There is a hint that freedom as a positive thing was known to him from the fact that he relied upon education to relieve the evils of the division of labor.

But the general context of his book required less emphasis upon the virtues of state-interference than upon its defects.

His cue was to show that all the benefits of regulation had been achieved despite its interference; from which, of course, it followed that restraint was a matter of supererogation.
III It would be tedious to praise the _Wealth of Nations_.

It may be doubtful whether Buckle's ecstatic judgment that it has had more influence than any other book in the world was justified even when he wrote; but certainly it is one of the seminal books of the modern time.
What is more important is to note the perspective in which its main teaching was set.

He wrote in the midst of the first significant beginnings of the Industrial Revolution; and his emphatic approval of Watt's experiments suggests that he was not unalive to its importance.
Yet it cannot in any full sense be said that the Industrial Revolution has a large part in his book.