SMITH, Dr Adam, the celebrated author of the Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, was the only son of Adam Smith comptroller of the customs at Kirkcaldy, and of Margaret Douglas daughter of Mr Douglas of Strathenry. He was born at Kirkcaldy on the 5th June 1723, a few months after the death of his father. His constitution during his infancy was infirm and sickly, and required all the care of his surviving parent. When only three years old he was carried by his mother to Strathenry on a visit to his uncle Mr Douglas; and happening one day to be amusing himself alone at the door of the house, he was stolen by a party of those vagrants who in Scotland are called tinkers. Luckily he was missed immediately, and the vagrants pursued and overtaken in Leslie wood; and thus Dr Smith was preserved to extend the bounds of science, and reform the commercial policy of Europe.
He received the rudiments of his education in the school of Kirkcaldy under David Miller, a teacher of considerable eminence, and whose name deserves to be recorded on account of the great number of eminent men which that seminary produced while under his direction. Dr Smith, even while at school, attracted notice by his passionate attachment to books, and by the extraordinary powers of his memory; while his friendly and generous disposition gained and secured the affection of his schoolfellows. Even then he was remarkable for those habits which remained with him through life, of speaking to himself when alone and of absence in company. He was sent in 1737 to the university of Glasgow, where he remained till 1740, when he went
Smith. to Balliol college Oxford, as an exhibitor on Snell's foundation. His favourite pursuits while at the university were mathematics and natural philosophy. After his removal to England he frequently employed himself in translating, particularly from the French, with a view to the improvement of his own style: a practice which he often recommended to all who wished to cultivate the art of composition. It was probably then also that he applied himself with the greatest care to the study of languages, of which, both ancient and modern, his knowledge was uncommonly extensive and accurate.
After seven years residence at Oxford he returned to Kirkcaldy, and lived two years with his mother without any fixed plan for his future life. He had been designed for the church of England; but disliking the ecclesiastical profession, he resolved to abandon it altogether, and to limit his ambition to the prospect of obtaining some of those preferences to which literary attainments lead in Scotland. In 1748 he fixed his residence in Edinburgh, and for three years read a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres under the patronage of Lord Kames. In 1751 he was elected professor of logic in the university of Glasgow, and the year following was removed to the professorship of moral philosophy, vacant by the death of Mr Thomas Craigie, the immediate successor of Dr Hutcheson. In this situation he remained 13 years, a period he used frequently to look back to as the most useful part of his life. His lectures on moral philosophy were divided into four parts: The first contained natural theology; in which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those truths on which religion is founded: the second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of those doctrines which he afterwards published in his theory of moral sentiments: in the third part he treated more at length of that part of morality called justice; and which, being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and accurate explanation: in the last part of his lectures he examined those political regulations which are founded, not upon the principle of justice, but of expediency; and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military governments: this contained the substance of his Wealth of Nations. In delivering his lectures he trusted almost entirely to extemporaneous elocution: his manner was plain and unaffected, and he never failed to interest his hearers. His reputation soon rose very high, and many students resorted to the university merely upon his account.
When his acquaintance with Mr Hume first commenced is uncertain; but it had ripened into friendship before the year 1752.
In 1759 he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments; a work which deservedly extended his reputation: for, though several of its conclusions be ill-founded, it must be allowed by all to be a singular effort of invention, ingenuity, and subtlety. Besides, it contains a great mixture of important truth; and, though the author has sometimes been misled, he has had the merit of directing the attention of philosophers to a view of human nature, which had formerly in a great
measure escaped their notice. It abounds everywhere with the purest and most elevated maxims concerning the practical conduct of life; and when the subject of his work leads him to address the imagination and the heart, the variety and felicity of his illustrations, the richness and fluency of his eloquence, and the skill with which he wins the attention and commands the passions of his readers, leave him among our British moralists without a rival.
Towards the end of 1763 Dr Smith received an invitation from Mr Charles Townsend to accompany the duke of Buccleugh on his travels; and the liberal terms in which this proposal was made induced him to resign his office at Glasgow. He joined the duke of Buccleugh at London early in the year 1764, and set out with him for the continent in the month of March following. After a stay of about ten days at Paris, they proceeded to Thoulouse, where they fixed their residence for about 18 months; thence they went by a pretty extensive route through the south of France to Geneva, where they passed two months. About Christmas 1765 they returned to Paris, and remained there till October following. The society in which Dr Smith passed these ten months may be conceived in consequence of the recommendation of Mr Hume. Turgot, Quesnai, Necker, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Marmonel, Madame Riccoboni, were among the number of his acquaintances; and some of them he continued ever after to reckon among the number of his friends. In October 1766 the duke of Buccleugh returned to England.
Dr Smith spent the next ten years of his life with his mother at Kirkcaldy, occupied habitually in intense study, but unbending his mind at times in the company of some of his old schoolfellows, who still continued to reside near the place of their birth. In 1776 he published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; a book so universally known, that any panegyric on it would be useless. The variety, importance, and (may we not add) novelty, of the information which it contains; the skill and comprehensiveness of mind displayed in the arrangement; the admirable illustrations with which it abounds; together with a plainness and perspicuity which make it intelligible to all—render it unquestionably the most perfect work which has yet appeared on the general principles of any branch of legislation.
He spent the next two years of his life in London, where he enjoyed the society of some of the most eminent men of the age: but he removed to Edinburgh in 1778, in consequence of having been appointed, at the request of the duke of Buccleugh, one of the commissioners of the customs in Scotland. Here he spent the last twelve years of his life in an affluence which was more than equal to all his wants. But his studies seemed entirely suspended till the infirmities of old age reminded him, when it was too late, of what he yet owed to the public and to his own fame. The principal materials of the works which he had announced had long ago been collected, and little probably was wanting but a few years of health and retirement to complete them. The death of his mother, who had accompanied him to Edinburgh in 1784, together with that of his cousin Miss Douglas in 1788, contributed to frustrate these projects. They had been the objects of his affection for
for more than 60 years, and in their society he had enjoyed from his infancy all that he ever knew of the endearments of a family. He was now alone and helpless; and though he bore his loss with equanimity, and regained apparently his former cheerfulness, yet his health and strength gradually declined till the period of his death, which happened in July 1790. Some days before his death he ordered all his papers to be burnt except a few essays, which have since been published.
Of the originality and comprehensiveness of his views; the extent, the variety, and the correctness of his information; the inexhaustible fertility of his invention—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. He was habitually absent in conversation, and was apt when he spoke to deliver his ideas in the form of a lecture. He was rarely known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others. 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 by a smile of inexpressible benignity. In the company of strangers, his tendency to absence, and perhaps still more his consciousness of that tendency, rendered his manners 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.