in similar circumstances more than once incurred the charge of illiberality with the public.  On my telling him, however, that you had made up your mind on the subject, and that it was perfectly unnecessary to write to you, as the nature of the work made it impossible for you to comply with his proposal, he requested of me to submit to your consideration whether it might not (be) proper for you to mention this circumstance, for his justification, in an advertisement prefixed to the Book.  This was all, I think, that passed in the course of our conversation.  I write this from Dover, which I am just leaving with a fair wind, so that I hope to be in Paris on Thursday.  It will give me great-pleasure to receive your commands, if I can be of any use to you in executing any of your commissions.—­I ever am, dear sir, your much obliged and most obedient servant,

     DUGALD STEWART.[359]

In the preface to the 1790 edition the author refers to the promise he had made in that of 1759 of treating in a future work of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions they had undergone in the different ages and periods of society, not only in what concerns justice, but in what concerns policy, revenue, and arms, and whatever else is the object of law; and he says that in the Wealth of Nations he had executed this promise so far as policy, revenue, and arms were concerned, but that the remaining part of the task, the theory of jurisprudence, he had been prevented from executing by the same occupations which had till then prevented him from revising the Theory.  He adds:  “Though my very advanced age leaves me, I acknowledge, very little expectation of ever being able to execute this great work to my own satisfaction, yet, as I have not altogether abandoned the design, and as I wish still to continue under the obligation of doing what I can, I have allowed the paragraph to remain as it was published more than thirty years ago, when I entertained no doubt of being able to execute everything which it announced.”

The most important of the new contributions to this last edition of the Theory is the chapter “on the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by our disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition.”  In spite of his alleged republicanism he was still a sort of believer in the principle of birth.  It was not, in his view, a rational principle, but it was a natural and beneficial delusion.  In the light of reason the vulgar esteem for rank and fortune above wisdom and virtue was utterly indefensible, but it had a certain advantage as a practical aid to good government.  The maintenance of social order required the establishment of popular deference to some species of superiority, and the superiorities of birth and fortune were at least plain and palpable to the mob of mankind who have to be governed, whereas the superiorities of wisdom and virtue were often invisible and uncertain, even to the discerning.  But however useful this admiration for the wrong things might be for the establishment of settled authority, he held it to be “at the same time the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."[360]