so much so that in a selection of them published by the Scots Magazine in 1757 every one partakes of that character.  “What are the advantages to the public and the State from grazing? what from corn lands? and what ought to be most encouraged in this country?  Whether great or small farms are most advantageous to the country?  What are the most proper measures for a gentleman to promote industry on his own estate?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of gentlemen of estate being farmers?  What is the best and most proper duration of leases of land in Scotland?  What prestations beside the proper tack-duty tenants ought to be obliged to pay with respect to carriages and other services, planting and preserving trees, maintaining enclosures and houses, working freestone, limestone, coal, or minerals, making enclosures, straightening marches, carrying off superfluous water to other grounds, and forming drains? and what restrictions they should be put under with respect to cottars, live stock on the farm, winter herding, ploughing the ground, selling manure, straw, hay, or corn, thirlage to mills, smiths or tradesmen employed on business extrinsic to the farm, subsetting land, granting assignations of leases, and removals at the expiration of leases?  What proportion of the produce of lands should be paid as rent to the master?  In what circumstances the rents of lands should be paid in money? in what in kind? and in what time they should be paid?  Whether corn should be sold by measure or by weight?  What is the best method of getting public highways made and repaired, whether by a turnpike law, as in many places in Great Britain, by county or parish work, by a tax, or by what other method?  What is the best and most equal way of hiring and contracting servants? and what is the most proper method to abolish the practice of giving of vails?"[85] The society had what may be termed a special agricultural branch, to which I shall presently refer, and which met once a month and discussed chiefly questions of husbandry and land management; and the above list of subjects looks, from its almost exclusively agrarian character, as if it had been rather the business of this branch of the society merely than of the society as a whole.  Still the same causes that made rural economy predominate in the monthly work of the branch would give it a large place in the weekly discussions of the parent association.  The members were largely connected with the landed interest, and agricultural improvement was then on the order of the day.

In this society accordingly, which Smith attended very frequently, though he does not appear to have spoken in the debates, he had with respect to agrarian problems precisely what he had in the economic club of Glasgow with respect to commercial problems, the best opportunities of hearing them discussed at first hand by those who were practically most conversant with the subjects in all their details.  Of course the society sometimes discussed questions of literature