Since I wrote to you last I have conversed with Sir Henry Moncreiff, Dr. Webster’s successor as collector of the fund for the maintenance of clergymen’s widows, and with his clerk, who was likewise clerk to Dr. Webster, and who was of great use to the Doctor in the composition of the very book which I mentioned to you in a former letter.  They are both of opinion that the conversation I had with Dr. Webster a few months before his death must have been the effect of a momentary and sudden thought, and not of any serious or deliberate consideration or inquiry.  It was, indeed, at a very jolly table and in the midst of much mirth and jollity, of which the worthy Doctor, among many other useful and amiable qualities, was a very great lover and promoter.  They told me that in the year 1779 a copy of the Doctor’s book was made out by his clerk for the use of my Lord North.  That at the end of that book the Doctor had subjoined a note to the following purpose, that though between 1755 and 1779 the numbers in the great trading and manufacturing towns and villages were considerably increased, yet the Highlands and Islands were much depopulated, and even the low country, by the enlargement of farms, in some degree; so that the whole numbers, he imagined, must be nearly the same at both periods.  Both these gentlemen believe that this was the last deliberate judgment which Dr. Webster ever formed upon this subject.  The lists mentioned in the note are the lists of what are called examinable persons—­that is, of persons upwards of seven or eight years of age, who are supposed fit to be publicly examined upon religious and moral subjects.  Most of our country clergy keep examination rolls of this kind.

My Lord North will, I dare to say, be happy to accommodate you with the use of this book.  It is a great curiosity, though the conversation I mentioned to you had a little shaken my faith in it—­I am glad now to suppose, without much reason.—­I have the honour to be, with the highest regard, sir, your most obedient humble servant,

     ADAM SMITH.[340]

A new edition of the Wealth of Nations—­the fourth—­appeared in 1786, without any alteration in the text from the previous one, but the author prefixed to it an advertisement acknowledging the very great obligations he had been under to Mr. Henry Hope, the banker at Amsterdam, for (to quote the words of the advertisement) “the most distinct as well as the most liberal information concerning a very interesting and important subject, the Bank of Amsterdam, of which no printed account has ever appeared to me satisfactory or even intelligible.  The name of that gentleman is so well known in Europe, the information which comes from him must do so much honour to whoever has been favoured with it, and my vanity is so much interested in making this acknowledgment, that I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of prefixing this advertisement to this new edition of my book.”