Early Reception and Hume's Assessment
- When
- 12 April 1776 – 1778
- Where
- British political and literary circles
Within weeks of publication, David Hume reportedly judged the book too demanding to become as popular as Gibbon's Decline and Fall.
On 12 April 1776 the printer William Strahan recorded that David Hume said The Wealth of Nations required too much thought to be as popular as Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Despite such reservations, the book quickly reached policymakers: in 1777 Lord North took from it the idea for two new taxes, on man-servants and on property sold at auction, and the 1778 budget introduced the inhabited house duty and malt tax, both recommended by Smith.
Sources
- The Wealth of Nations Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-21
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