Note 88 — Chapter II · SECOND THOUGHTS, 1803.
Reading edition
Appendix to 5th ed., 1817; 7th ed., p. 526. Cf. Bacon (Essay XXXVIII.), “to bend nature like a wand to a contrary extreme whereby to set it aright.” Adam Smith had used the simile of a bent stick to describe the reaction of the French Economists against the Mercantile theorists (Wealth of Nations, IV. ix. 300).