Adam Smith redux

Thus far, we have surveyed the first 11 of the 13 additions in Adam Smith’s pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1784). Next up, then, is Addition #12 (pp. 23-47), the second-longest part of his 1784 pamphlet, in which Smith adds an entirely new chapter to his great treatise: Chapter 8 of Book IV of The Wealth of Nations (“Conclusion of the Mercantile System”). As it happens, I surveyed this chapter earlier this year as part of my commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of Smith’s second magnum opus. (See my blog post from 3 March 2026: “The true villains in The Wealth of Nations“.) Yet I now see that Smith wrote up this particular addition — consisting of 54 paragraphs spread across 24 pages — between 1778 and 1784, while he was a Commissioner of Scottish Customs and Salt Duties, so I will start from scratch and revisit this chapter again but in far…