[Please forgive the double-posting of this message. I believe many of you did not receive it and others got a garbled mess. I hope it works this time. HB]


Dear beleaguered colleagues,

       In the midst of strife, can anyone identify the author of the
attached piece?  I would be most grateful.

Thank you,

Mason Gaffney



I'm limiting the excerpt below, to avoid imposing on the hospitality of the
group.

The Invisible Hand Behind The Wealth of Nations

A proposal was  made to Adam Smith during the summer of 1763  by the
Hon.Charles Townsend, who as  British Chancellor of the Exchequer imposed
taxation on the American colonies.   Townsend had been impressed with
Smith's book Moral Sentiments and had told Hume four years earlier that he
wished Smith to accompany his stepson, the third Duke of Buccleuch, who was
leaving Eton College at Christmas in 1763, for travels in France.  David
Hume was doubtful whether Smith would be tempted, though Hume was clearly
struck by Townsend, who, wrote in a letter to Smith dated 12 April 1759,
"passes for the cleverest fellow in England."  What later persuaded Smith
was the offer of expenses  as well as  an annual salary - =A3300 per annum -
which would continue until his death.    It was not particularly unusual for
a person to receive a pension for life.    Indeed Hume was to receive a
larger one.    But the pension offered by Townsend  represented almost twice
Smith's annual salary at the University at Glasgow.   In November 1763 Smith
resigned his professorship of moral philosophy  and offered to pay his
substitute the remainder of that year.    In modern terms =A3300 
represents about =A325,000 per annum.