ABSTRACT
My title records Walter Bagehot’s summary verdict on the Wealth of Nations in 1876, the centenary year. It plainly tells us as much about Bagehot’s conversational tone when
addressing his audience as it does about Adam Smith’s reputation at that time.2 Nor is it difficult to understand Bagehot’s reasons for announcing that the Wealth of Nations was now more an object of historical curiosity than a contribution to modern understanding. As a guide to enlightened economic policies the science to which this work had given rise had proved more influential than a sceptical Smith had been prepared to hope. Paradoxes in Smith’s time, ideas that continued to perplex benighted foreigners, were now commonplaces on his native heath – if southern Britain can be so considered. The main battles being over, it was time to pay homage to the most important of the early generals in a campaign which had been triumphant in bringing free trade as well as the principles of sound government finance and monetary practice to Britain. As Bagehot said with some pride: ‘No other form of political philosophy has ever had one thousandth part of the influence on us; its teachings have settled
down into the common sense of the nation, and have become irreversible.’3
