as phillipson rightly notes it was surely a mistake, those are phillipson's words and i agree, to turn down hamilton offer because the job of commissioner of customs consume more and more of smith's time, and it also negatively affected his health as well. as a result it probably prevented him from completing the great and large and tragically never published project of the philosophical project he'd been working on at the end of his life. instead smith connected history of liberal sciences and elegant arts at his executives describe it, i wished work for many years was never brought to fruition, and instead is note the manuscript as professor phillipson recounted a few minutes ago, were burned at his direction only a few weeks before he died. so why, one would like to know, with smith not only take a job that seemed to conflict with his principles, but also prevented him from bleeding projects that he loved and believed in. and i would guess that no one would be any better position to address these questions and professor phillipson so i'd be interested to know what he thinks. and on