Eamonn Butler

Yes, because The Wealth of Nations is an enormous, elephantine, sprawling book.

And it's got full of facts and figures and arguments, some of them not entirely consistent.

So you can take Adam Smith in many different ways.

Well, it took him 15 years to write this book.

And I think at the end of it, his friends would say, oh, come on, Smith, old chap, you know, it's about time you got this finished.

And so I think the final chapter is a little bit rushed.

Yes, because I don't think that was the main thrust of his argument.

The main thrust of his argument was all the previous stuff about how the economy works, and in particular that restrictions on trade and commerce produce bad results, that they don't maximize human welfare.

So it wasn't his main thing.

And I think his publisher was onto him as well to get the thing out.

I think his poor chap was probably under a lot of pressure.

Well, if it was me, I wouldn't read the book at all because it's enormous, 900 pages.

90 pages of it are what he calls a digression on the prize of silver.

And it's in this 18th century language and it's really just impenetrable.