Does Adam Smith have anything in common with the Italian Renaissance political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of The Prince?

One of the most famous phrases from The Wealth
of Nations is that of "the invisible hand", a metaphor to explain how
a market economy works. This is the partially unintended result of individual actions
and it is not to be ascribed to anyone's rational design. By pursuing his own ends an
individual promotes the improvement of society. Machiavelli too thinks of human actions
as determined by tension between the randomness of circumstances (for which he use the
term "fortuna", fortune) and the human skills to act in the face of this randomness and
control it ("virtù", virtue).

In addition, both thinkers
stressed the importance of a stable and fair government as indespensable conditions to
favor economic growth and development. This link compares two passages on this
topic from The Prince and The Wealth of Nations
to illustrate the similarities between the two
theorists:

href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1662">http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1662

In
addition, you can also look at the passages in Smith's writings where he explcitly
quotes Machiavelli:

href="http://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com/2009/01/adam-smith-and-nicolo-machiavelli.html">http://adamsmithslostlegacy.blogspot.com/2009/01/adam-smith-and-nicolo-machiavelli.html