The New Century. THE ADAM SMITH CENTENNIAL. The desire to commemorate the IIundredth Anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" in a manner publicly expressing the high estimation in which the principles of that work, and the character and services of its author, are held, sought expression at an early day of the present year. Mainly through the efforts of Mr. Parke Godwin, a committee was organized, and preparatory steps were taken at that time. for some fitting ceremony-a movement which met with hearty encouragement from all quarters. The opening of the International Exposition at Philadelphia, soon after, in which so great a portion of public interest was absorbed during the succeeding six months, followed by the intense excitement, doubts and anxieties growing out of the presidential election, made necessary a postponement of all preparations until later in the year. As soon after the election as the excitement over its results would permit, the following circular letter was addressed to all the prominent free-traders whose addresses could be obtained: DEAR SIR: NEW YORK, Nov. 16th, 1876. This year is the Hundredth Anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." The principles of commercial freedom taught in that immortal work are pre-eminently adapted to the highest development of our national resources, In commemoration of this anniversary-peculiarly appropriate to our national centennial-a public dinner will be given at Delmonico's, in this city, on Tuesday evening, 12th December next, at which a large number of gentlemen will be present who are deeply interested in these principles, and are making renewed efforts to secure for them national recognition. If you are disposed to participate, please communicate with either of the undersigned as soon as convenient. PARKE GODWIN, 19 East 37th Street. ARTHUR G. SEDGWICK, Box 25, New York. ABRAHAM L. EARLE, To this circular over one hundred responses, promising attendance, were received. Among the many gentlemen who were unfortunately compelled by circumstances to decline the invitation, but at the same time expressed a hearty sympathy with the objects of the proposed dinner, may be mentioned, Sir Edward Thornton, British minister, and Mr. Maurice Delforse, minister from Belgium, Governor Tilden, Presidents Woolsey, McCosh, Eliot, Russell, and Chapin; Senators Bayard and Christiancy; Charles Francis Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Professors Longfellow, Perry, and Stanley; Representatives Garfield, Lamar, and Morrison; Judge Stanley Matthews, Thomas W. Olcott, Lieut. Gov. Dorsheimer, Dr. Estes Howe, Dr. Osgood, S. T. K. Prime, Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Lafayette B. Foster, Edwin P. Whipple, Charles Elliot Norton, C. D. Hudson. On the appointed evening fully one hundred gentlemen gathered at Delmonico's. Mr. Parke Godwin presided at the dinner, supported at the head table by M. Henri Cernuschi, of Paris, Wm. Cullen Bryant, Hon. John Bigelow, Horace White, David A. Wells, President Anderson, Professors Sumner and Walker, Edward Atkinson, E. L. Godkin, Cyrus W. Field, and others. At the other tables were seated gentlemen from many of the States, among them Nathan Appleton and F. B. Sanborn, of Boston; A. Sidney Biddle and Brinton Coxe, of Philadelphia; A. D. Bolles, of Norwich, Conn.; E. R. Leland, of Eau Claire, Wis.; Edwin A. Pratt, of Springfield, Mass.; A. B. Mason, of Chicago, Ill.; Professor Youmans, Howard Potter, Anson Phelps Stokes, W. E. Dodge, Jr., J. S. Moore, and others, of New York. It is an interesting fact, and one that promises much for the future, that, although there were many present who had grown gray in the advocacy of economic truths, the greater number were young men who still look forward to years of faithful and efficient work. On the removal of the cloth, Mr. Godwin in the following remarks introduced the speakers of the occasion, to all of whom the closest attention was given until a late hour brought the pleasant gathering to a close: REMARKS OF PARKE GODWIN. GENTLEMEN :—It is my duty to-night to speak the prologue to our further performances, and I do not know of any better method for my discourse than to follow the epilogue to Henry IV, which says, "First, my fear; then my courtesy; and last, my speech." My fear is, that you will ascribe this infliction upon you to my own wishes, and not to the blind obstinacy of my friends, who, you know, are often a man's worst enemies. My courtesy is, to thank you for this generous attendance, at a time when all minds are preoccupied by the critical and momentous condition of public affairs, which might well deaden them to the interest of science. And, lastly, my speech is,—as it may turn out. It is not often in their secular experiences that men assemble to do honor to a book. The deep religious yearnings of our race have produced those Sacred Scriptures which become the centres of communion and worship to wide congregations. Literature, too, has its perennial authors in those master spirits who usurp the world of imagination, and reign for ever after as its legitimate monarchs. Wordsworth here rightly invoked our "blessings and eternal praise, on these, who give us nobler lives and sweeter thoughts." But we are gathered to commemorate, not a revelation from the depths of the spiritual world, nor a creation in the enchanted realms of art, only a humble treatise on the affairs of every day, which has taken its rank with the noblest monuments of human genius. It is just a hundred years since "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," appeared from the pen, not of a statesman, a banker, or a merchant, but of a Scottish professor of Ethics, of the somewhat ubiquitous name of Smith. It can hardly be said to have been an attractive subject; in all polite societies, its topics-labor, capital, wages, profits, rent and taxation--would have been voted dry, if mentioned at all; and even the able editors of the day, who, of course, knew everything, save their own ignorance, must have despised its long disquisitions on real and nominal prices and the mercantile system. The prevalent conceptions of the wealth of nations at that day were of the resources of a prince, to raise armies, equip fleets, subsidize allies, pension poets, and build ostentatious monuments. As to useful labor as wealth, as to free labor as the chief glory of nations and the source of their power, it was a thing still undreamed. Yet the book which argued in this strain, soon made its way into men's minds: it penetrated the cabinets as well as the counting houses; it created a school; it grew in fame with the revolving seasons, until now, in this great land, which had then just sprung into distinct national existence, it is held in honor among our best centennial memories. And well it may be, for its very last page advises the release of the North American colonies, not on the ground of political right, but because of the supreme economic folly of attempting to keep them in subjection. Now, what was the secret of this success, and what is the justification of our observance at this moment? It cannot be said that the author of the "Wealth of Nations" was the originator of a great and important system of truth. Many of his principal conclusions had been anticipated by obscure writers in Italy and England, and forced by labored reasonings upon the attention of philosophers and statesmen in France. The famous sect, as it was called, of the Physiocrats, had already dug up and brought to light the tap root of the goodly tree, which has since spread into a sturdy and fruitful plantation. That fundamental principle of freedom, which pervades more modern thought, and more modern legislation, was already discerned by them, and already proclaimed as the true principle of economic organization. But they saw it in its germ only, not in its completeness, with too much soil clinging to it to become a vigorous growth, or as the first upshooting streaks of light, which tinge the clouds rather than illumine the horizon, and not in its full midday splendor. The merit of Smith was that he grasped the truth in its inherent force, he grasped it in all its bearings and relations; and he developed it with such distinctness of conception, with such well-rounded and logical proportions, with such felicity and convincingness of illustration, with such simplicity and elegance of style, that it became a truth for mankind in their daily walks, and not solely for students in their closets, or for speculators in their schools. Two centuries before Columbus issued from the ports of Spain, a poor monk, named Roger Bacon, asserted the probable existence of a western world, but the glory of its actual discovery will forever encircle the head of "the immortal Genoese." It is not he that hits upon a happy invention in his brain who earns our gratitude, but he that makes it the common property of our race. The names of the forerunners, of Quesnay, De Gournay, Mercier de la Riviere, North, Child, Mann, Harris and Locke-above all of the grand Turgot-are not likely to be forgotten, but they will shine all the brighter, like dependent planets, because of the lustre which is shed back upon them by a more glorious sun. Now, gentlemen, what a grand truth it is we owe to the labors of these men and their successors. The great German philosopher, Kantand a greater has never lived--was accustomed to say that two things always filled him with awe--the view of the starry heavens, and the sense of duty in the soul. He might have added to these another-the contemplation of that mysterious law by which the intricate, capricious, wavering impulses of social man are made to work to such harmonious ends. Our own venerable poet-whom I am glad to see among us— in his beautiful poem of "The Crowded Street," sees how each one of the hurrying throng is driven on by his own wild desires and fitful purposes; how some to happy homes repair, while others will plunge in dens of shame; how ambition, rapacity, love, pleasure, power, whirl and toss them in their respective vortices; and yet he draws the conclusion, that "These struggling tides of life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of a mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.” But what is society at large but an expansion of the crowded street? And is there not, for its stupendous ramifications of interests, for its far-reaching enterprises, which span the globe, for its innumerable groups of toilers and exchangers, with all their rivalries and contests and greeds, a power also "which heeds and holds them all in its large love and boundless thought"? It is the power of that Providence which acts through the economic organization, when left to itself, to work out its results according to the indelible laws the Creator has implanted in our being. It is the power of freedom--of freedom of industry and of interchange, demanding nothing of government, the common agent and representative, but the maintenance of impartial justice and unbroken peace, and recognizing simply the reciprocal interests of men, not their reciprocal antagonisms, as the true basis of the social union. Like the principle of attraction, which in the sidereal world, reduces the farflaming orbs to musical chimes, it brings back our wide-whirling individualities to a state of coherence and order. In old times, when it was believed that all the universe revolved around our earth, it was also believed that every material human interest stood in hostility to every other material human interest. Races were enemies, nations were enemies, cities and towns were enemies, classes were enemies, craftsmen were enemies, persons were enemies. In the face of the beautiful fraternity proclaimed by the Gospel, the State, if not the Church, adhered to the theory of universal repulsion among human particles. The gain of one, whether a nation or a man, was thought to be the loss of another nation or man, and in that view of it, the only policy for nations or men was to prosecute each his own interest and to destroy the interests of others. There was no help for it; God had so constructed the order of things; and conquest, oppression, and arbitrary interference, were the indispensable means of self-preservation. It was a struggle for existence in which the weak must go to the wall. If any pious soul was disposed to think otherwise, or grew weary of the unceasing strife, he retired to the cloisters to pass his days in contemplation, sighing and prayer. Now, the signal service which Adam Smith and his coadjutors performed, was to demonstrate that the Gospel was right, and that human traditions were wrong. By a careful analysis of labor and of the modes in which it contributed to human welfare, by an exposition of the productive efficacy of what was called the division, but which is in reality the co-operation of industrial groups, by the demonstration of the fact that all exchanges of products are not one-sided spoliations, but two-sided benefits, they showed to every disinterested rational intelligence that human interests were, as the French say, solidaire, or reciprocally helpful, and not mutually destructive. Attraction, not repulsion, is the true law of our economic relations. The more a man works honestly for himself, the more he works for his fellows, and the more his fellows work honestly for themselves, the more they work for him. Human ignorance, rapacity and injustice had obstructed and perverted that law, but there it stood, as it still stands, a granitic fact, underlying all the rubbish of two thousand years of upheaval and cataclysm. An anonymous writer of the 17th century, in an almost forgotten tract, asked, "Why are we surrounded by the sea?" and he answered, "Surely, that our wants at home might be supplied by navigation into other countries. By this we taste the spices of Arabia, yet never feel the |