debased philosophy, and roused Kant from his dog-
matic slumbers. But Hume and Voltaire had little to
sow on the land they ploughed and harrowed. In all
their anxiety to humble and ridicule religion, they
would retain the Church as a useful instrument of the
State. In all their appeals to public opinion, they
never thought of resting government on a broad basis
of popular right. Their view of society was conven-
tional; they were rather satirists than reformers. It
has been a commonplace of criticism to compare Adam
Smith with Locke. He is supposed to have done for
a particular branch of politics what Locke did for the
whole science. But Locke's main achievement, after
all, was to find philosophic sanction for a revolution
accomplished by others, and to establish in the minds of
the Whig aristocracy an unlimited respect for a limited
constitution. Smith was the single-handed contriver
and sole author of a revolution in thought which
has modified the governing policy and prodigiously
increased the welfare of the whole civilised world.

Of his contemporaries, the nearest perhaps in spirit
are Turgot and the younger Burke, the Burke of the
American Revolution and of Free Trade and Economi-
cal Reform. But Burke and even Turgot were in a
certain sense men of the past. Though their radiance
can never fade, their influence wanes. But Smith has
issued from the seclusion of a professorship of morals,
from the drudgery of a commissionership of customs,
to sit in the council-chamber of princes. His word has
rung through the study to the platform. It has been
proclaimed by the agitator, conned by the statesman,
and printed in a thousand statutes.

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