Gavin Kennedy wrote (about the invisible hand in the TMS):
'I think Tony Brewer, and others, may have made a restricted reading of 
this chapter in TMS'.

I don't understand this: I agree with (almost) everything that Gavin says 
in his post, which seems to me to be a (very useful) amplification of my 
brief summary. We are on the same side, aren't we?

I am, it is true, a little doubtful about one pont in his post, where he 
treats 'those employed in his palaces' as if they were different from 'the 
poor', among whom the landlords divide 'the produce of all of their 
improvements'. My reading of the passage is that this is repetition by 
Smith, and that the two groups are the same. But Smith clearly takes it for 
granted that agricultural workers (who Gavin, if I understand him, 
identifies with 'the poor') must get their subsistence, so it makes no 
difference to the overall conclusion, on which I think we agree. Landlords 
spend selfishy but end up employing, and hence providing subsistence for, 
(nearly) as many people as could have been supported by the land with more 
equal distribution of ownership.

Tony Brewer