Note 63 — Chapter XVIII · THE VAMPIRE.
Reading edition
Adam Smith, in speaking of the class of merchants and manufacturers, says:—“Their superiority over the country gentleman is not so much in their knowledge of the public interest as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity and persuaded him to give up his own interest and that of the public from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the people.” (Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. Chap. XI.)
How true in the case of Free Trade!