con struction will be found so valuable as his.
The following may be referred to for biographical details: Dugald Stewart, Biographical Memoir of Adam Smith, originally read (1793) before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and after wards prefixed to Smith's Essays on Philosophical Subjects; J. A. Farrer, Adam Smith (1881); R. B. Haldane, Life of Smith (1887) ; and the very full and excellent Life of Adam Smith by John Rae (1895). Additional particulars are given in Brougham's Men of Letters and Science, Burton's Life of Hume and Alexander Car lyle's Autobiography; and some characteristic anecdotes of him will be found in Memoirs of the Life and Works of Sir John Sin clair (1837). For comments on his Theory of Moral Sentiments,
see, besides Stewart, as cited above, Dr. T. Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, lects. 8o and 81; Sir J. Mackintosh's Dis sertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy; and the art. ETHICS in the present work. On the Wealth of Nations, see the prefaces to M'Culloch's, Rogers's, Shield Nicholson's and Can nan's editions of that work; Rogers's Historical Gleanings (1869); the art. "Smith" in Coquelin and Guillaumin's Dictionn.aire de l'economie politique; Bagehot's Economic Studies (188o) ; Cossa's Guide to the Study of Political Economy (Eng. trans., 188o), chap. v. and E. Cannan, Theories of Production and Distribution 1776-1848 (1893). See also Professor Shield Nicholson's Project of Empire (1909), which is a critical study of the Economics of Imperialism, with special reference to the ideas of Adam Smith; and Professor W. J. Ashley's essay in Compatriots, Club Lectures (1905) on "Political Economy and the Tariff Problem." See also Professor W. J. Ashley's Select Chapters and Passages from the "Wealth of Nations" (1895) ; C. W. Hasek, The Introduction of Adam Smith's Doctrines into Germany (N.Y. 1925).