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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 188, 1 August 1876, Page 4

A correspondent of the Argus has recently called attention to the fact that this year is the centenary of two very notable events. Of the former of these two, the declaration of American independence, we have lately heard abundance, but of the latter there are few who care to speak. Yet there is good reason that Glasgow should in this year rejoice with a jay little less enthusiastic than that of Philadelphia. For just one hundred years a dreamy, absentminded professor of the University of Glasgow published a work which is one of the imperishable monuments of humau genius. "In. 1776," says Mr Buckle, "Adam Smith published his \Wealth of Nations, which, looking at its ultimate results, is probably the raost important work ever written, and which is certainly the moat valuable contribution ever made by a Bingle man towards establishing the principles on which Government should be based." "The Wealth of Nations'' says Sir James Macintosh, " is, perhaps, the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irr«»

vocable change in some of the moat important parts of all civilized States." Surely in this age of commemorations we may apare a few thoughts and a little honor for the deatroyer of the mercantile system, the leading advocate of free trade, the founder of scientific political economy, and the greatest of the many great thinkers who graced the literature of Scotland in the eighteenth century.— Australasian.