'Adam Smith famously declared that ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices’. Although Smith’s hostility to the merchants and the mercantile system is well known, what has not hitherto been appreciated is the full extent to which Smith believed such a ‘conspiracy’ to obtain, how he believed that it came about, and why it would likely prove highly resistant to effective political control.'