ABSTRACT
Adam Smith, the author of the third System of Political Economy, instead of seeking, like his predecessors, to invent a priori a theory to which he would then endeavor to connect all the facts, recognized that the science of government was experimental; that it had to be based on the history of many people, and that principles could be deduced only from a discerning observation of facts. His immortal work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which he published in 1776, and which was preceded in 1752 by Lectures on Political Economy, are actually the result of a philosophical study of the history of mankind. It was only after the author had analytically clarified past economic changes that he progressed to general laws of wealth accumulation and presented them for the first time.
