John Medaille contributes: Here is the passage from TMS. I leave the interpretation to others: [The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species..In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for .[1] [1] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 6th ed., The Conservative Leadership Series (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Co., 1997), IV.I p. 249. Smith's statement is so insensitive to the straits of the poor, and so blind to the extravagances of the rich, that I am tempted to wonder if the publisher, Regnery, didn't tamper with it. Maybe some Smith scholar will check earlier editions lacking the tendentious title of "The Conservative Leadership Series". Mason Gaffney