He was the son of Adam Smith (lawyer and Customs’ comptroller at Kirkcaldy), and Margaret Douglas of Strathendry; and he was born probably at the beginning of June, 1723. He was a student at Glasgow University from 1737 to 1740, and at Balliol College, Oxford (as Snell Exhibitioner) from 1740 to 1747. After a year and a half at Kirkcaldy he came to Edinburgh and lectured on belles lettres (1748–50). In 1751 he was made Professor of Logic at Glasgow University, and in 1752 Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1759 he published his “Theory of Moral Sentiments.” In 1764 he was persuaded by Charles Townshend to go abroad with the young Buccleuch to Toulouse, Geneva, and Paris, resigning his chair of Moral Philosophy. He was back in London in 1766 and at Kirkcaldy in 1767, devoting himself to his “Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” which appeared in 1776, just before the death of Hume. In 1778 he became a Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh. In 1787 he was chosen Rector of his old University, and on 17th July, 1790, he died at his residence, Panmure House, Canongate. He is buried in Canongate Churchyard. His last years were saddened by the loss of his mother and his cousin (Miss Jane Douglas), the former of whom died in 1784, and the latter in 1788.

Personal

  Adam Smith, though perhaps only second to David in learning and ingenuity, was far inferior to him in conversational talents. In that of public speaking they were equal—David never tried it, and I never heard Adam but once, which was at the first meeting of the Select Society, when he opened up the design of the meeting. His voice was harsh and enunciation thick, approaching to stammering. His conversation was not colloquial, but like lecturing, in which I have been told he was not deficient, especially when he grew warm. He was the most absent man in company that I ever saw, moving his lips, and talking to himself, and smiling, in the midst of large companies. If you awaked him from his reverie, and made him attend to the subject of conversation, he immediately began a harangue, and never stopped till he told you all he knew about it, with the utmost philosophical ingenuity. He knew nothing of characters, and yet was ready to draw them on the slightest invitation. But when you checked him or doubted, he retracted with the utmost ease, and contradicted all he had been saying. His journey abroad with the Duke of Buccleuch cured him in part of these foibles; but still he appeared very unfit for the intercourse of the world as a travelling tutor. But the Duke was a character, both in point of heart and understanding, to surmount all disadvantages—he could learn nothing ill from a philosopher of the utmost probity and benevolence. If he [Smith] had been more a man of address and of the world, he might perhaps have given a ply to the Duke’s fine mind, which was much better when left to its own energy. Charles Townshend had chosen Smith, not for his fitness for the purpose, but for his own glory in having sent an eminent Scottish philosopher to travel with the Duke.

  Sir, I was once in company with Smith, and we did not take to each other; but had I known that he loved rhyme so much as you tell me he does I should have hugged him.

  Poor Smith! We must soon lose him, and the moment in which he departs will give a heart-pang to thousands. Mr. Smith’s spirits are flat, and I am afraid the exertions he sometimes makes to please his friends do him no good. His intellect as well as his senses are clear and distinct. He wishes to be cheerful, but nature is omnipotent. His body is extremely emaciated, and his stomach cannot admit of sufficient nourishment; but, like a man, he is perfectly patient and resigned.

  I have been surprised, and I own a little indignant, to observe how little impression his death has made here. Scarce any notice has been taken of it, while for above a year together, after the death of Dr. Johnson, nothing was to be heard of but panegyrics of him. Lives, Letters, and Anecdotes, and even at this moment there are two more lives of him about to start into existence. Indeed one ought not, perhaps, to be very much surprised that the public does not do justice to the works of A. Smith, since he did not do justice to them himself, but always considered his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” as a much superior work to his “Wealth of Nations.”

  There was no situation in which the abilities of Mr. Smith appeared to greater advantage than as a professor. In delivering his lectures he trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution. His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected, and as he seemed to be always interested in his subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted commonly of several distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and illustrate. These propositions, when announced in general terms, had, from their extent, not unfrequently something of the air of a paradox. In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared, at first, not to be sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation. As he advanced, however, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. On points susceptible of controversy you could easily discern, that he secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that he was led upon this account to support them with greater energy and vehemence. By the fulness and variety of his illustrations the subject gradually swelled in his hands and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of his audience, and to afford them pleasure, as well as instruction, in following the same object, through all the diversity of shades and aspects in which it was presented, and afterwards in tracing it backwards to that original proposition or general truth, from which this beautiful train of speculation had proceeded.

  Of the intellectual gifts and attainments by which he was so eminently distinguished;—of the originality and comprehensiveness of his views; the extent, the variety, and the correctness of his information; the inexhaustible fertility of his invention; and the ornaments which his rich and beautiful imagination had borrowed from classical culture;—he has left behind him lasting monuments. To his private worth the most certain of all testimonies may be found in that confidence, respect, and attachment, which followed him through all the various relations of life. The serenity and gaiety he enjoyed, under the pressure of his growing infirmities, and the warm interest he felt to the last, in everything connected with the welfare of his friends, will be long remembered by a small circle, with whom, as long as his strength permitted, he regularly spent an evening in the week; and to whom the recollection of his worth still forms a pleasing, though melancholy bond of union. The more delicate and characteristical features of his mind, it is perhaps impossible to trace. That there were many peculiarities, both in his manners, and in his intellectual habits, was manifest to the most superficial observer; but although, to those who knew him, these peculiarities detracted nothing from the respect which his abilities commanded; and although, to his intimate friends, they added an inexpressible charm to his conversation, while they displayed, in the most interesting light, the artless simplicity of his heart; yet it would require a very skillful pencil to present them to the public eye. He was certainly not fitted for the general commerce of the world, or for the business of active life. The comprehensive speculations with which he had been occupied from his youth, and the variety of materials which his own invention continually supplied to his thoughts, rendered him habitually inattentive to familiar objects, and to common occurrences; and he frequently exhibited instances of absence, which have scarcely been surpassed by the fancy of La Bruyère. Even in company, he was apt to be ingrossed with his studies; and appeared, at times, by the motion of his lips, as well as by his looks and gestures, to be in the fervor of composition. I have often, however, been struck, at the distance of years, with his accurate memory of the most trifling particulars; and am inclined to believe, from this and some other circumstances, that he possessed a power, not perhaps uncommon among absent men, of recollecting, in consequence of subsequent efforts of reflection, many occurrences which, at the time when they happened, did not seem to have sensibly attracted his notice…. In his external form and appearance, there was nothing uncommon. When perfectly at ease, and when warmed with conversation, his gestures were animated, and not ungraceful; and, in the society of those he loved, his features were often brightened with a smile of inexpressible benignity. In the company of strangers, his tendency to absence, and perhaps still more his consciousness of this tendency, rendered his manner somewhat embarrassed, an effect which was probably not a little heightened by those speculative ideas of propriety, which his recluse habits tended at once to perfect in his conception, and to diminish his power of realizing. He never sat for his picture; but the medallion of Tassie conveys an exact idea of his profile, and of the general expression of his countenance.

  Those persons who have ever had the pleasure to be in his company may recollect that even in his common conversation the order and method he pursued, without the smallest degree of formality or stiffness, were beautiful and gave a sort of pleasure to all who listened to him.

  At the age of twenty-nine, he filled the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow; a place for which he was admirably suited by his power of communication as well as by the habits of his mind, as he spoke with great fluency when once engaged in his subject, and was listened to with the enthusiasm which his ability, accompanied by a popular manner, might be expected to inspire. It is much to be regretted, that his lectures were destroyed by his own hand before he died. The course of Natural Theology was one which would have great interest for readers of the present day; and such was the variety of suggestions always flowing from his active and fertile mind, that every part must have contained much to interest and instruct mankind.

  When a young man [in 1789], I went to Edinburgh, carrying letters of introduction (from Dr. Kippis, Dr. Price, &c.,) to Adam Smith, Robertson, and others. When I first saw Smith, he was at breakfast, eating strawberries; and he descanted on the superior flavour of those grown in Scotland. I found him very kind and communicative. He was (what Robertson was not) a man who had seen a great deal of the world. Once, in the course of conversation, I happened to remark of some writer, that “he was rather superficial,—a Voltaire.” “Sir,” cried Smith, striking the table with his hand, “there has been but one Voltaire!”

  In person he was a grave, preoccupied-looking man, of a stout middle size, with large features and large grey eyes, absent-minded in company, often incontinently talking to himself, and keeping up his rather poor constitution by strict regularity and temperance. He was warm and affectionate in disposition, exceedingly unreserved, with simple frankness expressing the thoughts of the moment, and with ready candour retracting his opinion if he found that he had spoken without just grounds. His intellectual proceedings were calm, patient and regular; he mastered a subject slowly and circumspectly, and carried his principles with steady tenacity through multitudes of details that would have checked many men of greater mental vigour unendowed with the same invincible persistence.

  In 1778 he was appointed, at the request of the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the commissioners of his majesty’s customs in Scotland, and removed to Edinburgh, taking his mother with him; it is scarcely necessary to mention that he continued all his life a bachelor. Here he spent the last twelve years of his life. Henceforth he became an object of curiosity to all people of literary culture; and his person was scrutinized, as he walked the streets, by the curious, and his peculiar habits reported. Many a youth, studying in Edinburgh, was proud to relate in after years that he had seen him—a fine gentleman of the old school, a little above the ordinary size, with a manly countenance lighted by large gray eyes, wearing a cap, a long, wide great-coat, breeches, and shoe-buckles.

  Adam Smith, who taught the nations economy, could not manage the economy of his own house. Choked with books and absorbed in abstractions, he was feeble and inefficient in active life—incapable of acting on his own conclusions.

  There is much, besides the contents of his published works, to draw to Adam Smith the attention of those who are attracted by individual power. Scotchmen have long been reputed strong in philosophic doctrine, and he was a Scot of Scots. But, though Scotland is now renowned for her philosophy, that renown is not of immemorial origin; it was not till the last century was well advanced that she began to add great speculative thinkers to her great preachers. Adam Smith, consequently, stands nearly at the opening of the greatest of the intellectual eras of Scotland; and yet by none of the great Scotch names, which men have learned since his day, has his name been eclipsed. The charm about the man consists, for those who do not regard him with the special interest of the political economist, in his literary method, which exhibits his personality and makes his works thoroughly his own, rather than in any facts about his eminency among Scotchmen. You bring away from your reading of Adam Smith a distinct and attractive impression of the man himself, such as you can get from the writings of no other author in the same field, and such as makes you wish to know still more of him…. Unhappily, we know very little of Adam Smith as a man, and it may be deplored, without injustice to a respected name, that we owe that little to Dugald Stewart.

  A common misconception regarding Smith is that he was as helpless as a child in matters of business. One of his Edinburgh neighbors remarked of him to Robert Chambers that it was strange a man who wrote so well on exchange and barter was obliged to get a friend to buy his horse corn for him. This idea of his helplessness in the petty transactions of life arose from observing his occasional fits of absence and his habitual simplicity of character, but his simplicity, nobody denies, was accompanied by exceptional acuteness and practical sagacity, and his fits of absence seem to have been neither so frequent or prolonged as they are commonly represented. Samuel Rogers spent most of a week with him in Edinburgh the year before his death, and did not remark his absence of mind all the time. Anyhow, during his thirteen years’ residence at Glasgow College, Smith seems to have had more to do with the business of the College, petty or important, than any other professor, and his brethren in the Senate of that University cannot have seen in him any marked failing or incapacity for ordinary business. They threw on his shoulders an ample share of the committee and general routine work of the place, and set him to audit accounts, or inspect the drains in the College Court, or see the holly hedge in the College garden uprooted, or to examine the encroachments on the College lands on the Molendinar Burn, without any fear of his forgetting his business on the way. They entrusted him for years with the post of College Quæstor or Treasurer, in which inattention or the want of sound business habits might inflict injury even on their pecuniary interests. They made him one of the two curators of the College chambers, the forty lodgings provided for students inside the College gates. And when there was any matter of business that was a little troublesome or delicate to negotiate, they seem generally to have chosen Smith for their chief spokesman or representative.

  In Edinburgh, where better things might have been expected, the public interest, or rather apathy, was reflected in two meagre paragraphs of his death in the newspapers. Lord Cockburn has left it on record that in his day all that seemed to be known of the founder of the science of Political Economy was that he had been Commissioner of Customs and had written a sensible book…. When Adam Smith’s personality is carefully analysed the reason of the public apathy at the time of his death becomes obvious. A solitary thinker, out of touch with the theological sympathies of his countrymen, and indifferent to the prevailing parochialism, Smith was an intellectual alien. A sensitive plant, he shrank from uncongenial influences by which he was surrounded. In the public mind his friend Hume bulked considerably, but that was not because he was more in touch with Scottish sympathies than Smith, but because of his greater intellectual aggressiveness. On the all-absorbing theme of human destiny Smith was silent; consequently he lived in a state of mental isolation. In this attitude he was confirmed by his temperament, which was not favourable to social expansion…. At this distance we can readily detect the limitations of the Smithsonian type of mind. Within its limitations, however, the genius of Smith was a potent influence, and had far-reaching issues. In the sphere of international economics his place is with the immortals. If his personality lacked the dramatic element, it was eminently harmonious. In the midst of his intellectual absorption he kept the fountains of his heart ever open. Adam Smith was no dry-as-dust speculator on mundane affairs; his emotional interest in humanity was intense. To outsiders he might seem cold and reserved, but those who knew him intimately record that he was not only a great thinker but a good man.

  With all drawbacks, Adam Smith must be counted not only one of the greatest influences, but also one of the most characteristic figures of the age. He was a man of simple life, wrapt in abstract thought, a stranger to all the baser ambitions of ordinary life, yet devoting himself, with singular tenacity of purpose, and with singular boldness, to work out a theory which had a profound effect upon the most practical side of human life. In another age than his, the recluse student, who struck his contemporaries as one utterly lacking even ordinary discernment of character, would have hung back in timidity from propounding views which were to be effectual only by moulding the action of men. His artlessness, his modesty, his occasional wayward eccentricity of view, which appeared to his intimates as almost childish, gave additional interest to the concentrated perseverance with which he worked out his system. His ordinary conversation consisted of long philosophical harangues, varied by fits of silence and reverie, and by the utterance of paradoxical opinions which he was ready to retract upon a show of opposition.

  His figure was one of the most familiar in the High Street—dressed in a light-coloured coat, in cocked hat or broad-brimmed beaver, white silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes, a bamboo cane held over his shoulder, as a soldier carries his musket, with one hand, while the other might hold a bunch of flowers from his garden. Thus he walked, with eyes gazing vacantly, and lips moving as if in inaudible converse, a placid smile occasionally wreathing his countenance, his body swaying, as an acquaintance describes it, “vermicularly, as if at every step he meant to alter his direction or to turn back.” No wonder the Musselburgh fishwife, as she watched the punctiliously attired, vacant-eyed, amiable man pass along the street, mistook him for a demented but harmless old gentleman, and sighed to her sister vender of haddocks, “Hech! and he is weel put on tae!” His very unpracticalness in little affairs of life only endeared him the more to friends, who were comforted at feeling they were at least in some things superior to a genius. In political matters he was, like most of his Scots brethren, on the side of liberalism; in religion he did not pronounce his opinions, and his friends did not question him, though they knew his convictions were deep.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759

  I give you thanks for the agreeable present of your Theory. Wedderburn and I made presents of our copies to such of our acquaintances as we thought good judges, and proper to spread the reputation of the book. I sent one to the Duke of Argyle, to Lord Lyttleton, Horace Walpole, Soame Jenyns, and Burke, an Irish gentleman, who wrote lately a very pretty treatise on the Sublime. Millar desired my permission to send one in your name to Dr. Warburton. I have delayed writing to you till I could tell you something of the success of the book, and could prognosticate with some probability, whether it should be finally damned to oblivion, or should be registered in the temple of immortality. Though it has been published only a few weeks, I think there appear already such strong symptoms, that I can almost venture to foretell its fate…. Three Bishops called yesterday at Millar’s shop in order to buy copies, and to ask questions about the author. The Bishop of Peterborough said he had passed the evening in a company where he heard it extolled above all books in the world. The Duke of Argyle is more decisive than he used to be in favor. I suppose he either considers it as an exotic, or thinks the author will be serviceable to him in the Glasgow elections. Lord Lyttleton says, that Robertson and Smith and Bower are the glories of English literature. Oswald protests he does not know whether he has reaped more instruction or entertainment from it. But you may easily judge what reliance can be put on his judgment, who has been engaged all his life in public business, and who never sees any faults in his friends. Millar exults and brags that two-thirds of the edition are already sold, and that he is now sure of success. You see what a son of the earth that is, to value books only by the profit they bring him. In that view, I believe it may prove a very good book. Charles Townshend, who passes for the cleverest fellow in England, is so taken with the performance, that he said to Oswald he would put the Duke of Buccleugh under the author’s care, and would make it worth his while to accept of that charge.

  The author seeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions, and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and showing that these are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory that has perhaps ever appeared. The illustrations are numerous and happy, and show the author to be a man of uncommon observation. His language is easy and spirited, and puts things before you in the fullest light; it is rather painting than writing.

  The system to which I allude, is that which is delivered by Dr. Smith, in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments,”—a work, unquestionably of the first rank, in a science which I cannot but regard as to man the most interesting of sciences. Profound in thought, it exhibits, even when it is most profound, an example of the graces with which a sage imagination knows how to adorn the simple and majestic form of science; that it is severe and cold, only to those who are themselves cold and severe,—as in those very graces, it exhibits in like manner, an example of the reciprocal embellishment which imagination receives from the sober dignity of truth. In its minor details and illustrations, indeed, it may be considered as presenting a model of philosophic beauty, of which all must acknowledge the power, who are not disqualified by their very nature for the admiration and enjoyment of intellectual excellence,—so dull of understanding, as to shrink with a painful consciousness of incapacity at the very appearance of refined analysis—or so dull and cold of heart, as to feel no charm in the delightful varieties of an eloquence, that in the illustration and embellishment of the noblest truths seems itself to live and harmonize with those noble sentiments which it adorns. It is chiefly in its minor analyses, however, that I conceive the excellence of this admirable work to consist. Its leading doctrine I am far from admitting. Indeed it seems to me as manifestly false, as the greater number of its secondary and minute delineations appear to me faithful, to the fine lights and faint and flying shades, of that moral nature which they represent.

  The “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” although it be not the work by which Dr. Smith is best known, and for which he is most renowned, is yet a performance of the highest merit. The system has not, indeed, been approved by the philosophical world, and it seems liable to insuperable objections when considered even with an ordinary degree of attention, objections which never could have escaped the acuteness of its author but for the veil so easily drawn over an inquirer’s eyes when directed to the weak points of his own supposed discovery…. There are whole compartments of the work which are of inestimable value, without any regard to the theory, and independent of those portions more connected with it, of which we have admitted the value. Thus the copious and accurate and luminous account of the other systems of morals, forming the seventh part, which occupies a fourth of the book, would have been a valuable work detached from the rest…. The admirable felicity, and the inexhaustible variety of the illustrations in which the book everywhere abounds, sheds a new and strong light upon all the most important principles of human nature; and affords an explanation of many things which are wholly independent of any theory whatever, and which deserves to be known and understood, whatever theory may obtain our assent. The beauty of the illustrations, and the eloquence of the diction, are indeed a great merit of this work.

  In a history of Scotch philosophy it would become us to notice the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” of Hume’s illustrious friend, Adam Smith. Even in such a history, a notice of them would be rather due to the fame which their author has earned in another direction, than to any influence which has proceeded from his “Ethics.”

  In Smith’s “Essay,” the purely scientific enquiry is overlaid by practical and hortatory dissertations, and by eloquent delineations of character and of beau-ideals of virtuous conduct. His style being thus pitched to the popular key, he never pushes home a metaphysical analysis, so that even his favourite theme, Sympathy, is not philosophically sifted to the bottom.

  His “Theory of Moral Sentiments” has commonly been a favorite with students, because of the eloquence of its language, modelled after the best philosophic writers of ancient Rome and modern France, and of the fertility of his resources in confirming his positions from his varied observation and reading. But his theory has gained the assent of few, and has often been prescribed by professors as a subject on which to exercise the critical acumen of their pupils. Adam Smith is always a discursive writer, and in the work now before us he wanders like a river amidst luxuriant banks, and it is not easy to define his course.

  Was his most important contribution to Ethical Philosophy, and is characterized by consummate ingenuity in its analyses of ethical phenomena, and by the affluence of its interesting illustrations, and the elegance of its somewhat elaborate diction. The theory of Smith is an offshoot of the theory of Hume.

  Smith’s ingenious and discursive intellect pours itself out in streams of diffuse eloquence, often brilliant with felicitous illustrations, and quick flashes of historical insight, and yet wide rather than deep, rather dextrous in new combinations than penetrating the essence of the subject, and, therefore, apt to disappoint us by a certain superficiality and flimsiness. Smith’s ingenuity in tracing the working of the mechanism of human nature is so marked and so delightful to himself that he almost forgets to enquire into the primary forces which set it in action. He describes the mutual action and reaction of the passions with more fidelity than the passions themselves. Smith, in fact, is a thorough representative of that optimistic Deism which we have seen illustrated by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson…. The name of Adam Smith should be mentioned with high respect; but I think that the respect is due chiefly to his economical labours. It may be fully admitted that he shows great ingenuity, and great fertility of illustration, and that he calls mention to a fact which must be taken into account by the moralist. But it is impossible to resist the impression, whilst we read his fluent rhetoric, and observe his easy acceptance of theological principles already exposed by his master Hume, that we are not listening to a thinker really grappling with a difficult problem, so much as to an ambitious professor who has found an excellent opportunity for displaying his command of language, and making brilliant lectures. The whole tone savours of that complacent optimism of the time which retained theological phrases to round a paragraph, and to save the trouble of genuine thought. Smith’s main proposition was hardly original, though he has worked it out in detail, and it is rather calculated to lead us dexterously round difficult questions than to supply us with a genuine answer.

  Soon became popular, as one of the most interesting and attractive books in the circle of ethical literature…. Analytically, his treatise is not remarkable; its merits rather lie in the practical and hortatory discourse, in the eloquent criticisms of character, and the fine illustrations of virtuous conduct with which it abounds, and are presented in a naturally copious, easy, flowing, and fascinating style. The chief blemish of his style is an excess of language—a running into redundance.

  Critics who have rejected the “Theory” as a whole, have been uniformly loud in their praises of its minor details and illustrations. Brown, for instance, who has been the most successful perhaps of all the adverse critics of the “Theory,” speaks of it as presenting in these respects “a model of philosophic beauty.” Jouffroy, too, allows that the book is one of the most useful in moral science, because Adam Smith, “deceived as he undoubtedly was as to the principle of morality,” brought to light and analyzed so many of the facts of human nature. Dugald Stewart and Mackintosh both say much the same thing; so that it is evident no account of Adam Smith’s work can be complete which omits from consideration all the collateral inquiries he pursues or all the illustrations he draws, either from history or from his imagination.

  If precariously based, is a model of ingenious system-making.

  The essays are finely written, full of subtle analysis and truthful illustration. The book is least significant, however, as philosophy; because it lacks any profound examination of the foundation upon which the author’s views rest.

  Adam Smith was one of the least metaphysical persons that ever wrote, but in some respects he anticipated a theory which some people would regard as metaphysical in the highest degree, that of the “social self,” and it is a social self which enables us to effect not only an imaginary change of situation with the persons chiefly concerned, but a complete identification of our own person and character with that of another person. Yet he does not ignore the influence of common interest, and, if sympathy with the motives of the agent is the source of our idea of propriety, sympathy with the gratitude of the person acted on is the source of our idea of merit; but the latter sympathy does not arise unless there be, first, propriety in the motives of the agent. He is thus enabled to recognize the undeniable element of utility in moral institutions, to which the selfish school had confined its view, and also to preserve those other elements which distinguish moral approval from the approval which we bestow on a well-contrived machine. His deliverance of moral approbation from the dead level imposed on it by the selfish and benevolent schools alike, and his restoration of variety and elasticity to that function, would alone be a considerable achievement. His theory of sympathy is rather a preservative than a solvent. His system, however, is a “closed system,” and he refused to recognize the existence of any question which necessarily leads beyond it, and, however useful for practical purposes, as a theory of the moral criterion it is insufficient.

  As a literary production it holds a high place, but its philosophic value is slight.

The Wealth of Nations, 1776

  The life which I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable, dissipated life in comparison to that which I lead here at present. I have begun to write a book, in order to pass away the time.

  Euge! Belle! Dear Mr. Smith: I am much pleased with your performance, and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance; but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth and solidity and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts, that it must at last take the public attention. It is probably much improved by your last abode in London. If you were here at my fire-side, I should dispute some of your principles…. But these, and a hundred other points, are fit only to be discussed in conversation. I hope it will be soon; for I am in a very bad state of health, and cannot afford a long delay.

  But there is still another cause, even more satisfactory than these, because it is of a still more extensive and permanent nature; that constant accumulation of capital, that continual tendency to increase, the operation of which is universally seen in a greater or less proportion, whenever it is not obstructed by some public calamity, or by some mistaken or mischievous policy, but which must be conspicuous and rapid indeed in any country which has once arrived at an advanced state of commercial prosperity. Simple and obvious as this principle is, and felt and observed as it must have been in a greater or less degree, even from the earliest periods, I doubt whether it has ever been fully developed and sufficiently explained, but in the writings of an author of our times, now, unfortunately, no more (I mean the author of a celebrated treatise on the wealth of nations), whose extensive knowledge of detail and philosophical research will, I believe, furnish the best solution to every question connected with the history of commerce or with the systems of political economy.

  Did not Adam Smith judge amiss, in his premature attempt to form a sort of system upon the wealth of nations, instead of presenting his valuable speculations to the world under the form of separate dissertations? As a system, his work is evidently imperfect; and yet it has so much the air of a system, and a reader becomes so fond of every analogy and arrangement, by which a specious appearance of system is made out, that we are apt to adopt erroneous opinions, because they figure in the same fabric with approved and important truths. That illustrious philosopher might therefore have contributed more powerfully to the progress of political science, had he developed his opinions in detached essays; nor would he have less consulted the real interests of his reputation, which indeed may have been more brilliant at first, by his appearance as the author of a comprehensive theory, but will ultimately be measured by what he shall be found to have actually contributed to the treasures of valuable knowledge.

  It is only a promiscuous assemblage of the soundest principles of political economy, supported by the clearest illustrations and ingenious statistical speculations, blended with instructive reflections; it is not a complete treatise on either science, but an ill-digested mass of enlightened views and accurate information.

  The writer in combating received opinions, has found it necessary to advert more particularly to those passages in the writings of Adam Smith from which he sees reason to differ; but he hopes it will not, on that account, be suspected that he does not, in common with all those who acknowledge the importance of the science of Political Economy, participate in the admiration which the profound work of this celebrated author so justly excites.

  The fact that the distinct statement of several of the most important of these principles, and that traces of them all, may be found in the works of previous writers, does not detract in any, or but in a very inconsiderable degree, from the real merits of Dr. Smith. In adopting the discoveries of others, he has made them his own; he has demonstrated the truth of principles on which his predecessors had, in most cases, stumbled by chance; has separated them from the errors by which they were encumbered, traced their remote consequences, and pointed out their limitations; has shewn their practical importance and real value, their mutual dependence and relation; and has reduced them into a consistent, harmonious, and beautiful system.

  The great defect of Adam Smith, and of our economists in general, is the want of definitions.

  Dr. Franklin once told Dr. Logan that the celebrated Adam Smith when writing his “Wealth of Nations” was in the habit of bringing chapter after chapter as he composed it to himself, Dr. Price, and others of the literati; then patiently hear their observations and profit by their discussions and criticisms, sometimes submitting to write whole chapters anew, and even to reverse some of his propositions.

  The great name of Adam Smith rests upon the “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations;” perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance to it in character and had no inconsiderable analogy to it in the extent of their popular influence, were productive only of a general amendment,—not so conspicuous in particular instances as discoverable, after a time, in the improved condition of human affairs. The work of Smith, as it touched those matters which may be numbered, and measured and weighed, bore more visible and palpable fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties; and has made its way through the convulsions of revolution and conquest to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average of those obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which ordinarily choke the channel through which truth flows into practice. The most eminent of those who have since cultivated and improved the science will be the foremost to address their immortal master,

  It is not less agreeable in form than it is valuable in substance; and, instead of being—as is supposed by some who have not read it—dry and repulsive, is undoubtedly, to every reader of mature taste and liberal accomplishments, one of the most interesting as well as instructive books which he can take up.

  Far superior to Arthur Young—superior as the researches of a Newton are above, though supporting and supported by, the observations of an Astronomical Table—stands the name of Adam Smith…. To say of the “Wealth of Nations” that it has faults and errors is only to say, in other words, that it is the work of man. But not merely did Adam Smith found the science of Political Economy; we might almost say of him that he completed it, leaving, at least as some have thought, to his successors, not so much any new discoveries to make, or any further principles to prove, but far rather conjectures to hazard and consequences to pursue.

  The great work of A. Smith is not an elementary book,—very far from it; and your best chance of understanding it is to read of each chapter as much as you can, then go to the next chapter, and so on; and when you have got to the end of the book, begin the book again; and you will at length comprehend the whole sufficiently for any general purpose. I have lately seen a treatise by Mr. Boileau, which I hoped I might recommend to you on this occasion; but I do not think that it will be found either more simple or more intelligible, than A. Smith’s original work, from which it is avowedly borrowed.

  In the sense of a comprehensive aggregate, gathering into the unity of one edifice the total architecture of Political Economy, there are even at this day but few systems besides the “Wealth of Nations,”—none which approaches it in philosophic beauty.

  The “Wealth of Nations” combines both the sound and enlightened views which had distinguished the detached pieces of the French and Italian Economists, and above all, of Mr. Hume, with the great merit of embracing the whole subject, thus bringing the general scope of the principles into view, illustrating all the parts of the inquiry by their combined relations, and confirming their soundness in each instance by their application to the others. The copiousness of the illustrations keeps pace with the closeness of the reasoning; and wherever the received prejudices of lawgivers are to be overcome, or popular errors to be encountered, the arguments, and the facts, and the explanations are judiciously given with extraordinary fullness, the author wisely disregarding all imputations of prolixity or repetition, in pursuit of the great end of making himself understood and gaining the victory over error. The chapter on the Mercantile System is an example of this; but the errors of that widely prevailing theory and its deeply-rooted prejudices are also encountered occasionally in almost every other part of the work. It is a lesser, but a very important merit that the style of the writing is truly admirable. There is not a book of better English to be anywhere found. The language is simple, clear, often homely like the illustrations, not seldom idiomatic, always perfectly adapted to the subject handled. Besides its other perfections, it is one of the most entertaining of books. There is no laying it down after you begin to read. You are drawn on from page to page by the strong current of the arguments, the manly sense of the remarks, the fullness and force of the illustrations, the thickly strewed and happily selected facts. Nor can it ever escape observation, that the facts, far from being a mere bede-roll of details unconnected with principle and with each other, derive all their interest from forming parts of a whole, and reflecting the general views which they are intended to exemplify or to support.

  Twenty years have elapsed since Mackintosh pronounced this opinion; and during these twenty years, the influence of Adam Smith’s science of political economy has been even more conspicuous and direct than it was during the period of which he spoke. It has shaped the polity of nations; its principles are embodied on almost every page of commercial law; it has guided the most important applications of national industry; it has done more than all other causes united to put a stop to the practice of international war. Though its doctrines have been somewhat modified, and large additions have been made to it, it is still, in the main, what we have called it, Adam Smith’s science. His successors have built mainly upon the foundations which he laid, and the structure has risen in general conformity with the plan which he sketched out. Among all the moral sciences, there is no other which bears the name of its founder so distinctly engraven upon its front, or which retains so large a proportion of the doctrines that he first promulgated.

  Adam Smith is the distinguished man, by common consent, referred to as the Father of that School which has long claimed pre-eminence in Political Economy. Whatever ground there may be for ascribing to him this paternity, it is very safe to say, that were he to revisit the world, he would find it difficult to recognise his offspring. We prefer giving all the honor of this fatherhood to J. B. Say, who, though he may have taken his inspiration from Adam Smith, was certainly the first to give the doctrines of Political Economy a shape and degree of consistency sufficient to form the rallying points of a School. Regarded as a treatise upon industry, wealth, and trade, and the other subjects to which it refers, and considering the time at which it appeared, the “Wealth of Nations” must be admitted to be one of the most successful works of modern times. It has, beyond question, been the chief stimulus to the extraordinary discussions which have since ensued upon the subjects of which it treats. Its leading ideas made a great impression, and have since been the subjects of interminable discussion; but the “Wealth of Nations,” though often referred to, is seldom studied.

  Looking at its ultimate results, is probably the most important book that has ever been written, and is certainly the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man towards establishing the principles on which government should be based…. Well may it be said of Adam Smith, and said too without fear of contradiction, that this solitary Scotchman has, by the publication of one single work, contributed more toward the happiness of men, than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic account.

  The great text-book in political economy, “The Wealth of Nations.” In every page of that work its readers found themselves presented with the evidence of the superior advantages of commerce over trade; and of the absolute necessity of commerce at home if they would have it abroad…. In every page of that great work they found evidence that if they would prosper they could do so on one condition only,—that condition which requires that the consumer and the producer take their places by each other’s side, and thus approximate as nearly as possible the prices of raw materials and manufactured commodities…. Dr. Smith was not always right, but he was very generally so. Modern political economy, as has before been said, has very generally rejected him when he was right, or has so used him as to cause him to stand responsible for the correctness of views, that, had he been alive, he would indignantly have denounced as utterly erroneous.

  When Adam Smith first stated the truth that one nation does not gain by the poverty of another, but that all are gainers by the prosperity of all, no one suspected that a sagacious despot of great power [Napoleon III.] would on this very year pronounce the great truth on his imperial throne to the assembled deputies of his nation.

  It is even at the present day important to direct careful attention to an erroneous conception of wealth, which was universal until the appearance of Adam Smith’s great work, in 1775.

  A glance at the index of the “Wealth of Nations” will suffice to show that its author possessed just that kind of knowledge of the American Colonies which Franklin was of all men the best fitted to impart. The allusion to the Colonies may be counted by hundreds; illustrations from their condition and growth occur in nearly every chapter. We may go further and say that the American Colonies constitute the experimental evidence of the essential truth of the book, without which many of its leading positions had been little more than theory.

  That which Adam Smith got from the French economists was the habit of analytical research, exercised upon economical phenomena. I do not say that political economy began with him, but I can assert that its method does. His teachers argued from à priori, or what they believed to be à priori, principles, and examined the facts by these principles. Smith applied an inductive method to his facts, and, as far as possible, verified his hypotheses by observation. Hence his work is full of illustrations, is copious in examples, whenever illustration or example could be obtained. And just as succeeding economists have used his method, and in so far as they have gone to history and statistics, so they have been able to correct Smith; for in his day, history was uncritical, statistics were imperfect and inexact. But in so far as they have departed from his method, and suffered themselves to evolve the science from their own theories, they have, even the ablest among them, fallen into notorious fallacies.

  If books are to be measured by the effect which they have produced on the fortunes of mankind, the “Wealth of Nations” must rank among the greatest of books.

  We may, however, admit that no more important book than the “Wealth of Nations” was published in Great Britain during the last half of the eighteenth century. Few writers have ever done for any study what Smith did for Political Economy. If he did not found a science, he brought a great body of theory into close relation with facts, and may be said to have first brought about a union between abstract reasoners and practical statesmen. To marry science to practice is the great problem of politics; and from the appearance of the “Wealth of Nations” the main outlines and the chief methods of one important branch of political science were distinctly marked out. Much had been done, and much still remained to do; but Smith took the significant step and is rightly regarded as the intellectual ancestor of a race of theorists, whose influence, though not uniformly beneficial, has at least been of great importance towards constituting the still rudimentary science of sociology.

  It is just a hundred years since “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” appeared from the pen, not of a statesman, a banker, or a merchant, but of a Scottish professor of Ethics, of the somewhat ubiquitous name of Smith. It can hardly be said to have been an attractive subject; in all polite societies, its topics—labor, capital, wages, profits, rent and taxation—would have been voted dry, if mentioned at all; and even able editors of the day, who, of course, knew everything, save their own ignorance, must have despised its long disquisitions on real and nominal prices and the mercantile system. The prevalent conceptions of the wealth of nations at that day were of the resources of a prince, to raise armies, equip fleets, subsidize allies, pension poets, and build ostentatious monuments. As to useful labor as wealth, as to free labor as the chief glory of nations and the source of their power, it was a thing still undreamed. Yet the book which argued in this strain, soon made its way into men’s minds: it penetrated the cabinets as well as the counting houses; it created a school; it grew in fame with the revolving seasons, until now, in this great land, which had then just sprung into distinct national existence, it is held in honor among our best centennial memories.

  It is interesting and pertinent to this year and to this occasion to call attention to the circumstance, not generally known, that months before the Declaration of American Independence, Adam Smith was led by his reasoning and investigations to advocate the peaceful abandonment, on grounds of purely economic advantage to the mother country, of the American colonies; and while pointing out, during the very first year of the war, the great improbability of conquering the Americans by force, predicted that the new trans-Atlantic States would ultimately form one of the greatest and most powerful empires that ever existed. And if to-day we fail to make good this prediction, it will be more than from any other one cause, because as a nation, we neglect and despise the economic laws developed in the “Wealth of Nations;” under and through the influence and intelligent application of which, the maximum of abundance and the highest intellectual, moral and religious development are capable of attainment by our countrymen.

  By nature, Smith was wholly unfitted to conduct a scientific discussion of any kind. He was a dreamer, not a reasoner. He evolved, to use a cant phrase, his systems from his own consciousness. He knew nothing of affairs, and could learn nothing from others. In his antipathy to merchants, or in a freak of passion, he lost sight of his principles altogether…. It is not strange that a person so wholly wanting in practical sense should be equally wanting in the perception of principles, in method, and in originality. He borrowed his ideas of money very largely from Law; following him, like Hume, where he was wrong, and rejecting him where he was right. In urging the advantages of freedom of trade, he was fully anticipated by Hume, “whose political discourses,” says Stewart, “were of greater use to him than any other works which had appeared prior to his lectures.” Had neither of them lived, the whole question of Free-Trade and Protection would have been precisely where it is to-day…. When the ignorance of Smith upon the subject upon which he wrote, his want of scientific method, the groundlessness of his assumptions and conclusions, especially in reference to money, are considered, the influence he has exerted over succeeding generations is well fitted to excite astonishment.

  Adam Smith may be said to have changed the whole theory of government, and in this way to have contributed more than any other person to the great revolutions of the nineteenth century.

  Had the great Scotchman taken this as the initial point of his reasoning, and continued to regard the produce of labor as the natural wages of labor, and the landlord and master but as sharers, his conclusions would have been very different, and political economy to-day would not embrace such a mass of contradictions and absurdities; but instead of following the truth obvious in the simple modes of production as a clue through the perplexities of the more complicated forms, he momentarily recognizes it, only to immediately abandon it, and stating that “in every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent,” he re-commences the inquiry from a point of view in which the master is considered as providing from his capital the wages of his workmen…. Now, such men have not been led into such confusion of thought without a cause. If they, one after another, have followed Dr. Adam Smith, as boys play “follow my leader,” jumping where he jumped, and falling where he fell, it has been that there was a fence where he jumped and a hole where he fell.

  Although it at first attracted no great attention and had little political influence for at least a generation after its appearance, it has ultimately proved one of the most important events in the economical, and indeed in the intellectual, history of modern Europe…. Adam Smith showed by an exhaustive examination that the liberty of commerce which England allowed to her colonies, though greatly and variously restricted, was at least more extensive than that which any other nation conceded to its dependencies, and that it was sufficient to give them a large and increasing measure of prosperity.

  The epoch-making “Wealth of Nations.”

  Is undoubtedly the Bible of political economy.

  The “Wealth of Nations” is, without doubt, the greatest existing book on that department of knowledge, the only attempt to replace and so antiquate it—that of John Stuart Mill—having, notwithstanding its partial usefulness, on the whole decidedly failed. Buckle, however, goes too far when he pronounces it “the most important book ever written,” just as he similarly exceeds due measure when he makes its author superior as a philosopher to Hume. Mackintosh more justly said of it that it stands on a level with the treatise “De Jure Belli et Pacis,” the “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and the “Spirit of Laws,” in the respect that these four works are severally the most conspicuous landmarks in the progress of the sciences with which they deal. And, when he added that the “Wealth of Nations” was “perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states,” he scarcely spoke too strongly if we understand him as referring to its influence as an agent of demolition. It certainly operated powerfully through the harmony of its critical side with the tendencies of the half-century which followed its publication to the assertion of personal freedom and “natural rights.”

  Not only have we here a full disquisition on the comparative claims of Free-trade and Reciprocity; State regulation and unlimited competition; the importance of liberating industry, and the marvellous results of a division of labour; the sources of wealth in nature and the secret springs of human action, stimulating its production and determining distribution; but we have here, also, sage remarks on the decay of foreign trade and the causes of commercial depression, on the advantages of colonial enterprize, and an extension of Imperial possessions from an economic point of view; we have allusions to the co-existence of progress and poverty when the “age of industry” had scarcely commenced, and remarks on depopulation of the country districts and over-crowding of the towns; on landlordism and peasant proprietorship; on education and Church Establishment; on the just principles of taxation and local government—all subjects which at this present moment are occupying the public mind, and on which Adam Smith’s views throw interesting and instructive side lights, whilst on such topics as the functions of capital, and the relationship of rent, profit, and wages, his authority, though questioned by some, cannot be ignored by any in the settlement of the long-standing controversy between capital and labour.

  Adam Smith’s book, as will be readily seen, was based upon the manufacture-industry which had as yet not been supplanted by the great machine-industry of modern times. It is important to bear this in mind in considering many of the views advanced in the work. Those who followed in his footsteps had necessarily to take into account the great industrial revolution which supervened but a few years after his death. The more immediate result of his teaching and the one which has maintained itself until the present day was the complete overthrow, in this country at least, of the doctrine of protection, and the establishment of free-trade as the basis of orthodox middle-class economics on their practical side.

  To the practical politician and social reformer, Adam Smith ought to be a hero, no less than he is to the economist. To both he appears in the light of one of the greatest vanquishers of error on record, the literary Napoleon of his generation. No man in modern times has said more with so much effect within the compass of one book. Yet it is not probable that any competent person could now be found to repeat without hesitation the assertion, made more than once by Buckle in his “History of Civilization,” that “The Wealth of Nations” is the most important book ever written. As we become removed by an ever-increasing distance from the prejudices and opinions which Adam Smith once for all shattered, their magnitude and importance appear to grow smaller.

  Adam Smith left the love of wealth in human minds, not rebuked but enlightened. Little more than a century has elapsed, yet mankind have made greater progress toward humane and mutually advantageous international relations in that time than during all the other centuries of human history.

  The chief merit of the “Wealth of Nations,” and that which enables it still to hold its place at the head of the politico-economic literature of the world, is not any very great originality in detail, but an extraordinary grasp of all parts of the subject, and a marvellous ability in illustrating theoretical propositions by apt instances from practical life. Adam Smith is usually spoken of as the first prophet of Free Trade.

  One of the most remarkable books which bear a Scotchman’s name—and that is saying much for it, and for him.

  In reality I owe far more to Adam Smith than to Mill. The great defect of Mill’s work is the want of historical knowledge, whilst a large part of the “Wealth of Nations” is history of the highest order. I have availed myself of the authority of the older master to include a much greater amount of history than is usual in a statement of principles.

  It is not too much to say that Franklin’s influence on economic education is illustrative of his whole educational doctrine. He gave to Adam Smith apt illustrations of the utility of the ideas of the “Wealth of Nations.” So great had been the changes in America due to its development that the illustrations in the “Wealth of Nations” which bear particularly upon the American colonies are now hardly estimated at their original value; it should be remembered that this book, which Buckle calls “the most important book ever written,” and “the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man toward establishing the principles on which governments should be based,” was the first work by an European scholar which made use of the American colonies as apt illustrations of its doctrines and pointed to those colonies as the country where the new political economy should develop in all its strength. Had Franklin done nothing else in the world but contribute these illustrations to Adam Smith’s book, he would have had a high place among the great educators of mankind. As the first book on the economy basis of modern government in America, the “Wealth of Nations” should be classed with the “Federalist,” De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” and Bryce’s “American Commonwealth.”

  The nature of his subject demanded clearness more than elegance; and the “Wealth of Nations” is always clear, often homely, even at times ungrammatical…. He will not keep up his dignity at the cost of the smallest obscurity; and, like Socrates, he takes his illustrations rather from the courtyard than the court…. His examples are almost always from actual life and history; he is fanciful only in his similes…. He is a hard hitter, and a good hater, though his heaviest strokes are levelled at bad laws and false doctrines, and his hatred is usually kept for classes, not individuals.

  The value of the book can hardly be exaggerated. It consists largely in its practicality. He was writing, not for students only, but for statesmen and financiers and business men…. His book is full of acute practical suggestions. No wonder Pulteney said, in 1797, it is converting this generation and will conquer the next. What also aided it was the arrangement and plan of the book, so informal and unpedantic; its combination of deductive and inductive method, so well fitted to be the source of an historical as well as of an abstract school of economics; the broad view it takes of human life, so contrasted with “the economic man” of some later writers. It is remarkable that while his great aim was the demolition of abuses, he should have succeeded also in constructing so much that has proved permanent; and that, practical writer as he was, the one thing of supreme importance in him should be his contribution to the theory of his subject; for it has been noted that it was he who first showed how “value” measures human motive—that is, how much of human activity is measurable, and, therefore, open to science. Much of his influence was due to the exact date at which his book appeared—early enough to administer the coup de grâce to the old system of obstruction and to champion the cause of land and of labour, but not too soon to ride on the advancing wave of a new industrial epoch.

  A good book to read in these times, or in any times. He may indeed say rash things about “that crafty animal called a Politician,” and the mean rapacity of capitalists; but he is full of sympathy for the poor, and for those who labor; and is everywhere large in his thought and healthy and generous. I am glad to pay this tribute, though only in a note.

  By a course of masterly reasoning, far superior to that of Condillac, he demonstrated that in commerce both sides gain; and, therefore, that nations in multiplying their commercial relations, multiply their profits, and multiply their wealth; and that, as a necessary consequence, the labour of artisans, manufactures and commerce, all enrich a nation, and, therefore, that those who engage in them are productive labourers. Perhaps it may seem that the doctrine is so plain that it needs no proof; but that is far from being the case. At the time Smith proved it, it was a perfect paradox, contrary to the universal opinion of centuries. Even if Adam Smith had never done anything else for Economics than this, he would have been entitled to immortal glory. Smith’s doctrine is now the very corner-stone of Economics, and made a complete change in public opinion, and in international policy, which has forever removed a perennial source of war from the world.

  It was not by mere chance that the Declaration of Independence and the “Wealth of Nations” were published at so nearly the same time. Each involved the recognition of the same principle in different fields of human activity. In modern politics we have seen that society is better governed by allowing individuals, as far as possible to govern themselves. In modern economics we have seen that society is made richer by allowing individuals, as far as possible, freedom to get rich in their own ways. Each of these principles has its limits; but each marks an immeasurable advance in politics and in economics, over the system of police government which had preceded it.

  To speak of Adam Smith as the author of “The Wealth of Nations” brings before us at once his chief claim to a place among the immortals in literature. The significance of this work is so overwhelming that it casts into a dark shadow all that he wrote in addition to this masterpiece. His other writings are chiefly valued in so far as they may throw additional light upon the doctrines of this one book. Few books in the world’s history have exerted a greater influence on the course of human affairs; and on account of this one work, Adam Smith’s name is familiar to all well-educated persons in every civilized land…. All the economists before the time of Adam Smith must be regarded as his predecessors; all the economists who have lived since Adam Smith have carried on his work: and his position in economics is therefore somewhat like that of Darwin in natural science. There are many schools among modern economists, but their work all stands in some relation to that large work of this “old master.”

  Too often the blood of the martyred thinker has been the seed of civilisation. To this general experience Adam Smith was a notable exception. As the founder of Political Economy, the systematiser and expounder of those economic ideas which lie at the root of civilisation, Adam Smith escaped alike the violent opposition and the contemptuous indifference of his contemporaries; he had the good fortune to reap in his lifetime the reward of his greatness. Upon his brow ere he died was placed the wreath of immortality. When Adam Smith began to meditate upon economic problems the world was wedded to the great delusion of Protection. What could a solitary thinker do single-handed to overthrow a system which for centuries held the foremost intellects of the world in thraldom? Only an intellectual Don Quixote could hope by philosophic tilting to destroy a world-wide delusion. And yet the modest, retiring philosopher of Kirkcaldy, from his obscure study, sent forth ideas which, by moulding afresh the minds of statesmen, have changed the economic history of the world. In view of the grandeur of his work and the far-reaching nature of his influence, it is surely meet that in Scotland’s temple of fame a niche should be found for her illustrious son, Adam Smith…. The remarkable features of Adam Smith’s work was, that long before political emancipation was conceded, the Governments of the day, under the influence of the “Wealth of Nations,” made concessions which paved the way for Free Trade. Pitt, whose economic ideas were somewhat advanced, made a sympathetic reference to the “Wealth of Nations” in the House of Commons in 1792, and his successors did much to purify the tariff on Smithian principles. By Cobden and Gladstone the ideas of the “Wealth of Nations” were still further translated into practical life in the direction of complete Free Trade. Under the guidance of the idea of Freedom which dominates that book, Liberalism set itself to the work of emancipation in all departments of the national life. A reformed commercial policy in the direction of Free Trade, a reformed foreign policy in the direction of national independence, a reformed legal code in the direction of equality before the law and freedom from feudal restraints, a reformed ecclesiastical policy in the direction of freedom from religious tests—these, and numerous emancipatory movements, were inspired by the idea of natural liberty, which, on the economic side, came from Adam Smith, and on the political side from the principles of the Revolution of 1688 as formulated by John Locke.

General

  Smith, who called into existence a new science, fraught with the dearest interests of humanity, and unfolded many of its principles in a single lifetime.

  The greatest man his county has ever produced.

  One consideration to be carried in mind in the interpretation of the “Wealth of Nations,” is that its author’s system of philosophy ought to be studied as a whole; his economic system was part of a complete system of social, or, as he called it, moral philosophy. Mr. Buckle, who on other points has much misconceived the “Wealth of Nations,” properly says of it, and the “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” that the two must be taken together and considered as one, both forming parts of the scheme embraced in his course of moral philosophy at Glasgow—a course which, it is important to observe, began with Natural Theology, and included, along with Ethics and Political Economy, the Philosophy of Law. Again, as his social philosophy should be considered as a whole, so the whole should be considered in connection with the philosophical systems, or methods, of investigation of his time.

  He created the Science of Political Economy, and started the theory and practice of Free Trade.

  Adam Smith, the first (alas! perhaps the last) real economist, did not devote his life to polishing up a theory of rent. Astronomy, society, education, government, morals, psychology, language, art, were in turns the subject of his study, and in all he was master; they all moved him alike, as part of man’s work on earth. He never would have founded Political Economy if he had been merely an economist.

  The breadth and comprehensiveness of treatment characteristic of the utterances of such a teacher are inseparable attributes of his manner of thought. He has the artist’s eye. For him things stand in picturesque relations; their great outlines fit into each other; the touch of his treatment is necessarily broad and strong. The same informing influence of artistic conception and combination gives to his style its luminous and yet transparent qualities. His sentences cannot retain the stiff joints of logic; it would be death to them to wear the chains of formal statement; they must take leave to deck themselves with eloquence.

  It is needless, for these general and other reasons, to speak in detail of Smith’s exposition of justice. Enough has been said about it and about the “Lectures” in general to show how far Adam Smith was from being a dogmatist, an exponent of some one uncritical and uncriticised view of human economic or social activity. The man had a complete “social philosophy,” if we are obliged to put matters in this way, and these “Lectures” establish the fact that the “Wealth of Nations” was written as illustrative of merely one phase of human activity—not the ultimate and only phase. And the originality of Adam Smith’s genius is more apparent after their perusal and after consideration of the facts and considerations they make apparent. What he learned in France was not enough to make him wholly recast what he had evolved as the natural result of the workings of his own independent, and great, original mind along the lines laid down for him largely by his British predecessors.

  There can in any case be no doubt that Smith was a sincere theist, and that he especially lays great stress upon the doctrine of final causes. It is probably as clear that he was not an orthodox believer. His characteristic shrinking from “clamour” explains his reticence as to deviations from accepted opinions. But his warm admiration for Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau, was scarcely compatible with complete disapproval of their religious doctrines; and not to express such disapproval, had he felt it, would have been cowardly rather than reticent. He no doubt shared the rationalism of most contemporary philosophers, though in the sense of optimistic deism. Smith argues, in the “Wealth of Nations,” that society is so constituted that each man promotes the interests of all by attending to his own interests, and in the “Moral Sentiments,” that sympathy induces us to approve such conduct as tends to this result. In both cases a belief in the argument from design is clearly implied.