ABSTRACT
My aim was to take issue with the argument (Griswold 1999, ch. 6.5), that one of the works that Smith did not live to complete, or part of one them, a ‘long projected theory of jurisprudence’, could not be completed ‘given the premises of the rest of [Smith’s] system’. We are agreed that this theory of jurisprudence would present an account of the ‘rules of natural justice’ or the ‘theory of the general principles which ought to run through and be the foundation of the laws of all nations’ (TMS VII.iv.36, 37). This statement is found at the conclusion of all editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments from the first, 1759, to the last one corrected by the author: sixth, 1790.
