For a long time, the work of the 8th Earl of Lauderdale, James Maitland, was badly neglected. It has only been in this century that his contribution to economic thought has been reassessed and revalued. Since then he has come to be recognized as the earliest systematic critic of Smith's economic thought. This revaluation continues now with the publication of Lauderdale's Notes on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

The work, the existence of which was only discovered five years ago, is published here for the first time. It is reproduced from the hand-written notes and marginalia which appear in Lauderdale's own edition of the Wealth of Nations which in now housed in the Tokyo Keizai University Library. The notes are reproduced here in full along with the relevant passages from The Wealth of Nations to which they refer.