On 9 March 1776, The Wealth of Nations was published in London. Its author, Adam Smith, outlined the framework of a rising new economic world, and concluded his voluminous book with these words:

Several months later, on 4 July, across the Atlantic, the American colonists proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, ‘that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown’. Although Smith proposed to ‘the rulers of Great Britain’ that ‘If the project [for possessing a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic] cannot be compleated, it ought to be given up’, he does not appear to have defended passionately the cause of American independence, or to have supported the rebel Americans. David Hume, who wrote to Baron Mure of Caldwell that ‘I am an American in my Principles, and wish we woud let them alone to govern or misgovern themselves as they think proper’, welcomed the proposal of some ministers in council that ‘both Fleet and Army be withdrawn from America’. Hume, however, died on 25 August 1776, shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

One of the signatories to that Declaration was John Witherspoon, an emigrant Scot born in 1723 (the same year as Smith), and one of the representatives of New Jersey to the Continental Congress. Having endeavoured to justify the independence of America in his writings and sermons, Witherspoon took ‘an active part in the debate leading to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in the late 1770s’.