“In the last part of his lectures he examined those political regulations which are founded not upon the principle of justice , but that of expediency , and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power and the prosperity of a state. Under this view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. What he delivered on these subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published under the title of ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.’ ”
Of course this is not necessarily inconsistent with the economic lectures having been denominated police, revenue, and arms, even at that early date, but the italicising of “justice” and “expediency,” if due to Millar, rather suggests the contrary, and there is no denying that the arrangement of “cheapness or plenty” under “police” may very well have been an afterthought fallen upon to justify the introduction of a mass of economic material into lectures on Jurisprudence. As