Adam Smith, Mercantilism, and the Caricature of Locke (on the origins of liberalism)

As regular readers know (recall); recall) after William Robertson (who together with Adam Smith coined the modern use of ‘liberal’), the Scottish historian, read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, he wrote Smith the following:

“You have formed into a regular and consistent system one of the most intricate and important parts of political science, and if the…