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The Wealth of Nations has become so influential since it did so much to create the subject of political economy and develop it into an autonomous systematic discipline. In the western world, it is the most influential book on the subject ever published. When the book, which has become a classic manifesto against mercantalism, appeared in 1776, there was a strong sentiment for free trade in both Britain and America. This new feeling had been born out of the economic hardships and poverty caused by the war. However, at the time of publication, not everybody was convinced of the advantages of free trade right away: the British public and Parliament still clung to mercantilism for many years to come (Tindall and Shi). However, controversial views have been expressed as to the extent of Smith’s originality in The Wealth of Nations. Smith has been blamed for relying too much on the ideas of great thinkers such as David Hume and Montesquieu. Nevertheless, The Wealth of Nations was the first and remains the most important book on the subject of political ecomomy until this present day.

It has never, I think, been the good fortune of any founder

of a scientific system to think out to the very end even the more

important ideas that constitute his system. The strength and

lifetime of no single man are sufficient for that. It is enough

if some few of the ideas which have to play the chief part in the

system are put on a perfectly safe foundation, and analysed in

all their ramifications and complexities. It is a great deal if,

over and above that, an equal carefulness falls to the lot of a

few other favoured members of the system. But in all cases the

most ambitious spirit must be content to build up a great deal

that is insecure, and to fit into his system, on cursory

examination, ideas which it was not permitted him to work out.

We must keep these considerations before us if we would

rightly appreciate Adam Smith’s attitude towards our problem.

Adam Smith has not overlooked the problem of interest;

neither has he worked it out. He deals with it as a great thinker

may deal with an important subject which he often comes across,

but has not time or opportunity to go very deeply into. He has

adopted a certain proximate but still vague explanation. The more

indefinite this explanation is, the less does it bind him to

strict conclusions; and a many-sided mind like Adam Smith’s,

seeing all the many different ways in which the problem can be

put, but lacking the control which the possession of a distinct

theory gives, could scarcely fail to fall into all sorts of

wavering and contradictory expressions. Thus we have the peculiar

phenomenon that, while Adam Smith has not laid down any distinct

theory of interest, the germs of almost all the later and

conflicting theories are to be found, with more or less

distinctness, in his scattered observations. We find the same

phenomenon in Adam Smith as regards many other questions.

The line of thought which seems to commend itself principally

to him as explaining natural interest occurs in very similar

language in the sixth and eighth chapters of book i of the Wealth

of Nations. It amounts to this, that there must be a profit from

capital, because otherwise the capitalist would have no interest

in spending his capital in the productive employment of

labourers.(1*)

General expressions like these have of course no claim to

stand for a complete theory.(2*) There is no reasoned attempt in

them to show what we are to represent as the actual connecting

links between the psychological motive of the capitalist’s

self-interest and the final fixing of market prices which leave a

difference between costs and proceeds that we call interest. But

yet, if we take those expressions in connection with a later

passage,(3*) where Smith sharply opposes the “future profit” that

rewards the resolution of the capitalist to the “present

enjoyment” of immediate consumption, we may recognise the first

germs of that theory which Senior worked out later on under the

name of the Abstinence theory.

In the same way as Adam Smith asserts the necessity of

interest, and leaves it without going any deeper in the way of

proof, so does he avoid making any systematic investigation of

the important question of the source of undertaker’s profit. He

contents himself with making a few passing observations on the

subject. Indeed in different places he gives two contradictory

accounts of this profit. According to one account, the profit of

capital arises from the circumstance, that, to meet the

capitalist’s claim to profit, buyers have to submit to pay

something more for their goods than the value which these goods

would get from the labour expended on them. according to this

explanation, the source of interest is an increased value given

to the product over that value which labour creates; but no

explanation of this increase in value is given. According to the

second account, interest is a deduction which the capitalist

makes in his own favour from the return to labour, so that the

workers do not receive the full value created by them, but are

obliged to share it with the capitalist. According to this

account, profit is a part of the value created by labour and kept

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