"(Sreat Writers/ 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. 
 
 LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 
 
LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 ADAM SMITH 
 
 R. B. IIALDANE, M.P. 
 
 LONDON 
 WALTER SCOTT 
 
 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1887 
 
 (AH rights reserved^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 
 PACE 
 
 Introductory ; individuality of Smith ; nature of the work done 
 by him ; he will be remembered only as an economist , u 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Born at Kirkcaldy, June 5, 1 723 ; his father and mother ; his early 
 life ; goes to Glasgow University at fourteen years of age ; 
 afterwards gains a Snell Exhibition and goes to Oxford ; 
 his experience there ; goes to Edinburgh in 1748 and lec- 
 tures on Belles Lettres under patronage of Lord Kames ; 
 friendship with Hume ; elected to chair of Logic in Glasgow 
 in 1751, and to chair of Moral Philosophy four years later; 
 descriptions of him by Professor Millar and Alexander 
 Carlyle ; anecdote of his absent-mindedness ; the Poker 
 Club and the Select Society ; candidature of Hume and 
 Burke for chair of Logic at Glasgow ; publication of 
 "Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759 ; letter from Hume 
 on its appearance ; Smith engages himself to travel with 
 the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe; in 1763 they go to 
 Paris ; letter to Hume from that city ; the duke and Smith 
 go to Toulouse and return to Paris ; Turgot and Quesnay ; 
 Smith returns to Kirkcaldy and spends ten years in writing 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " The Wealth of Nations " ; publishes this work in 1776 ; 
 Hume's letter of congratulation ; Hume endeavours to get 
 Smith to act as his literary executor ; Smith's letter on 
 Hume's death in 1776; reception of "Wealth of Nations"; 
 anecdote of Pitt ; Smith goes to London ; supposed en- 
 counter with Johnson ; returns to Edinburgh, 1778 ; his 
 life there, and his appointment as Commissioner of Cus- 
 toms ; letter to him from the Bishop of Norwich on Hume's 
 death ; Smith's manner of composition ; elected Lord 
 Rector of Glasgow in 1787 ; death in 1790 . . -15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Smith as a moralist ; his style ; his apparent reluctance to be 
 thought a sceptic ; his consequent failure to establish his 
 ethical system on a philosophical basis ; his predecessors in 
 philosophy ; Locke ; Berkeley and the " New Question " ; 
 Hume's further application of the experimental method ; 
 Smith adopts Hume's method ; sympathy his fundamental 
 principle ; neither Smith nor Hume utilitarians ; ** merit 
 and demerit " ; conscience ; the character of virtue ; works 
 on other subjects; "Considerations concerning the First 
 Formation of Languages"; "Principles which lead and 
 direct Philosophical Enquiries as illustrated by the History 
 of the Ancient Physics," and by the " History of Ancient 
 Logic and Metaphysics" ; " Nature of that Imitation which 
 takes place in what are called the Imitative Arts " ; Essay 
 on the external senses; "English and Italian verses"; 
 Smith apparently contemplated a great work on the 
 theories of ethics, and of jurisprudence . . . 56 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Pitt cites Smith in House of Commons on tendency of capital 
 to accumulate ; Smith's influence on Pitt ; the concrete 
 character of " The Wealth of Nations " ; political economy 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 before Smith ; nature of great fallacies ; mercantile system ; 
 its origin and true meaning ; the arguments of the mer- 
 chants ; comparison between Colbert and Bismarck ; the 
 exaggeration of the free traders, and the fallacies of the 
 protectionists ; France and the encyclopcedists ; the agri- 
 cultural system ; Quesnay and Turgot ; nature of advances 
 accomplished by men of genius ; difference between science 
 and literature in this respect; Hume prepared the ground 
 for Smith ; Quesnay 's influence on Smith ; abstract nature 
 of method of English economists who succeeded Smith ; 
 difference between political economy and politics ; they 
 were not separated in Smith's hands ; his mixed method 
 illustrated by his defence of the Navigation Acts ; arrange- 
 ment of ** Wealth of Nations " ; account of its contents . 74 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Relation of Smith's teaching to modern politics ; the concrete 
 character of his method ; political economy a hypothetical 
 science ; Smith an individualist but only as a rule of prac- 
 tice ; his attitude towards Free Trade the only safe one in 
 view of the impending controversy; limits of State inter- 
 ference ; Smith's bias against enlarging the thttics of the 
 Government when persons under no disability were con- 
 cerned ; hardly any political problem can be treated as a 
 single illustration of a simple principle ; the House of 
 Commons not fitted to decide what are really speculative 
 questions ; there is no theoretical but only a practical tebt 
 possible as regards the propriety cf Slate interference, and 
 this appears to have been Smith's view ; the pressure ex- 
 ercised by popular constituencies ; the faults of the two 
 great parties ; the outlook for the future . . . . 1 5 
 
LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IT is more difficult to write about a man of letters 
 than about any other kind of great man. The 
 individuality of an author, to whatever extent he may 
 live in the creations of his pen, is immensely less bound 
 up, in the public imagination, with his deeds, than is 
 that of a soldier or a statesman. If these deeds have 
 fashioned our daily lives, they have done so in a manner 
 usually far more subtle and less obvious in the former 
 case than in the latter. 
 
 The individuality of Adam Smith can hardly be said 
 to be bound up at all with his deeds. Even in Kirkcaldy 
 and Edinburgh, the places of his birth and of his death, 
 but little memorial of him has survived. We think of 
 him, in the main, and we think of him rightly, as the 
 bosom friend of David Hume. It is to be regretted, on 
 nearly all scores, that the records of his life are so 
 meagre. For he was a great writer, and an interesting 
 man. He is not reputed to have played any part in the 
 world's history of the kind which tempts those whose 
 ambition it is to show that the private end inner lives 
 
12 LIFE OF 
 
 of all men are lived on a level. On the contrary, 
 he was a somewhat shy, retiring, and awkward student, 
 caring, so far as we can judge, little what the world 
 ^thought about himself, and much what it thought, or 
 some day would think, of his books. To give some 
 account of the life and work of this man, without 
 magnifying or diminishing either unduly, is the object 
 aimed at in these pages. In order to do so at all fairly, 
 within the compass of a small space, it will be necessary, 
 so far as possible, to abstract from irrelevant detail, and 
 to invite the attention of the reader to more marked and 
 distinctive matters. 
 
 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. It is safe to affirm that even the battle 
 between Free Trade and Protection will never again be 
 fought upon the ground from which Smith drove his 
 opponents. Here, as in almost every other particular, 
 the controversies of political economy turn upon new 
 
ADAM SMITH. 13 
 
 issues, however they may resemble the old disputes in 
 name. 
 
 Adam Smith was a breaker down of prejudices. What 
 the prejudices were which the Time-spirit equipped him 
 to encounter, it will be the chief business of this volume 
 to state in a plain fashion. Like every great thinker he 
 came upon a scene which was prepared for him. Like 
 every great thinker he is apt to lose something of the 
 admiration he merits, because of the extent to which his 
 conceptions have entered into and become part of our 
 ' intellectual lives. 
 
 The economist possesses a certain advantage over the 
 metaphysician and the man of letters. His department 
 of knowledge is not old enough to have had periods of 
 want of progress, and even of backward movement. He 
 has not to torment himself by observing how much less 
 the Greeks were embarrassed by conceptions, such as 
 that of the distinction of subject and object, which to-day 
 hinder us by thrusting themselves with irresistible force 
 upon philosopher and man of letters alike. His is an 
 unbroken history of advances in the direction of in- 
 tellectual freedom. It is with the name of Adam Smiih 
 that the most important of these advances are associated. 
 His work was something more than the overthrow of 
 the agricultural and mercantile systems, and the extirpa- 
 tion of certain subtle prejudices derived from the doctrines 
 of these systems by persons who did not in terms profess 
 them. He threw the lessons of modern political economy 
 into a systematic form, and thereby left them advanced 
 a stage in their development. 
 
 It is as an economist that Smith will be remembered* 
 
1'4 LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 
 
 For the right understanding of his great book, and of 
 how it came to be that his teaching was something 
 more than a mere theory of the production and distribu- 
 tion of wealth, it must never be forgotten that he was 
 also a writer on Ethics, and would, had he carried out 
 his intentions, have been a writer on Jurisprudence as 
 well. 
 
 Butwhile the subject matter of "The Wealth of Nations" 
 formed part of the systematic course, embracing all 
 these three subjects, which its author was accustomed 
 to deliver to his students in the University of Glasgow, 
 on it alone depends the great position of him who wrote 
 it. His contribution to Ethics was, as we shall see, 
 unimportant, and of that made by him to Jurisprudence 
 we have no sufficient record to enable us to form a 
 judgment. 
 
 How, and out of what materials, "The Wealth of 
 Nations " was fashioned, will best be understood after we 
 have seen what kind of man its author was, 
 
CHAPTER II, 
 
 KIRKCALDY, or as the name was spelt in the days 
 of Adam Smith, Kirkaldy, is a manufacturing town ' 
 on the north side of the Firth of Forth. From its 
 peculiar characteristic of possessing great length without 
 breadth, it has for generations enjoyed the appellation of 
 "the lang toon." The inhabitants are of that shrewd, 
 hard-headed nature for which Fife is famous. Manufac- 
 ture overshadows agriculture, and the general aspect of 
 the place is that of industry. Judging of the past, not 
 merely from tradition, but by the present, Kirkcaldy is 
 an ideal place of nurture for economists. 
 
 It was in this town that Smith was born on June 5, 
 1723, three months after the death of his father. That 
 father had originally been a member of the Society of 
 Writers to the Signet, a branch of the legal profession 
 which has no counterpart out of Scotland. Performing 
 most of the functions of solicitors (in this country a 
 distinct body), and at the same time of conveyancing 
 counsel, a very large portion of the occupation of the 
 Writers to the Signet consisted, then as now, in the 
 management of the estates of the more important of the 
 Scottish landed gentry, an occupation which sometimes 
 
1G LIFE OF 
 
 brought them into close, and often confidential, relation- 
 ships with distinguished public men. It was, therefore, 
 not unnatural that Smith's father* should quit his profes- 
 sion for the private secretaryship to the Earl of Loudoun, 
 the Principal Secretary of State for Scotland, and Keeper 
 of the Great Seal. About 1714 he was appointed, 
 doubtless through the influence of this nobleman, to the 
 office of Comptroller of the Customs at Kirkcaldy, 
 having some years previously obtained that of Clerk to 
 the Courts-martial and Councils of War for Scotland. 
 
 Smith's mother was a Miss Douglas, daughter of a Mr. 
 Douglas, of Strathenry, a place lying a few miles away 
 from Kirkcaldy. According to Dugald Stewart, she was 
 a most affectionate and indulgent parent, so much so that 
 it was only the excellence of the disposition of her boy 
 that prevented him from being spoiled. Be that as it 
 may, he proved to be in his turn an admirable son 
 throughout the whole of the long period of sixty years 
 for which she survived her husband. 
 
 j The only incident which is recorded of Smith's child- 
 hood is that he once was stolen by tinkers from the door 
 of his grandfather's house at Strathenry. Fortunately 
 his grandfather conjectured what might have become of 
 him, and, after a vigorous pursuit, discovered and rescued 
 his grandson in a wood some miles off. 
 
 The boy was sent to the school kept by Mr. David 
 Miller, in Kirkcaldy. lie was then remarkable, not 
 merely for love of reading and an extraordinary memory, 
 but for a precocious absence of mind, and a habit, 
 which in after years became at times startling to 
 the bystanders, of speaking to himself. When he was 
 
ADAM SMITH., i? 
 
 fourteen years old, he was sent, in accordance with the 
 not uncommon Scotch practice of those times, to the 
 university, that selected for him being Glasgow. At 
 Glasgow he gave himself up to Mathematics and Natural 
 Philosophy, and in 1^40 obtained a " Snell " exhibition. 
 Snell was a merchant who, in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, founded certain exhibitions in Glasgow 
 University, with the object of enabling deserving students 
 to go, for the purposes of study, to Balliol College, 
 Oxford. To Oxford accordingly Adam Smith went, a cir- 
 cumstance which distinguished his education from that 
 of the majority of his countrymen, including his -friend 
 David Hume. At Oxford he remained for over six 
 years. According to Professor Thorold Rogers he seems 
 to have lived economically, the cost of his first quarter's 
 residence having been ^7 55. Even at a Scotch 
 university it would not be easy now-a-days to live at a 
 much less rate. 
 
 Oxford was at this time one of the last places to be ! 
 chosen as the educational nursery for a man who was to 
 break away from the traditions of the old political 
 economy, and effect a revolution in its principles. The 
 whole place was weighed down by intellectual listlessness, 
 and by indifference to the rapid movements of the time. 
 The pressure of the pent-up lava which was to break out 
 upon the world through France as its place of exit, was 
 unfelt in the English universities. But Smith's genius 
 was independent of its surroundings. Its bent was not 
 to be influenced by other minds. He appears from the 
 first to have busied himself with the study of ancient and 
 .modern literature, a study the results of which his marvel- 
 
18 LIFE OF 
 
 lous memory enabled him to carry with him to the 
 last. 
 
 His original intention had been to enter the Church. 
 But his experience at Oxford, and in all probability the 
 effect upon his mind of Hume's "Treatise," which ap- 
 peared in the year before he went there, determined him 
 definitely to abandon all thoughts of orders, and to take 
 his chance of earning a livelihood by literature. To 
 Scotland he returned in this frame of mind at the age of 
 twenty-three. After a couple of years spent at Kirkcaldy, 
 he removed to Edinburgh in the year 1748, and there, 
 under the patronage of Lord Kames, delivered public 
 lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-lettres. It was at this 
 period in his life that he began to form his most impor- 
 tant friendships. Among the earliest of these was a 
 friendship with one of the most accomplished men of 
 the world of the time. Alexander Wedderburn, after- 
 wards Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Baron 
 Loughborough, and Earl of Rosslyn, is, of all the 
 eminent statesmen of the end of last century who failed 
 in the great things of life for want of morality, perhaps the 
 most remarkable. The history of his career is a prolonged 
 justification of the bitter saying of Junius, that there 
 was something about him that treachery could not trust. 
 But a yet more important friendship was that which 
 reached its maturity apparently about 1752, the historical 
 friendship of Adam Smith and David Hume. In this 
 there was none of the combination by contrast of com- 
 plementary qualities which often impresses us in such 
 relationships. They were both men of singularly easy- 
 going temperament. Each displayed strikingly destructive 
 
ADAM SMITH. 19 
 
 intellectual tendencies in combination with a certain 
 conservatism of mental disposition. So similar were 
 their pursuits, that in the case of persons who understood 
 each other less there would have been real danger of a 
 rivalry not altogether stingless. But there is no trace, so 
 far as we are aware, of any interruption in a sympathy 
 and intercourse which ended only with the death of 
 Hume. 
 
 They lived, sometimes together and always in con- 
 stant communication, for a quarter of a century. The 
 chief difference between them was the difference of the 
 directions which they respectively gave to the great 
 currents of thought in the world ; the origins of these 
 directions lay very close together. Whether Hume 
 could have been but for Smith, we cannot now say; 
 but we know that, but for Hume, Smith could never 
 have been. 
 
 In 1751 Smith was elected to the Chair of Logic in 
 Glasgow University, a chair which, four years afterwards, 
 he exchanged for that of Moral Philosophy. In the 
 practice incident to the lectures delivered from that 
 position he effected a revolution. Instead of pursuing 
 the course followed by his predecessors, including 
 Hutcheson, under whom he had himself been a student, 
 he imparted to his lectures a highly concrete character. 
 His course was divided into four parts, the first of which 
 embraced Natural Theology ; the second, Ethics ; the 
 third, Jurisprudence in its general principles ; and the 
 fourth, The Nature of Political Institutions. The second 
 part was published by him as " The Theory of Moral 
 Sentiments." The fourth became known to the entire 
 
20 LIFE OF 
 
 civilized world under the immortal form of " The Wealth 
 of Nations." A Professor Millar of Glasgow, one of 
 Smith's contemporaries, gives the following description 
 of his delivery : 
 
 " There was no situation in which the abilities of Mr. 
 Smith appeared to greater advantage than in that of 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 the 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 infrequently, 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. 
 In 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 
 
ADAM SMITH. 21 
 
 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. 
 
 " His reputation as a professor was accordingly raised 
 very high, and a multitude of students from a great 
 distance resorted to the university, merely upon his 
 account. These branches of science which he taught 
 became fashionable at this place, and his opinions were 
 the chief topics of discussion in clubs and literary socie- 
 ties. Even the small peculiarities in his pronunciation 
 or manner of speaking became frequently the objects 
 1 of imitation." 
 
 Ponderous though the excellent professor's description 
 is, we can recognize in it a certain ring of truth. The 
 reference to the copiousness of the lecturer's style recalls 
 the diffuseness of " The Wealth of Nations." Smith was 
 great in illustration, and, like many great masters of con- 
 crete statement, deficient in the power of arrangement. 
 But to gain anything like an adequate impression of his 
 personality, it is necessary to turn to the pages of a 
 more capable observer than Professor Millar. In his 
 Autobiography, Alexander Carlyle, the minister of In- 
 veresk, one of the leaders of the Moderate party in the 
 General Assembly, and one of the acutest worldly men 
 of his time in Scotland, describes Smith thus : 
 
 " Adam Smith, though perhaps only second to Hume 
 in learning and ingenuity, was far inferior to him in 
 
22 LIFE OF 
 
 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 his enunciation thick, 
 amounting almost 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 the conversation, he immediately began a harangue, 
 and never stopped till he told you all he knew about it, 
 and 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 contra- 
 dicted 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 r 
 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 a man of address and 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 Townsend 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." 
 
ADAM SMBTJf. ^ 23 
 
 The duke here alluded to, with no little indication of 
 partiality, was the Duke of Buccleuch. We shall see 
 presently under what circumstances Smith became his 
 tutor. As regards the absence of mind, Dr. Carlyle most 
 likely had present to him when he wrote a story which 
 went the round at the time. Smith had been invited to 
 Dalkeith Palace to meet an eminent statesman who was 
 staying there. During, or after dinner, he fell into a 
 reverie, and began to discourse aloud upon the merits, or 
 rather demerits, of this very politician, in language which 
 was neither guarded nor indirect. On being recalled to 
 consciousness of his surroundings, he was so covered 
 with confusion that he again relapsed into reverie, 
 muttering to himself and to the company, as the reflec- 
 tion of his inner mind " Deil care, deil care, it's all 
 true ! " 
 
 v Notwithstanding that his academic home was Glasgow, 
 Smith appears to have lived a great deal in Edinburgh at 
 this time. He was a prominent member of the famous 
 Poker Club, which had its origin in an association formed 
 in Edinburgh for the purpose of protesting and agitating 
 against the indisposition of the Government to extend the 
 Militia system to Scotland, an indisposition which was 
 doubtless due to the fear of Jacobitism, and a very vivid 
 recollection of Culloden. This club was dissolved in 
 disgust at the resolution of the authorities to levy a heavy 
 duty on its favourite beverage claret; and in its place 
 there was established a debating society known as the 
 " Select," the first meeting of which took place on May i, 
 
 I754- 
 The Select Society reckoned among its members most 
 
24 LIFE OF 
 
 of the literary notabilities of the Edinburgh of that day. 
 Besides Smith and his friend Hume, it included Home 
 the author of "Douglas," Dr. Hugh Blair, Sir David 
 Dalrymple, Dr. Robertson of Gladsmuir, and a score of 
 other well-known men. It is remarkable that the question 
 fixed on for discussion at the second meeting was the 
 advantage of bounties on the exportation of corn, and that 
 the debate was to be opened by Smith himself. It is 
 clear that at this time the attention of both Smith and 
 his friend Hume was closely concentrated on the ques- 
 tion of the validity of the Mercantile System. 
 
 One well-known epigram the work of Home sur- 
 vives to us as a reminiscence of these old Edinburgh 
 days. Before the levy of prohibitive duties on claret, 
 which had led to the dissolution of the Poker Club, 
 this wine had been imported into Scotland under the 
 title of " Southampton port," paying only certain small 
 duties. It was consumed at this time in Scotland in 
 quantities the enormous magnitude of which can only 
 be realized after reading detailed descriptions of the ways 
 and customs of the then generation. The blow to the 
 consumers, and the privations which they suffered through 
 the change in the law, were summed up by Home - 
 
 Firm and erect the Caledonian stood, 
 Old was his mutton, and his claret good ; 
 Let him drink port, the English statesmen cried j 
 He drank the poison, and his spirit died.'* 
 
 It has already been mentioned that Smith occupied 
 the Chair of Logic in Glasgow, before his appointment to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 25 
 
 that of Moral Philosophy. There is evidence, in the form 
 of a letter from Hume to Dr. Cullen, that Hume himself 
 was anxious to be appointed to the Chair of Logic, 
 rendered vacant by his friend's change of position. Some 
 of the electors seem to have taken steps to promote the 
 choice of no less a personage than Burke. But in these 
 days the spirit of lion-hunting, if it prevailed at all, pre- 
 vailed only in regard to persons of social distinction ; and 
 the wholesome disinclination of the general public to 
 confide the education of the coming generation to in- 
 dividuals whose opinions it did not understand, led to 
 the choice of neither Burke nor Hume, but a certain 
 Mr. Clow. 
 
 In 1 759 appeared " The Theory of Moral Sentiments." 
 As sometimes happens, the author seems to have ex- 
 hausted his interest in his work in the course of its 
 creation, and it is recorded that from the day of its pub- 
 lication his attention became increasingly concentrated 
 upon economical subjects. In the course of the four 
 years during which he continued at Glasgow after 1759, 
 his lectures became more and more devoted to Jurls^ 
 prudence and Political Economy. On the whole, how- 
 ever, the book proved a success, although it was not 
 destined to become a substantial, or indeed any part, of 
 the foundation upon which its author's fame now reposes. 
 His great fault as a thinker on morals is the absence, in 
 his case, of any metaphysical training. It was Hume 
 who first made it plain that Metaphysics and Ethics are 
 inextricably intertwined ; and since his time the tendency 
 of modern thought has been to regard them as altogether 
 mutually dependent- 
 
26 LIFE OF 
 
 The following letter from Hume to his friend on the 
 occasion of the appearance of the book, is worth quoting 
 at length : 
 
 "DEAR SIR, I give you thanks for the agreeable 
 present of your theory. Wedderburn and I made presents 
 of our own 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 
 Lyttelton, 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 prog- 
 nosticate, 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 ity 
 fate. It is, in short, this 
 
 " But I have been interrupted in my letter by a foolish, 
 impertinent visit of one who has lately come from 
 Scotland. He tells me that the University of Glasgow 
 intend to declare Rouet's office vacant upon his going 
 abroad with Lord Hope. I question not but you will 
 have our friend Ferguson in your eye, in case another 
 project for procuring him a place in the University of 
 Edinburgh should fail. Ferguson has very much polished 
 and improved his treatise on Refinement, and, with 
 some amendments, it will make an admirable book, and 
 
ADAM SMITH. 27 
 
 discovers an elegant and a singular genius. The Epi- 
 goniad I hope will do, but it is somewhat uphill work. 
 As I doubt not but you consult the Reviews sometimes 
 at present, you will see, in The Critical Review, a letter 
 upon that poem, and I desire you to employ your con- 
 jectures in finding out the author. Let me see a sample 
 of your skill in knowing hands by your guessing at the 
 person. 
 
 " I am afraid of Kames' ' Law Tracts/ A man might 
 as well think of making a fine sauce by a mixture of 
 wormwood and aloes, as an agreeable composition by 
 joining metaphysics and Scottish law. However, the 
 book, I believe, has merit, though few people will take 
 the pains of inquiring into it. But to return to your 
 book and its success in this town. I must tell you 
 
 " A plague of interruptions ! I ordered myself to be 
 denied, and yet here is one that has broke in upon me 
 again. He is a man of letters, and we have had a good 
 deal of literary conversation. You told me that you was 
 curious of literary anecdotes, and therefore I shall inform 
 you of a few that have come to my knowledge. I believe 
 that I have mentioned to you already Helvetius's book 
 * De 1'Esprit.' It is worth your reading ; not for its philo- 
 sophy, which I do not highly value, but for its agreeable 
 composition. I had a letter from him a few days ago, 
 wherein he tells me that my name was much oftener in 
 the manuscript, but that the censor of books at Paris 
 obliged him to strike it out. 
 
 "Voltaire has lately published a small work called 
 4 Candide; ou, L'Optimisme.' I shall give you a detail 
 of it. But what is all this to my book ? say you. My 
 
28 LIFE OF 
 
 dear Mr. Smith, have patience: compose yourself to 
 tranquility ; show yourself a philosopher in practice as 
 well as in profession : think on the emptiness, and rash- 
 ness, and futility of the common judgments of men, 
 how little they are regulated by reason in any subject, 
 much more in philosophical subjects, which so far exceed 
 the comprehension of the vulgar. 
 
 ' Non si quid turbida Roma 
 Elevet, accedas : examenve improbum in ilia 
 Castiges trutina : nee te qusesiveris extra.' 
 
 A wise man's kingdom is his own breast, or, if he ever 
 looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select 
 few who are free from prejudices, and capable of ex- 
 amining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger 
 presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the 
 multitude, and Phocion, you know, always suspected 
 himself of some blunder when he was attended with the 
 applauses of the populace. 
 
 " Supposing, therefore, that you have duly prepared 
 yourself for the worst by all these reflections, I proceed 
 to tell you the melancholy news that your book has been 
 very unfortunate, for the public seem disposed to applaud 
 it extremely. It was looked for by the foolish people 
 with some impatience, and the mob of literati are begin- 
 ning already to be very loud in its praises. 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 
 
ADAM SMITH. 29 
 
 in the world. The Duke of Argyle is more decisive 
 than he uses to be in its favour. I suppose he either 
 considers it an exotic, or thinks the author will be 
 serviceable to him in the Glasgow elections. Lord 
 Lyttelton says that Robertson, and Smith, and Bower 
 are the glories of English literature. Oswald protests 
 he does not know whether he has reaped more instruc- 
 tion 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 Townsend/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 Buccleuch 
 under the author's care, and would make it worth his 
 while to accept of that charge. As soon as I heard of 
 this I called on him twice, with a view of talking with 
 him about the matter, and convincing him of the pro- 
 priety of sending that young nobleman to Glasgow ; for 
 I could not hope that he could offer you any terms 
 which would tempt you to renounce your professorship ; 
 but I missed him. Mr. Townsend passes for being a 
 little uncertain in his resolutions, so, perhaps, you need_ 
 not build much on his sally. 
 
 " In recompense for so many mortifying things, which 
 nothing but truth could have extorted from me, and 
 
30 LIFE OF 
 
 which I could easily have multiplied to a greater number, 
 I doubt not but you are so good a Christian as to return 
 good for evil, and to flatter my vanity by telling me that 
 all the godly in Scotland abuse me for my account of 
 John Knox and the Reformation. I suppose you are 
 glad to see my paper end, and that I am obliged to 
 conclude with Your humble servant." 
 
 In those days men of letters had time to impart form 
 to their correspondence. 
 
 Charles Townsend, to whose promise Hume refers 
 with some doubt in the letter just quoted, proved as good 
 as his word, although some time elapsed before his inten- 
 tion was carried into effect. In 1763 Smith received 
 from him an invitation to travel in Europe with the Duke 
 of Buccleuch, accompanied by an offer of terms and 
 opportunities so tempting that the professor was induced 
 to resign his chair, and enter upon a (to him) entirely 
 new phase of life. 
 
 The duke and his distinguished fellow traveller pro- 
 ceeded to Paris, where, however, they remained only a 
 few days, in the first instance, returning later on. From 
 here the latter sent a formal letter of resignation of his 
 chair to Glasgow, the reception of which was recorded in 
 the university records in the following terms : 
 
 "The meeting accepts of Dr. Smith's resignation in 
 terms of the above letter," (one from Smith, in which 
 he expressed a wish that whoever was his successor 
 might not only do credit to the office by his abilities, 
 but be a comfort to the very excellent men with whom 
 
ADAM SMITH. 31 
 
 he was likely to spend his life, by the probity of his 
 heart, and the goodness of his temper), " and the 
 office of Professor of Moral Philosophy in this university 
 is therefore declared vacant. The university, at the 
 same time, cannot help expressing their sincere regret 
 at the removal of Dr. Smith, whose distinguished 
 probity and amiable qualities procured him the esteem 
 and affection of his colleagues ; and whose uncommon 
 genius, great abilities, and extensive learning, did so much 
 honour to this society ; his elegant and ingenious ' Theory 
 of Moral Sentiments ' having recommended him to the 
 esteem of men of taste and literature throughout Europe. 
 His happy talent in illustrating abstracted subjects, and 
 faithful assiduity in communicating useful knowledge, 
 distinguished him as a professor, and at once afforded 
 the greatest pleasure and the most important instruction 
 to the youth under his care." 
 
 That Smith's life in Paris was not at first entirely to 
 his mind, the following extract from a letter to Hume 
 shows unmistakably : 
 
 " The duke is acquainted with no Frenchman what- 
 ever. I cannot cultivate the acquaintance of the few 
 with whom I am acquainted, as I cannot bring them to 
 our house and am not always at liberty to go to theirs. 
 The life which I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable dissi- 
 pated life in comparison of that which I lead here at 
 present. I have begun to write a book in order to pass 
 away the time. You may believe I have very little to do. 
 If Sir James would come and spend a month with us in 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 his travels it would not only be a great satisfaction to me, 
 but he might by his influence and example be of great 
 service to the duke." 
 
 Matters however improved as time went on, and in the 
 end the visit to Paris proved as great a success, as it 
 threatened to be a failure. 
 
 From Paris the travellers went on to Toulouse, where 
 they remained for eighteen months, and from Toulouse, 
 through the South of France, by Geneva to Paris (where 
 they must have arrived at Christmas, 1765), and in Paris 
 they remained until the following October. Smith had 
 been provided with introductions from Hume, and these, 
 together with facilities which he obtained in virtue of his 
 charge, brought him into some of the best company in 
 the city. Turgot, Quesnay, Necker, D'Alembert, Helve- 
 tius, and the Abbe Morellet were among the acquaintances 
 of this period of his life. Two of these names belong to 
 men who made a profound and lasting impression on his 
 mind. 
 
 The influence of Turgot and Quesnay had probably 
 more to do with the opinions which were afterwards 
 elaborated into a systematic form in ''The Wealth of 
 Nations," than any of their other antecedents. How 
 great was Smith's admiration of Quesnay, notwithstanding 
 that the " Agricultural System " of that thinker was one 
 of the two great fallacies which " The Wealth of Nations " 
 was written to expose, will be seen at a glance by any one 
 who looks at the ninth chapter of the fourth book of that 
 work. The tour in France was for Smith, and presumably 
 for his companion, a most successful one. In the duke's 
 
ADAM SMITH. 33 
 
 o\vn words : "In October, 1766, we returned to Lon- 
 don, after having spent near three years together, without 
 the slightest disagreement or coolness ; on my part with 
 every advantage that could be expected from the society 
 of such a man. We continued to live in friendship till 
 the hour of his death ; and I shall always remain with 
 the impression of having lost a friend whom I loved and 
 respected, not only for his great talents, but for every 
 private virtue." There can be no doubt that during his 
 stay in France, Smith laid the foundations, not only of an 
 immense stock of illustrations of economical principles 
 but also of an extensive acquaintance with French litera 
 ture. His progress in the language appears, howeve^ 
 if we may trust the Abb Morellet to have been less 
 satisfactory : " II parloit fort mal notre langue, mais 
 nous parlames theorie commerciale, banque, Credit pub- 
 lic," &c. (" He spoke French very badly, but we dis- 
 cussed the theory of commerce, banks, public credit," &c.) 
 On his return to this country, he went, almost at once, 
 into a retirement at Kirkcaldy from which he did not 
 emerge for ten years. His friends were aware that he 
 was engrossed by the composition of some great book, 
 but the following extract from a letter, dated in 1772, 
 suggests that even Hume had not been taken fully into 
 his confidence on the subject: "I shall not take any 
 excuse from your state of health, which I suppose only 
 a subterfuge invented by indolence and love of solitude. 
 Indeed, my dear Smith, if you continue to hearken to 
 complaints of this nature, you will cut yourself out 
 entirely from human society, to the great loss of both 
 parties." In a still earlier letter, however, written from 
 
 3 
 
34 LIFE OF 
 
 his house in James's Court (which commanded a view 
 of the Firth of Forth and of Kirkcaldy on the opposite 
 side), Hume refers to the general character of his friend's 
 occupation : 
 
 " DEAR SMITH, I am glad to have come within sight 
 of you, and to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows, 
 but as I wish also to be within speaking terms of you I 
 wish we could concert measures for that purpose. I am 
 mortally sick at sea, and regard with horror and a kind 
 of hydrophobia the great gulf that lies between us. I 
 am also tired of travelling as much as you ought natu- 
 rally to be of staying at home. I therefore propose to 
 you to come hither and pass some days with me in this 
 solitude. I want to know what you have been doing, 
 and propose to exact a rigorous account of the method 
 in which you have employed yourself during your retreat. 
 I am positive you are in the wrong in many of your 
 speculations, especially where you have the misfortune 
 to differ from me. All these are reasons for our meeting, 
 and I wish you would make me some reasonable pro- 
 posal for that purpose. There is no habitation on the 
 island of Inchkeith, otherwise I should challenge you to 
 meet me on that spot, and neither of us ever to leave 
 the place till we were fully agreed on all points of con- 
 troversy. I expect General Conway here to-morrow 
 whom I shall attend to Roseneath, and I shall remain 
 there a few days. On my return I expect to find a 
 letter from you, containing a bold acceptance of this 
 defiance. I am, dear Smith, yours sincerely." 
 
ADAM SMITH. 85 
 
 His house at Kirkcaldy, which Smith inhabited along 
 with his brother and his cousin, Miss Douglas, was exactly 
 suited for his purpose. It was sufficiently near Edin- 
 burgh to enable him to get there easily by a sail across 
 the Firth of Forth, and it was yet a place where he was 
 secure from too frequent interruption by his friends. 
 The town was a manufacturing one, and he could con- 
 sequently obtain information at first hand on commercial 
 topics. Besides this, it afforded him a small circle of 
 quiet acquaintances, in whose society it was his habit to 
 relax, though sparingly, from his labours. At last in 
 1776, early in the year, there appeared, in two quarto 
 volumes, the first edition of the " Inquiry into the 
 Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." Hume, 
 who was now in a dying condition, wrote to congratulate 
 the author in a characteristic letter : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, April i, 1776. 
 
 " 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 neces- 
 sarily 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 
 
36 LIFE OF 
 
 abode in London. If you were here at my fireside, I 
 should dispute some of your principles. I cannot think , 
 that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of the 
 produce, but that the price is determined altogether by 
 the quantity and the demand. It appears to me 
 impossible that the king of France can take a seignorage 
 of 8 per cent, upon the coinage. Nobody would bring 
 bullion to the mint. It would be all sent to Holland or 
 England, where it might be coined and sent back to 
 France, for less than 2 per cent. Accordingly, 
 Necker says that the French king takes only 2 per 
 cent, of seignorage. 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. I fancy 
 you are acquainted with Mr. Gibbon. I like his per- 
 formance extremely, and have ventured to tell him, had 
 I not been personally acquainted with him, I should 
 never have expected such an excellent work from the 
 pen of an Englishman. It is lamentable to consider 
 how much that nation has declined in literature during 
 our time. I hope he did not take amiss the national 
 reflection. 
 
 " All your friends here are in great grief at present for 
 the death of Baron Mure, which is an irreparable loss to 
 our society. He was among the oldest and best friends 
 I had in the world." 
 
 Before passing to the story of the great success of 
 Adam Smith's life, the effect of his book upon the 
 contemporary world, we may pause to notice a more 
 
ADAM SMITH. 37 
 
 questionable incident in his history. Of all the qualities, 
 of an extrinsic nature, which the character of a great 
 man ought to display, moral courage is probably the one 
 which the public, perhaps rightly, appreciates most. 
 There is ground for supposing that throughout his career ' 
 Smith was never very frank about his theological 
 opinions. What these were we do not know. There is 
 no record (that the writer of these memoirs has been able 
 to discover) of Smith's lectures in Glasgow, so far as these 
 topics are concerned. But the traditions which survive, 
 and the internal evidence afforded by his writings, point 
 to the apparent similarity of his views to those of Hume. 
 It is, in any view, far from admirable that he should 
 have hesitated to peril his reputation and interests, 
 whatever these might amount to, in the way he did, for 
 the sake of his friend. That he did hesitate, Hume's 
 letters to him show 
 
 " LONDON, May 3, 1776. 
 
 "Mv DEAR FRIEND, I send you enclosed an 
 ostensible letter, conformably to your desire. I think, 
 however, your scruples groundless. Was Mallet any 
 wise hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke ? He 
 received an office afterwards from the present king and 
 Lord Bute, the most prudish men in the world, and he 
 always justifies himself by his sacred regard to the will of 
 a dead friend. At the same time I own that your 
 scruples have a specious appearance. But my opinion is 
 that if upon my death you determine never to publish 
 these papers, you should leave them sealed up with my 
 brother and family, with some inscription that you reserve 
 

 38 LIFE OF 
 
 to yourself the power of reclaiming them whenever you 
 think proper. If I live a few years longer I publish 
 them myself. I consider an observation of Rochefoucault 
 that a wind though it extinguishes a candle blows up a 
 fire. 
 
 " You may be surprised to hear me talk of living years, 
 considering the state you saw me in, and the sentiments 
 which both I and all my friends at Edinburgh enter- 
 tained on that subject. But though I cannot come up 
 entirely to the sanguine notions of our friend John, I 
 find myself very much recovered on the road, and I hope 
 Bath waters and farther journeys may effect my cure. 
 
 " By the little company I have seen I find the town very 
 full of your book which meets with general approbation. 
 Many people think particular parts disputable, but this 
 you certainly expected. I am glad that I am one of the 
 number, as these parts will be the subject of future 
 conversation between us. I set out for Bath, I believe 
 on Monday, by Sir John Pringle's directions who says 
 that he sees nothing to be apprehended in my case. If 
 you write to me (hem ! hem !), I say if you write to me, 
 send your letter under cover to Mr. Strahan who will 
 have my direction/' 
 
 LONDON, May 3, 1776. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, After reflecting more maturely on 
 that article of my will by which I left you the disposal 
 of all my papers with a request that you should publish 
 my * Dialogues concerning Natural Religion,' I have 
 become sensible that both on account of the nature of 
 the work, and of your situation, it may be improper to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 39 
 
 hurry on that publication. I therefore take the present 
 opportunity of qualifying that friendly bequest. I am 
 content to leave it entirely to your discretion at what 
 time you will publish that piece, or whether you will 
 publish it at all. 
 
 " You will find among my papers a very inoffensive 
 piece called ' My own Life," which I composed a few 
 days before I left Edinburgh, when I thought, as did all 
 my friends, that my life was despaired of. There can be 
 no objection that the small piece should be sent to 
 Messrs. Strahan and Cadell, and the proprietors of my 
 other works, to be prefixed to any future edition of 
 them." 
 
 Hume soon saw that Smith would not undertake 
 the trust he sought to commit to him. He did not 
 absolutely decline to edit the " Dialogues concerning 
 Natural Religion," but it became plain that he was 
 most unwilling to do so. It may be said that this un- 
 willingness was as much in the interests of Hume's own 
 memory, as of his own reputation, and this is the best 
 excuse that can be made for him. At all events, Hume 
 determined to revoke, and did revoke, the direction by 
 a codicil to his will, and entrusted the task to Strahan, 
 the publisher. To the latter Smith wrote, after Hume's 
 death, thus 
 
 "I once had persuaded him to leave it entirely to 
 my discretion either to publish them at what time I 
 thought proper, or not to publish them at all. Had 
 he continued of this mind, the manuscript would have 
 
40 LIFE OF 
 
 been most carefully preserved, and upon my decease 
 restored to his family ; but it should never have been 
 published in my lifetime. When you have read it, you 
 will perhaps consult some prudent friend about what you 
 ought to do." 
 
 The book was ultimately published, not by Strahan, 
 whom Smith appears to have terrified, but by Hume's 
 nephew, in 1779. 
 
 No life of Adam Smith can be complete without some 
 account of his description of the death-bed of his friend. 
 That description was contained in a letter which, though 
 somewhat long, relates to a matter of such interest that 
 it is worth quoting at length. It is a description which 
 refutes completely the nursery tales upon the subject 
 which were set abroad at the time, and for long passed 
 current. Fortunately we live in a generation which 
 countenances malicious gossip on such a topic but little. 
 
 "KlRKALDY. FlFESHIRE, Nov. 9, 1776. 
 
 "DEAR SIR, It is with a real, though a very melan- 
 choly pleasure, that I sit down to give you some account 
 of the behaviour of our excellent friend, Mr. Hume, 
 during his last illness. 
 
 "Though, in his own judgment, his disease was mortal 
 and incurable, yet he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, 
 by the entreaty of his friends, to try what might be the 
 effects of a long journey. A few days before he set out 
 he wrote that account of his own life, which, together 
 with his other papers, he has left to your care. My 
 account, therefore, shall begin where his ends. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 41 
 
 " He set out for London towards the end of April, and 
 at Morpeth met with Mr. John Home and myself, who 
 had both come down from London on purpose to see 
 him, expecting to have found him at Edinburgh. Mr. 
 Home returned with him, and attended him during the 
 whole of his stay in England, with that care and atten- 
 tion which might be expected from a temper so perfectly 
 friendly and affectionate. As I had written to my mother 
 that she might expect me in Scotland, I was under the 
 necessity of continuing my journey. His disease seemed 
 to yield to exercise and change of air, and when he 
 arrived in London he was apparently in much belter 
 health than when he left Edinburgh. He was advised to 
 go to Bath to drink the waters, which appeared for some 
 time to have so good an effect upon him that even he 
 himself began to entertain, what he was not apt to do, a 
 better opinion of his own health. His symptoms, how- 
 ever, soon returned with their usual violence, and from 
 that moment he gave up all thoughts of recovery, but 
 submitted with the utmost cheerfulness, and the most 
 perfect complacency and resignation. Upon his return 
 to Edinburgh, though he found himself much weaker, yet 
 his cheerfulness never abated, and he continued to divert 
 himself as usual, with correcting his own works fora new 
 edition, and reading books of amusement, with the con- 
 versation of his friends, and, sometimes in the evening, 
 with a party at his favourite game of whist. His cheer- 
 fulness was so great, his conversation and amusements 
 run so much in their usual strain that, notwithstanding 
 all bad symptoms, many people could not believe he was 
 dying. * I shall tell your friend. Colonel Edmondstone,' 
 
42 LIFE Of 
 
 said Doctor Dundas to him one day, 'that I left you 
 much better, and in a fair way of recovery. 7 ' Doctor/ 
 said he, c as I believe you would not choose to tell any- 
 thing but the truth, you had better tell him, that I am 
 dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, 
 and as easily and as cheerfully as my best friends could 
 desire.' Colonel Edmondstone soon afterwards came to 
 see him, and took leave of him ; and on his way home 
 he could not forbear writing him a letter bidding him 
 once more an eternal adieu, and applying to him, as a 
 dying man, the beautiful French verses in which the 
 Abbe Chaulieu, in expectation of his own death, laments 
 his approaching separation from his friend, the Marquis 
 de la Fare. Mr. Hume's magnanimity and firmness were 
 such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they 
 hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a 
 dying man, and that, so far from being hurt by this 
 frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I 
 happened to come into his room while he was reading 
 this letter, which he had just received, and which he 
 immediately showed me. I told him that though I was 
 sensible how very much he was weakened, and that ap- 
 pearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheer- 
 fulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to 
 be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertain- 
 ing some faint hopes. He answered ' Your hopes are 
 groundless. An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year's 
 standing would be a very bad disease at any age : at my 
 age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening, 
 I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning ; 
 and when I rise in the morning, weaker than when I lay 
 
ADAM SMITH. 43 
 
 down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some 
 of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die/ 
 ' Well/ said I, * if it must be so, you have at least the 
 satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother's 
 family in particular, in great prosperity.' He said that he 
 felt that satisfaction so sensibly, that when he was read- 
 ing a few days before, Lucian's * Dialogues of the Dead,' 
 among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon for 
 not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one 
 that fitted him : he had no house to finish, he had no 
 daughter to provide for, he had no enemies upon whom 
 he wished to revenge himself. * I could not well imagine,' 
 said he, * what excuse I could make to Charon in order to 
 obtain a little delay. I have done everything of conse- 
 quence which I ever meant to do ; and I could at no 
 time expect to leave my relations and friends in a better 
 situation than that in which I am now like to leave them : 
 I therefore have all reason to die contented.' He then 
 diverted himself with inventing several jocular excuses, 
 which he supposed he might make to Charon, and with 
 imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the 
 character of Charon to return to them. ' Upon further 
 consideration,' said he, ' I thought I might say to him, 
 good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new 
 edition ; allow me a little time that I may see how the 
 public receives the alterations.' But Charon would answer, 
 ' When you have seen the effect of these, you will be for 
 making other alterations. There will be no end of such 
 excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat.' 
 But I might still urge, ' Have a little patience, good 
 Charon , I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of 
 
44 LIFE OF 
 
 the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the 
 satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the pre- 
 vailing systems of superstition/ But Charon would then 
 lose all temper and decency. c You loitering rogue ; that 
 will not happen these many hundred years. Do you 
 fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? 
 Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering 
 rogue/ 
 
 "But though Mr. Hume always talked of his approach- 
 ing dissolution with great cheerfulness, he never affected to 
 make any parade of his magnanimity. He never men- 
 tioned the subject but when the conversation naturally 
 led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the 
 course of the conversation happened to require : it was a 
 subject, indeed, which occurred pretty frequently, in con- 
 sequence of the inquiries which his friends, who came to 
 see him, naturally made concerning the state of his 
 health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and 
 which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the 
 last, except one, that I ever had with him. He had now 
 become so very weak, that the company of his most 
 intimate friends fatigued him ; for his cheerfulness was 
 still so great, his complaisance and social disposition 
 were still so entire, that when any friend was with him 
 he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion 
 than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, 
 therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was 
 staying partly upon his account, and returned to my 
 mother's house here, at Kirkaldy, upon condition that he 
 would send for me whenever he wished to see me ; the 
 physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, under- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 45 
 
 taking in the meantime, to write me occasionally an 
 account of the state of his health. 
 
 "On the 22nd of August, the doctor wrote meuihfi. 
 following letter : 
 
 * ' Since my last Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty 
 easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, gods downstairs 
 once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom 
 sees anybody. He finds that even the conversation of 
 his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; 
 and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite 
 free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes 
 his time very well with the assistance of amusing books.' 
 
 " I received the day after a letter from Mr. Hume him- 
 self, of which the following is an extract : 
 
 " 'EDINBURGH, August 23, 1776. 
 " c MY DEAREST FRIEND, I am obliged to make use 
 of my nephew's hand in writing to you, as I do not rise 
 to-day. 
 
 * ***** 
 
 " ' I go very fast to decline, and last night had a small 
 fever, which I hoped might put a quicker period to this 
 tedious illness ; but unluckily it has, in a great measure, 
 gone off. I cannot submit to your coming over here on my 
 account, as it is possible for me to see you so small a part 
 of the day, but Dr. Black can better inform you con- 
 cerning the degree of strength which may from time to 
 time remain with me. Adieu, etc. 1 
 
46 LIFE OF 
 
 " Three days after I received the following letter from 
 Dr. Black : 
 
 " 'EDINBURGH, August 26, 1776. 
 "'DEAR SIR, Yesterday, about four o'clock afternoon, 
 Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death 
 became evident in the night between Thursday and 
 Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon 
 weakened him so much that he could no longer rise out 
 of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, 
 and free from much pain or feeling of distress. He never 
 dropped the smallest expression of impatience ; but when 
 he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always 
 did it with affection and tenderness. I thought it im- 
 proper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard 
 that he had dictated a letter to you desiring you not to 
 come. When he became very weak it cost him an effort 
 to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of 
 mind, that nothing could exceed it ! ' 
 
 "Thus died our most excellent and never-to-be-for- 
 gotten friend, concerning whose philosophical opinions 
 men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving 
 or condemning them according as they happen to coincide 
 or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character 
 and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. 
 His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced 
 if I may be allowed such an expression than that 
 perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in 
 the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary 
 frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon 
 
 
ADAM SMITH. 47 
 
 proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. 
 It was a frugality, founded not upon avarice, but upon 
 the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of 
 his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind 
 or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant plea- 
 santry was the genuine effusion of good-nature and good- 
 humour tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without 
 even the slightest tincture of malignity so frequently the 
 disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. 
 It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify, and 
 therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please 
 and delight even those who were the object of it. To 
 his friends who were frequently the object of it there 
 was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable 
 qualities, which contributed more to endear his conver- 
 sation. And that gaiety of temper so agreeable in society, 
 but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and 
 superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with 
 the most severe application, the most extensive learning, 
 the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every 
 respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I 
 have always considered him,^both in his lifetime and since 
 his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a 
 perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature 
 of human frailty will permit. 
 
 " I ever am, dear sir, most affectionately yours, 
 
 "ADAM SMITH." 
 
 Hume died, as he had lived, a brave, upright man ; 
 and it is some satisfaction to know that his moral, as well 
 as his mental qualities, remained intact until the last. 
 
 
48 LIFE OF 
 
 The less tolerant section of the public, no doubt, expected 
 at the time to find that his death-bed was a scene of 
 mental anguish, for reasons as good as those which 
 prompted its less educated members to crowd round his 
 grave in the Calton burying-ground, in the anticipation 
 of seeing his body snatched from its last resting-place in 
 a blue flame. 
 
 With Hume's death there came a great change over the 
 life and habits of his friend. It was not merely that old 
 associations, and the tie which bound him to Edinburgh, 
 were broken. In a few months he had become famous. 
 Hitherto he had been known only as a man of letters, 
 who had written a book of some merit upon Moral 
 Philosophy, and whose greatest distinction was his asso- 
 ciation with Hume. But now he had, almost at a stroke, 
 kindled an opposition fiercer and more substantial than 
 any which Hume had raised. There are comparatively 
 few men who become excited at an attack on their faith. 
 There are many who resent, with the utmost conceivable 
 bitterness, an attack upon their pockets. Were the 
 principles of " The Wealth of Nations " to be adopted, the 
 whole of the then business of the mercantile community 
 must be upset. The promulgation of a far less heretical 
 doctrine cost Burke his seat at Bristol, and even to-day, 
 when the teaching of Adam Smith has become familiar 
 to us, and his principles have long since been made part 
 of the law of the land, it is over the issues which he 
 placed before the world that the political controversy 
 rages most keenly. As soon as the practical bearing of 
 the book became understood, a storm of criticism arose 
 around it. Statesmen and men of letters alike were at 
 
ADAM SMITH. 49 
 
 once interested in it, and unlike " The Treatise of Human 
 Nature," it produced its effect almost at once. The 
 enthusiasm with which this author was received by 
 politicians of the first rank may be gathered from what 
 took place on the occasion of a dinner-party to which 
 Smith was invited by Lord Melville at Wimbledon, shortly 
 after the appearance of the book. Pitt, Grenville, 
 Addington, and several others were among the guests. 
 Smith was late and apologized. The whole company 
 rose, and Pitt exclaimed " We will stand till you are 
 seated, for we are all your scholars ! " 
 
 In the midst of the storm which he had raised, Smith 
 went to London. When he resigned his chair thirteen 
 years previously, in order to travel with the Duke of 
 Buccleuch, the trustees of his pupil had settled upon him 
 an annuity of ^300, a sum which was amply sufficient 
 for his comparatively simple wants, and which enabled 
 him to use his time as he pleased. He now plunged into 
 the society which was only too glad to receive him. He 
 became one of the little circle of famous men at whose " 
 social gatherings Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, and Dr. 
 Johnson presided. With all the members of this circle 
 Smith did not get on equally well. There is, indeed, 
 evidence in the pages of Boswell who, by the way, had 
 been a student under Smith at Glasgow that Smith and 
 Johnson, notwithstanding that they belonged to the same 
 club, agreed at times very ill indeed. One scandalous 
 story, however, related by Sir Walter Scott, whether or 
 not it is wholly without foundation, is, on the face of it, 
 inaccurate. On the authority of Professor Miller, Scott 
 charges Boswell with having omitted to mention that 
 
 4 
 
50 LIFE OF 
 
 Smith and Johnson had met, not merely in London, but 
 also in Glasgow in 1773, and that Smith, leaving the 
 party where he had met the distinguished tourist, went 
 on to another party where Miller was. Knowing that 
 Smith had been in Johnson's society, the company were 
 anxious to learn how they had got on. At first Smith, 
 so the story goes, would only answer, " He's a brute 
 he's a brute ! " but on further inquiry it appeared that 
 Johnson no sooner saw Smith, than he attacked him for 
 some point of his famous letter to Strahan on the death 
 of Hume. Smith vindicated the truth of his statement. 
 "What did Johnson say?" was the universal inquiry. 
 "Why, he said," replied Smith,- with the deepest im- 
 pression of resentment, "He said You lie!" "And 
 what did you reply?" "I said You are a son of 
 
 a ! " It is sufficient comment on the credibility of 
 
 this story to point out that while Johnson's visit to 
 Glasgow took place in 1773, Hume did not die until 1776. 
 
 After remaining for two years in London, and mixing 
 while there with the most "brilliant literary society of the 
 period, Smith returned to Scotland, for which country he 
 had been appointed, through the influence of his friend 
 the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the Commissioners of 
 Customs. The duties of this office required his presence 
 in Edinburgh, and accordingly his mother, and his 
 cousin, Miss Douglas, removed from Kirkcaldy, and 
 joined him there. The household was only broken up 
 by the deaths, of the former in 1784, and of the latter 
 in 1788. He never got over his mother's death. For 
 sixty years her house had been his real home. 
 
 Dugald Stewart relates, that there had once in Smith's 
 
ADAM SMITH. 51 
 
 history been an attachment of a different kind. " In the 
 early part of Mr. 'Smith's life it is well known to his 
 friends that he was for several years attached to a young 
 lady of great beauty and accomplishment. How far his 
 addresses were favourably received, or what the circum- 
 stances were which prevented their union, I have not 
 been able to learn ; but I believe it to be pretty certain 
 that after this disappointment he laid aside all thoughts 
 of marriage. The lady to whom I allude died also 
 unmarried. She survived Mr. Smith for a considerable 
 number of years, and was alive long after the publication 
 of the first edition of this memoir. I had the pleasure 
 of seeing her when she was turned of eighty, and when 
 she still retained evident traces of her former beauty. 
 The powers of her understanding and the gaiety of her 
 temper seemed to have suffered nothing from the hand of 
 time." 
 
 From 1778, when he came to Edinburgh, until his 
 death twelve years afterwards, Smith lived in a house 
 called Panmure House, at the bottom of a close, a little 
 way below the Canongate Church. There he was fond 
 of entertaining his friends in the most hospitable fashion. 
 He seems to have somewhat neglected the opportunity, 
 which the light duties of his office afforded him, of 
 revising and completing his various works. Indeed he 
 appears to have written nothing, and to have studied 
 little, if at all. It is recorded that he found the official 
 demands upon his time enough to waste his spirits and 
 dissipate his attention. But he went much into society, 
 and as both the drawing of his figure and the letterpress 
 in " Kay's Portraits " show, he was one of the prominen: 
 
52 LIFE of 
 
 Edinburgh figures of his time. He was no great talker, 
 so far as ordinary conversation was concerned. But 
 when drawn out, or roused, he would pour forth a very 
 torrent on all manner of topics upon which his vast 
 reading and retentive memory furnished him with 
 abundance of materials. Ordinarily, he shrank from 
 public controversy. On one memorable occasion only 
 do we hear of his being made the subject of anything 
 approaching to a public attack. It was the publication 
 of his famous letter to Strahan upon the death of Hume 
 that called forth an anonymous epistle from " One of the 
 people called Christians." The author of this com- 
 position turned out to be Dr. Home, the Bishop -of 
 Norwich. His language was by no means conciliatory. 
 Not unjustifiably conjecturing that there was consider- 
 able sympathy on the part of Smith with the peculiar 
 tenets of. his dead friend, the bishop writes after the 
 frank fashion of those days : 
 
 "You have been lately employed in embalming a 
 philosopher; his body, I believe I must say, for 
 concerning the other part of his nature neither you 
 nor he seem to have entertained an idea, sleeping 
 or waking. Else it surely might have claimed a 
 little of your care and attention; and we would think 
 the belief of the soul's existence and immortality 
 could do no harm, if it did no good, in a Theory of 
 Moral Sentiments. But every gentleman understands his 
 own business best. . . . Are you sure, and can you make 
 us sure, that there really exist no such things as God, a 
 future state of rewards and punishments? If so, all is 
 
ADAM SMITH. 53 
 
 well. Let us then^ in our last hours, read Lucian, and 
 play at whist, and droll upon Charon and his boat ; let 
 us die as foolish and insensible, as much like our brother 
 philosophers, the calves of the field and the asses of the 
 desert, as we can, for the life of us. ... Upon the whole, 
 doctor, your meaning is good, but I think you will not 
 succeed this time. You would persuade us by the 
 example of David Hume, Esq., that Atheism is the only 
 cordial for low spirits, and the proper antidote against 
 the fear of death." 
 
 Smith wisely ignored this letter, and the controversy 
 which threatened, dropped. 
 
 Dugald Stewart has preserved to us some reminiscences 
 of Adam Smith's manner of composition. He composed 
 slowly and with difficulty throughout, unlike Hume, who 
 latterly acquired a facility so great that the last volumes of 
 his " History " were printed from his original copy with a 
 few marginal corrections. Smith's practice when com- 
 posing was to walk up and down his room dictating to a 
 secretary. With some parts of what he had done he 
 was never satisfied. He directed the manuscript volumes 
 of his lectures to be burned in his lifetime, and the 
 following letter, written by him to Hume, in April, 1773, 
 apparently in contemplation of a journey to London, 
 shows that he had but little confidence in his own judg- 
 ment as to what he had done : 
 
 "Mv DEAR FRIEND, As I have left the care of all my 
 literary papers to you, I must tell you that except those 
 which I carry along with me, there are none worth the 
 
54 LIFE OF 
 
 publication, but a fragment of a great work which con- 
 tains a history of the astronomical systems that were 
 successively in fashion down to the time of Descartes. 
 Whether that might not be published as a fragment of 
 an intended juvenile work, I leave entirely to your 
 judgment, though I begin to suspect myself there is 
 more refinement than solidity in some parts of it. This 
 little work you will find in a thin folio paper book in my 
 back-room. All the other loose papers, which you will 
 find in that desk, or within the glass folding doors of a 
 bureau which stands in my bedroom, together with about 
 eighteen thin paper folio books, which you will likewise 
 find within the same glass-folding doors, I desire may be 
 destroyed without any examination. Unless I die very 
 suddenly, I shall take care that the papers I carry with 
 me shall be carefully sent to you. I am ever, my dear 
 friend, most faithfully yours, 
 
 lt ADAM SMITH." 
 
 In 1787 Smith was elected Lord Rector of the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow. " No preferment," he writes, " could 
 have given me so much real satisfaction. No man can 
 owe greater obligations to a society than I do to the 
 University of Glasgow. They educated me : they sent 
 me to Oxford. Soon after my return to Scotland, they 
 elected me one of their own members, and afterwards 
 preferred me to another office, to which the abilities and 
 virtues of the never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson had 
 given a superior degree of illustration. The period of 
 thirteen years which I spent as a member of that society, 
 I remember as by far the most useful, and therefore by 
 
ADAM SMITH. 55 
 
 far the happiest and most honourable period of my life ; 
 and now, after three and twenty years' absence, to be re- 
 membered in so very agreeable a manner by my old 
 friends and protectors, gives me a heartfelt joy which I 
 cannot easily express to you." 
 
 As has already been mentioned, he sustained a severe 
 shock through his mother's death in 1784. From this 
 date his health seems to have declined. In 1790 he was 
 prostrated by an obstruction of the bowels, which, after 
 inflicting on him a good deal of prolonged suffering, 
 terminated fatally in July of that year. He thus died at 
 the comparatively early 'age of sixty-seven. 
 
 On the southern slope of the Calton Hill, opening off 
 the London Road, there is a small and quiet cemetery, 
 in a corner of which stands a plain but stately tomb, 
 overlooking a rocky and precipitous descent. Below it, 
 almost within a stonethrow, and in the heart of one of 
 the most densely populated districts of Edinburgh, lies 
 another burying-place, its gravestones blackened with the 
 smoke and dust of the busy city. Above, there repose 
 the remains of David Hume. Below, and not far sepa- 
 rated from him, lies the dust of his dearest friend. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WE now approach the subject of this book in his 
 capacity of a moralist. Had his ethical writings not 
 assumed a systematic form, but been presented as a series 
 of essays, written by an acute observer of men and things, 
 upon the nature of certain human emotions, Adam Smith 
 would, in all probability, have taken rank as one of the 
 greatest essayists in English literature. The style is the 
 simple, direct, eighteenth-century style which is the envy 
 of those for whom it is a lost art. The writer has the 
 acuteness and latent humour of Montaigne, while he has 
 something of that power of subtle analysis which charac- 
 terizes the highest type of latter-day novelist. But it is 
 not in him to lay the foundations of a philosophical 
 system. Such a system cannot, or, at all events, at the 
 time he wrote, could not, dispense with some kind of 
 metaphysical basis, whether that basis dogmatically 
 ignored and excluded any metempirical existence, or pro- 
 fessed to recognize and build upon something more or 
 less of the sort. Of what Smith taught in that first part 
 of his fourfold course at Glasgow, which dealt with these 
 and the like topics, we have no authentic record; but there 
 is abundant internal evidence that it could not have been 
 
LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 57 
 
 anything either very definite, or that committed him very 
 deeply. The hesitation which both Hume and he 
 evidently felt about the publication of the former's " Dia- 
 logues concerning Natural Religion," proves that Smith 
 was in no hurry to enter the lists as champion of a 
 scepticism, which in those times was as unpopular as it is 
 popular in certain circles to-day. Besides this, during 
 the period when these things were most in his thoughts 
 he was a professor in a Scottish university, a position 
 which he certainly could not have occupied had his meta- 
 physics been unsatisfactory. Hume failed to obtain the 
 very position Smith had held, and we may, without 
 violence to probabilities, conjecture that the reason why 
 a certain Mr. Clow was, as we have already seen, 
 appointed to the chair vacated by Smith at Glasgow, in 
 preference to both Burke and Hume, was that neither of 
 the latter united in himself the requisites of orthodoxy 
 and nationality. It may be, though it is hardly probable, 
 that Smith had no taste either for metaphysics or for 
 controversy, but if want of courage was the cause of the 
 form assumed by his ethical system, the opinions which 
 were repressed have taken ample vengeance. A writer 
 on ethics so acute could not fail to make his mark as a 
 man of letters. A philosopher so silent about the princi- 
 ples on which his teaching depended, could not fail to be 
 overlooked as a scientific thinker. In every reference, 
 excepting that of the systematic study of the subject 
 which it professes to expound, his "Theory of Moral 
 Sentiments " is delightful reading. As a work on Moral 
 Philosophy it is dull and unedifying. As such, therefore, 
 it will receive but scant notice in these pages. 
 
58 LIFE OF 
 
 To understand Smith's position as a philosopher, pro- 
 perly so called, it is above all things necessary to bear in 
 mind his position in history. With Locke a revival 
 had taken place in British philosophy. Locke ' invented,' 
 (the term is more accurate than ' discovered/) and 
 applied to the facts of experience, a method which was 
 his own so far as psychology was concerned. 
 
 Bacon had called men back to the investigation of the 
 facts of experience as the foundation of knowledge. 
 His method was what is popularly called inductive. It 
 proceeded from particular instances to general par- 
 ticulars, and like all scientific methods it really got along 
 by first inventing hypotheses and testing their truth after- 
 wards. The success of such a method is, of course, 
 dependent as much upon the scope of the imagination 
 of the observer in framing hypotheses, as on the accuracy 
 of the verification. 
 
 By pursuing this method, Locke put together a body 
 of psychological knowledge which rested on a metaphy- 
 sical basis. Most of his psychology was, and still is, of 
 the greatest value. But the metaphysical assumptions, 
 the worst features of which were the doctrines of what in 
 the Scottish philosophy was afterwards known as Repre- 
 sentative Perception, and of a supposed abstract idea of 
 Substance, were highly vulnerable. All our knowledge, 
 according to Locke, consists in " the view the mind has 
 of its own ideas." " A quality in an object is the power. 
 to produce any idea in my mind." The mind was for 
 him a tabula rasa, upon which * substance ' imprinted 
 ideas. " Not imagining how these simple ideas can 
 subsist of themselves, we accustomed ourselves to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 59 
 
 suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and 
 from which they do result; which, therefore, we call 
 substance." 
 
 Bishop Berkeley made short work of the theory of 
 Substance. He put the " New Question," what does 
 Substance mean for those who hold that all knowledge 
 has its origin in sense perception ? His answer was that 
 Locke's ' substance ' was a meaningless attempt at an 
 abstract, and therefore impossible, idea. There could be 
 but one true conception of the objective world, the con- 
 ception of it as a series of sensations and groups of 
 sensations impressed upon the human mind by the only 
 existence which, according to Berkeley, was at once 
 independent of it, and intelligible, the Supreme Being. 
 Hume accepted the criticism of Locke's theory of 
 Substance put forward by Berkeley, and proceeded to 
 make havoc of the edifice which the latter had reared 
 in its place. What intelligible meaning had either 
 the mental substance upon which Berkeley imagined 
 sensations to be impressed, or the Deity who so im- 
 pressed them, for those who, like Berkeley and himself, 
 thought that all knowledge had its source in sensation? 
 None at all ! Custom and the laws of association were 
 responsible for the fiction that we ourselves had any 
 existence apart from our momentary experiences, or that 
 these experiences had any cause or validity otherwise 
 than as our ideas. It was this conclusion which 
 Kant critically examined, with the result that in his 
 view Hume's reasoning proved too much, if carried to 
 its logical conclusions, and made even the presupposed 
 fact of a sequence of sensations an impossibility. He 
 
GO LIFE OF 
 
 went back to Hume's premises, the principles of Locke, 
 and, agreeing that in point of time, sensation and not 
 thought was the prius in the individual, proceeded to 
 show that the individual experience in which sensation 
 became a fact, and the space and time which were the 
 forms of that experience, themselves implied, as their 
 logical prius, an intelligence for which alone they 
 could exist. With Kant and his successors we have 
 nothing to do here. What concerns us is to state the 
 position of philosophy in the hands of David Hume, 
 who obviously had a deep influence in this reference 
 upon his friend Smith. In morals, Hume was not, in 
 the ordinary sense, a utilitarian. His method was to 
 take what he conceived to be the facts, and apply to 
 them the Baconian method. His philosophical stand- 
 point of course led him to endeavour to resolve the facts 
 of our moral experience into the simplest elements 
 possible. A man for whom self meant only a series of 
 really unrelated sensations, was not likely to set up, as 
 the object of conduct, the attainment of ends dependent 
 on a complicated conception of a self which for him 
 was more or less of a metaphysical figment. He took 
 the good and bad tendencies in human nature as he 
 found them, and dealt with them by the same method 
 as he had already applied to the analysis of the relations 
 of cause and effect. His method was likewise the 
 method of Adam Smith, and the metaphysical and 
 psychological presuppositions on which it was made 
 to depend, in the case of Hume explicitly, were those 
 on which the " Theory of Moral Sentiments " was de- 
 pendent implicitly. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 
 
 Hume's application of the experimental method to 
 the investigation of the phenomena of moral life had 
 made it plain to him that the chief feature in these 
 phenomena was the approval of the qualities which are 
 recognized as meritorious. The facts of the case were 
 inconsistent with a reference of this approval to self-love 
 as its origin. Seeking this origin elsewhere, he adopted 
 a view of it which rested on a disinterested benevolence, 
 apparently independent of any merely self-regarding 
 point of view : " The hypothesis which we countenance 
 is plain. It maintains that morality is determined by "I 
 
 Itdefines virtue to be whatever mental 
 
 action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing senti- 
 ment of approbation, and vice the. contrary." x 
 " This statement by Hume of his theory puts us in a 
 position to form a just estimate of the nature of the contri- 
 bution of Adam Smith to the elucidation of the problem 
 of the nature of moral qualities. The 'sentiment,' which for 
 Hume was the great fact, demanded a close investigation, 
 and to such an investigation Smith subjected it. With 
 Hume moral sentiment was closely connected with some 
 kind of perception of the useful consequences, (useful 
 not merely to the individual but to the race,) of moral 
 conduct. With Smith a moral judgment fc r ffl1]y an 
 expression of the sympathy of an impartial spectator 
 with the impulses which occasion action. Take, for 
 example, conscience. "We either approve," he says, "or 
 diBUjjpiuvtroi the conduct of another man according as 
 we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, 
 we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the_ 
 1 Appendix I. W ** Essay concerning the Principles of Morals." 
 
62 LIFE OF 
 
 sentiments and motives which directed it. And, in jhe 
 same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our 
 own conduct according as we feel that, when we place 
 ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, 
 as it were, with his eyes and from his station, we either 
 can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the 
 sentiments and motives which influenced it. We can never 
 survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never 
 form any judgment regarding them, unless we remove 
 ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and 
 endeavour to view them as at a certain distanG@-&om .. 
 us." Like all persons who proceed inductively, Smith 
 applied his preconceived hypothesis to the facts, and 
 tested its accordance with them. His hypothesis was 
 that the phenomena which had attracted the attention of 
 Hume, as well as of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, might 
 be explained as the result of a natural instinct of 
 sympathy or fellow-feeling. His ethical writings consist 
 of illustrations of the application of his hypothesis. 
 
 " The Theory of Moral Sentiments " opens with a de- 
 
 . scription of sympathy as a principle of human nature 
 
 !/ which interests man in the fortune of others, and renders 
 
 If their happiness necessary to him, although he derives 
 
 nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. The 
 
 emotion in question denotes, speaking generally, our 
 
 fellow feeling with any passion whatever. Applying 
 
 this explanation to what is commonly recognized as the 
 
 propriety or impropriety of actions, the just result arrived 
 
 at may be summarized thus : When the original passions 
 
 of the person principally concerned are in perfect concord 
 
 with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they 
 
ADAM SMITH. 63 
 
 necessarily appear to him just and proper ; and when, 
 on the contrary, he finds that they do not coincide with 
 what he feels, they necessarily appear to him unjust and 
 improper, and unsuitable to the causes which excite them. 
 To approve of the passions of another as suitable to their 
 objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely 
 sympathize with them ; and not to approve of them as 
 such, is the same thing as to observe that we do not 
 entirely sympathize with them. The character of the 
 book, and its style, are far more those of a volume of 
 literary essays, devoted to the purpose of expanding these 
 propositions, than what one naturally expects in a philo- 
 sophical treatise. The method of Hume is there, but 
 we lack his precision, and that grasp of the whole which 
 is never wanting in his pages. The truth is that Smith 
 was never quite in his place as a professor of Moral 
 Philosophy. He was essentially an observer of the 
 external world of men and things. When he takes 
 to introspection, his analyses are those of the essayist 
 rather than of the psychologist. But from the point 
 of view of literature they are admirable, for they possess 
 the supreme quality of truthfulness. Take, for example, 
 the following remarks upon what he speaks of as the 
 passions which take their origin from the body : 
 
 " It is indecent to express any strong degree of those 
 passions which arise from a certain situation or dis- 
 position of the body; because the company, not being 
 in the same disposition, cannot be expected to sympathize 
 with them. Violent hunger, for example, though upon 
 many occasions not only natural but unavoidable, is 
 
64 LIFE OF 
 
 always indecent; and to eat voraciously is universally 
 regarded as a piece of ill manners. There is, however, 
 some degree of sympathy even with hunger. It is agree- 
 able to see our companions eat with a good appetite, and 
 all expressions of loathing are offensive. . . . 
 
 " It is quite otherwise with those passions which take 
 their origin from the imagination. The frame of my 
 body can be but little affected by the alterations which 
 are brought about on that of my companions ; but my 
 imagination is more ductile, and more readily assumes, 
 if I may say so, the shape and configuration of the 
 imaginations of those with whom I am familiar. A 
 disappointment in love, or ambition, will, upon this 
 account, call forth more sympathy than the greatest 
 bodily evil. Those passions arise altogether from the 
 imagination. 
 
 " The person who has lost his whole fortune, if he is 
 in health, feels nothing in his body. What he suffers 
 is from the imagination only, which represents to him the 
 loss of his dignity, neglect from his friends, contempt 
 from his enemies dependence, want, and misery coming 
 fast upon him ; and we sympathize with him the more 
 strongly upon this account, because our imaginations can 
 the more readily mould themselves upon his imagination 
 than our bodies can mould themselves upon his body. 
 The loss of a leg may generally be regarded as a more 
 real calamity than the loss of a mistress. It would be a 
 ridiculous tragedy, however, of which the catastrophe was 
 to turn upon a loss of this kind. A misfortune of the 
 other kind, how frivolous soever it may appear to be, has 
 given occasion to many a fine one." 
 
ADAM SMITH. 65 
 
 This is fine writing. Its matter and manner are as good 
 as those of Montaigne, and there is a purpose super- 
 added. Subtle analysis of this kind is never so pleasing 
 as when it comes before us incidentally, as it were, and 
 in the form of a means to an end It is wonderful that 
 the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" has not become 
 more popular as general reading. In a literary reference 
 it is a far greater book than it ever can be in the con- 
 templation of the mere student of the history of philo- 
 sophy. The passage quoted reminds one of Schopenhauer 
 when he is at his best. It goes to the very root of the 
 whole matter in its subtle apprehension of the most 
 delicate of distinctions. 
 
 We are now in a position to describe, in its outline, 
 Smith's ethical system. The guide to it is throughout 
 the theory of sympathy stated above. It has already 
 been suggested that the foundation of " The Theory of 
 Moral Sentiments " was not of a Utilitarian character. 
 Hume was far too keen and sceptical an observer to put 
 forward a theory so difficult to reconcile with the facts of 
 experience as one which should find the guiding principle 
 of conduct in the tendency to seek self. And Adam 
 Smith was equally cautious. Hfi l66R'e9 to the facts, ancL 
 among the facts he found unselfishness staring him inthe 
 "face? 'lake the opening sentences ot his book : " How 
 selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently 
 some principles in his nature which interest him in the 
 fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary 
 to him, though he derives nothing from it except the 
 pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compas- 
 sion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, 
 
 5 
 
66 LIFE OF 
 
 when we either see it or are made to conceive it, in a 
 very lively manner." 
 
 Hume, his somewhat cynical scepticism again predomi- 
 nating, had thrown out the suggestion that our sympathetic 
 pleasure and displeasure at the moral or immoral conduct 
 of others, was due to our perception of the tendencies of 
 the respective actions, and their probable effects on the 
 well-being of the race. Not so Smith. He is fonder of, 
 and more true to, facts than was even Hume. He finds 
 that the essential element in moral sentiment is a direct 
 sympathy with the motives, and not with the conse- 
 quences, of action. Upon this point he is quite clear. 
 Nor does he seek to go behind the facts, or to find any 
 explanation for them. He is content to treat this 
 phenomenon of sympathy as original and irresoluble. 
 It is not easy to find in the " Theory " any reason for the 
 plan he adopts in the investigations he bases on his dis- 
 covery. First of all, he proceeds to explain our sense of 
 the propriety of actions. This, he declares, depends 
 upon the extent to which the motive or feeling of the 
 person principally concerned accords with the feeling of 
 the spectator. " The man whose sympathy keeps time 
 to my grief, cannot but admit the reasonableness of my 
 sorrow. He who laughs at the same joke, and laughs 
 along with me, cannot well deny the propriety of my 
 laughter. On the contrary, the person who upon these 
 different occasions, either feels no such emotion as I 
 feel, or feels more than bears any proportion to mine, 
 cannot avoid disapproving my sentiments on account of 
 their dissonance with his own." There are two kinds of 
 sympathy, an agreeable and a disagreeable kind. And 
 
ADAM SMITH. 67 
 
 Smith will not admit that there is any inconsistency in 
 the admission .into his system of a disagreeable sympathy, 
 arising from the general proposition which he lays down 
 that the sentiment of approbation, which is always agree- 
 able, is founded on sympathy. For, as he points out, in 
 the sentiment of approbation there are two things to be 
 taken notice of: first, the sympathetic passion of the 
 spectator ; and secondly, the emotion which arises from 
 his observing the perfect coincidence between this sym- 
 pathetic passion in himself, and the original passion in 
 the person principally concerned. It is this last emotion, 
 according to Smith, in which the sentiment of approbation 
 properly consists, an emotion which is always agreeable 
 and delightful. The other may be either agreeable or 
 disagreeable, according to the nature of the original 
 passion, whose features it must always in some measure 
 retain. In the chapters which deal with this subject 
 there are some fine specimens of analysis. That which 
 discusses the effect upon individuals of a weaker calibre 
 of the manifestations of a coarse, strong nature, is 
 especially worth remembering. " The hoarse, boisterous, 
 and discordant voice of anger, when heard at a distance, 
 inspires us with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards 
 it, as to one who cries out with pain and agony. Women 
 and men of weak nerves tremble and are overcome with 
 fear, though sensible that themselves are not the objects 
 of the anger. They conceive fear, however, by putting 
 themselves in the situation of the person who is so. 
 Even those of stouter hearts are disturbed ; not indeed 
 enough to make them afraid, but enough to make them 
 angry; for anger is the passion which they would feel in 
 
68 LIFE OF 
 
 the situation of the other person. It is the same case 
 with hatred. Mere expressions of spite inspire it against 
 nobody but the man who uses them. Both these passions 
 are by nature the objects of our aversion. Their dis- 
 agreeable and boisterous appearance never excites, never 
 prepares, and often disturbs our sympathy. Grief does 
 not more powerfully engage and attract us to the person 
 in whom we observe it, than these, while we are ignorant 
 of their cause, disgust and detach us from him. It was, 
 it seems, the intention of nature that these rougher 
 and more unamiable emotions, which drive men from 
 one another, should be less easily and more rarely com- 
 municated." 
 
 The next topic to which the theory of sympathy is 
 applied is that of merit and demerit, or the objects of 
 reward and punishment. We do not thoroughly and 
 heartily sympathize with the gratitude of one man towards 
 another, merely because that other has been the cause of 
 his good fortune. But when to the beneficent 
 of an action is joined the proprietylSTTIieaifection from 
 which it proceeds, then Smith holds that the action is a 
 meritorious one. ^J[t is, in short r the. pr^prity fl r ' fflr 
 ^propriety of the motive, from the point of view of a 
 spectator capable of sympathy, which ^detenmnes^b 
 /TjiurafTpiaiity QtjJlS .a^qtion. 
 
 The weakness of all this as a theory of morals is 
 apparent. Everything turns upon the subjective condition 
 of a supposed spectator. But every spectator is an 
 % individual. Therefore Smith makes the nature and 
 validity of ethical principles depend on the state of 
 mind of an individual. He ;eeks to lessen this difficulty 
 
ADAM SMITH. 69 
 
 by supposing the spectator to be an impartial one, but 
 it is needless to remark that this supposition does not 
 avail for escape from the difficulty . The dilemma is 
 exhaustive. Every system of morals must either be 
 hedonistic (that is, based upon the pleasurable impulses 
 of the particular individual), or else depend on some | 
 principle to which validity is ascribed apart from the! 
 particular experiences of the person who forms a moral/ 
 judgment based on it. It is just because Smith does not! 
 face this dilemma, and accept one or other of the alternal 
 tives, that his system has become of little or no account 
 as a contribution to philosophy. 
 
 The third important subject dealt with in the book, is 
 the foundation of our judgments concerning our own 
 sentiments and conduct, and of the sense of duty. This 
 embraces the theory of conscience. Man desires, 
 according to Adam Smith, not only to be loved, but to I 
 be lovely. The love and admiration which we naturally 
 conceive for those whose character and conduct we 
 approve of, necessarily dispose us to desire to become 
 ourselves the objects of the like agreeable sentiments, 
 and to be as amiable and as admirable as those whom 
 we admire the most. The most sincere praise can give 
 but little pleasure when it cannot be considered as some 
 sort of proof of praiseworthiness. Nature has endowed 
 us, not only with a desire of being approved of, but 
 with a desire of being what ought to be approved of, or 
 of being what we ourselves approve in other men. This 
 explains how it is that profligate criminals have frequently 
 but little sense of the baseness of their own conduct, and 
 regard with comparative equanimity death upon the 
 
70 LIFE OF 
 
 gibbet as a mere piece of bad luck which has befallen 
 them. Such men conquer the fear of death easily 
 because of this. The innocent man, on the other 
 hand, over and above the uneasiness which the, nature 
 of death may cause him, is tormented by his own in- 
 dignation at the injustice which has been done him, 
 when he is wrongly condemned. Pain, as Smith is never 
 tired of reminding us, is, in almost all cases, a more 
 pungent sensation than the opposite and correspondent 
 pleasure. The one depresses us much more below the 
 natural state of our happiness than the other raises us 
 above it. Hence the wise man will often feel severely 
 the injustice of unmerited censure, while he will reject 
 with contempt unmerited applause. Such is the origin 
 and nature of conscience. Some of the most profound 
 and weighty observations in all the writings of the author 
 of the theory are to be found in the chapters which deal 
 with it. 
 
 The remaining great topic of the " Theory of Moral^ 
 Sentiments' ^ is Trie character oiTyirtue. The manjwho 
 acts accorgmp; to the rules of perfect prudence,j2f strict 
 justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be 
 j^erfectly virtuous, although the most perfect knowledge 
 of riie nilffi pf r^r^^J^Jf It is not sirppflr^rt hy thp_ 
 most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to 
 do his duty.jThese propositions initiate an investigation 
 "t67rn3etalle"9~ i to be sketched in these pages, even in 
 outline, but well worth a careful perusal. Smith is never 
 so good as when he is writing in the strain adopted here. 
 There is no affectation, no insincerity about him. Nor 
 has he anything of the prude in his composition. He 
 
ADAM SMITH. 71 
 
 was a wise, just man, or at least one who knew well what 
 wisdom and justice meant. And his style in treating of 
 these things is excellent. He is never heavy, even when 
 he is as diffuse as often happens with him. It has 
 already been remarked that had he devoted his powers 
 as a moralist to essay writing, instead of to the composi- 
 tion of a systematic treatise, he might have attained high 
 distinction among British men of letters. But it was 
 not to be so, and the blame lies with the author if the 
 public have persistently declined to look for one kind of 
 merit in regions where the only promise held out to 
 them is that of something quite different. 
 
 It will be convenient to take this opportunity of 
 adverting to the literary productions of the author of the 
 " Theory of Moral Sentiments," other than the " Wealth 
 of Nations." Besides these two works, there are extant 
 several essays of considerable length written by Smith at 
 various periods in his career. One of these, the " Con- 
 siderations concerning the First Formation of Languages," 
 while of no general interest, exhibits the subtlety of 
 Smith's imagination in its illustrations of the proposition 
 that language becomes more simple in its rudiments and 
 principles, just in proportion as it grows more complex 
 in its composition. The author likens the gradual 
 improvement of language to the gradual improvement of 
 machinery, in that, instead of a particular principle 
 being applied for the production of each single move- 
 ment, a single principle is in an increasing degree so 
 applied as to produce more than one movement. But 
 he lays stress on the qualification of the analogy by the 
 circumstance that, in the case of languages, the simpli- 
 
72 LIFE OP 
 
 fications, instead of rendering the means more perfect 
 for the fulfilment of its end, really renders it less perfect. 
 
 The essay on the " Principles which lead and direct 
 Philosophical Enquiries as illustrated by the History of 
 Astronomy," was left by its author in an incomplete 
 condition. What is finished of it relates mainly to 
 method, and to the tendencies of the mind in observa- 
 tion. The essays on the " Principles which lead and 
 direct Philosophical Enquiries, illustrated by the History 
 of the Ancient Physics," and by the " History of the 
 Ancient Logic and Metaphysics" respectively, are of 
 little general interest. The first mentioned of these 
 three essays is divided into four chapters ; the first deal- 
 ing with the " Effects of Unexpectedness or Surprise " ; 
 the second investigating " Wonder, or the Effects of 
 Novelty"; the third relating to the "Origin of Philosophy"; 
 and the fourth treating of the " History of Astronomy." 
 
 There is also an essay on the " Nature of that Imita- 
 tion which takes place in what are called the Imitative 
 Arts." There is much matter here of a kind which 
 recalls the style of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments." 
 But as a whole, the essay is decidedly below the level of 
 Smith's general writing. There is a characteristic com- 
 ment by the bosom friend of Hume upon Hume's most 
 aggressive enemy (Rousseau) : " * Painting/ says an author 
 more capable of feeling strongly than of analysing accu- 
 rately, ' Painting, which presents its imitations not to 
 the imagination, but to the senses, can represent nothing 
 besides the objects of sight/" Smith goes on to con- 
 trast music with painting, and both music and painting 
 with dancing and poetry. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 73 
 
 The brief treatise on the external senses is of no 
 philosophical value. When Adam Smith says in it that 
 the four qualities, or attributes, of extension, divisibility, 
 figure, and mobility, or the capacity of motion or rest, 
 seem necessarily involved in the idea or conception of a 
 solid substance, one feels instinctively that he had never 
 taken kindly either to his Berkeley or to his Hume r 
 There is in this essay, among other things, a repetition 
 of the even then somewhat hackneyed psychological tale 
 of Cheselden's observations upon the growth of vision 
 in the young gentleman whom he couched for cataract. 
 
 The only other production by Smith which remains to 
 us, is a brief fragment upon the affinity between certain 
 English and Italian Verses. What was in the mind of 
 the author of the treatises, some complete, and some 
 fragmentary upon all these subjects, is not difficult to 
 divine. He probably contemplated a series of great 
 works upon the various phases of intellectual life which 
 were embraced in his course of lectures at Glasgow 
 University. What he completed embraced the theories 
 of Ethics and of Political Economy. What he failed to 
 complete would have covered the field of those general 
 subjects which lay between these theories, including a 
 systematic view of the science of Jurisprudence. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ON February 17, 1792, two years after Adam Smith's 
 death, a famous debate took place in the House 
 of Commons. The Commons having resolved themselves 
 into a committee of the whole House, the Earl of Morn 
 ington in the chair, to consider so much of his Majesty'? 
 speech in the opening of the Session as related to 
 the public income and expenditure, Mr. Pitt rose and 
 addressed the committee. After explaining the several 
 measures which he proposed to introduce for the relief of 
 the British taxpayer, he proceeded to discuss the causes 
 of the rapid increase which at that time was taking place 
 in the manufacturing industries of the country. Among 
 these he placed one which may best be described in 
 his own words : 
 
 "But there is still another cause, even more 
 satisfactory than these, because it is of a still more 
 extensive and permanent nature ; that constant accu- 
 mulation of capital, that continual tendency to in- 
 crease, 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 mis- 
 
LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 75 
 
 chievous 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." 
 
 No words express better than this language of Pitt the 
 completeness of the recognition of the change which Adam 
 Smith had effected in public opinion by his new view of 
 the problem which he set himself to investigate. That 
 problem was not abstract, but concrete. The question 
 was the great one of the nature of the production and 
 accumulation of wealth in a community containing men 
 and institutions of a certain and definite kind just such 
 a kind as would rise up in image before the minds of an 
 assemblage of the Commons of England, sitting in the 
 later part of the eighteenth century. One of the secrets 
 of the great popularity of " The Wealth of Nations " was 
 this concrete quality. Its author united in himself two 
 powers which do not often go together, the power of\\ 
 abstract thinking, and that of being able to grasp facts \ 
 with a keen interest in them merely as facts. This it is / 
 
76 LIFE Of 
 
 which has made his book immortal in its influence on 
 statesmen of all ways of thinking. We knoiv that on 
 Pitt it exercised a profound influence from the first time 
 he read it, and he read it often. On three great 
 occasions it completely determined his policy. The first 
 was that on which he laid down his financial principles in 
 the speech just quoted ; the second was his refusal to 
 support a Bill brought in in 1795 by Mr. Samuel Whit- 
 bread, the then member for Bedford, to regulate the 
 wages of labourers in husbandry ; and the third was his 
 resolute insistence that the Government should, in 1800, 
 abstain from interference in the purchase of corn in 
 foreign markets, on the ground that the speculations of 
 private individuals afforded the greatest prospect of pro- 
 ducing a sufficient supply. 
 
 Whether or not Adam Smith is correctly repre- 
 sented as having maintained in theory that political 
 economy is a body of abstract and immutable prin- 
 ciples, he certainly did not himself lay down any such 
 principles. On the contrary, he was describing the 
 Great Britain of his time, of the time of Pitt and 
 Fox, the Britain which was, within less than a century 
 from the period at which he wrote, to realize to the 
 full his conception of what it might become, were 
 the practical changes which he advocated carried into 
 effect.- It has been said by Mr. Bagehot that he prepared 
 the way for, though he did not found, the abstract science 
 of Political Economy. No doubt this is in a sense true. 
 Adam Smith was not, like Ricardo, a man who started 
 from certain propositions and deduced a system from 
 them. But it is this absence of system that has been his 
 
ADAM SMITH. 77 
 
 very merit, and that has made him, with all his faults, 
 probably the greatest economist that ever lived. He 
 had a perception that abstract propositions, however 
 carefully stated, express only one aspect or side of things, 
 and are therefore wanting in truth, a quality which 
 belongs to what is concrete alone. Abstractions are 
 useful servants, but bad masters. Seeing this, he is 
 always looking to the one side or the other, and digressing, 
 often tediously, but never unprofitably, into discussions 
 of those real details of commerce and politics which are 
 so rarely subjected to any scientific treatment. This is 
 why it is that his book is diffuse and lacking in arrange- 
 ment. But its very vices give it a meaning and an 
 interest to men who would otherwise have neither the 
 opportunity nor the capacity to profit by it. 
 
 Before attempting to give some account of what Smith 
 taught the world of his time, in " The Wealth of Nations," 
 it is desirable to state shortly what it was that that world 
 thought before it had digested his book, and what was 
 the nature and origin of the prejudices which the new 
 teacher once for all broke down. Of these thoughts and 0* 
 prejudices the best known and most important were what 
 have become familiar in history as the mercantile and 
 agricultural systems. 
 
 It is a common kind of mistake to exaggerate, and give 
 an undue prominence to, a fallacy which has been ex- 
 posed and laid. Nothing is more usual in ordinary 
 conversation than to hear that the mistake, which an 
 unsuccessful opponent of the person speaking has made, 
 was something so transparent that those who are not 
 familiar with the misleading character of adverse repre- 
 
78 LIFE OF 
 
 sentations of other people's positions, wonder how any 
 human being of ordinary intelligence could have com- 
 mitted such a fallacy. But the reasoning of the world, 
 or at all events that which is best in it, is not carried on 
 in syllogistic form. It is always elliptical, and sometimes 
 not even merely that. Real, as distinguished from 
 notional, assent is not generally to be obtained by the 
 application of the rules of logic. Consequently there is 
 great room everywhere for error, even of a purely formal 
 character. We see only one side of a subject at a time, 
 and often not even so much. The advocates of the mer- 
 cantile system did not in terms make wealth and money 
 identical, as they are crudely represented to have done. 
 If they had, they would quickly have been found out 
 and exposed. But it is none the less accurate to say 
 that this was the tendency of their reasonings, and 
 the common element in the mistakes they committed, 
 notwithstanding that they did not know it to be so. How 
 natural it was that this should be the case, the merest 
 glance at the history of the doctrine will show. 
 /The mercantile system arose out of the decomposition 
 of feudalism and mediae valism. The days had gone by 
 in which war was the only important subject in Western 
 civilization ; commerce was becoming more and more 
 important. The merchant and the landowner found it to 
 their advantage to pay for the soldiers who composed 
 the standing armies under the new order of things, 
 instead of themselves taking a constant part in supplying 
 the materials out of which these armies were composed. 
 A great development of industry ensued, a development 
 the accomplishment of which depended for its success upon 
 
ADAM SMITH. 79 
 
 the possession of the requisite capital. The discoveries 
 of the art of printing ; of the routes over the sea to the 
 East and to America ; of improvements in the machinery 
 of production all contributed to make the possession 
 by a nation of wealth more than equivalent to the mere 
 possession of that bone and muscle which could be 
 hired from abroad for money. 
 
 It was natural that the gold and silver, which in every 
 civilized country was appreciated as symbolical of the 
 possession of power of this kind, should come to be 
 identified in the popular imagination with wealth itself. 
 Wealth was then, as now, an abstract term. The products 
 of labour had their value best measured in money, and 
 the measure, which was concrete and easily conceived, 
 was readily identified in the popular imagination with the 
 wealth which it measured, particularly when one of the 
 prominent uses which that wealth served was to command 
 the services of paid soldiers and sailors. The object then 
 of a nation being admittedly to grow rich, and riches 
 meaning the accumulation within its territories of the 
 precious metals, it was natural that mercantile and legis- 
 lative policy should be shaped accordingly. Now when 
 we sell goods we receive money ; when we buy them 
 we pay it out. Therefore let us sell to foreign cus- 
 tomers as much as we can, and buy not at all. Sor 
 reasoned the predecessors of Adam Smith. The multi- 
 tude, however able the particular individuals scattered 
 here and there among it, is prone to follow custom in its 
 reasoning. Even where that multitude is relatively small, 
 and its component units relatively intelligent, this pro- 
 position holds good, though in a less degree. A litigant 
 
80 LIFE OF 
 
 who employs half a dozen competent counsel to conduct 
 his case where two would be sufficient, sometimes finds 
 that his case is not only imperfectly, but also unintelli- 
 gently dealt with. The British House of Commons is 
 infinitely unintelligent on points of detail of little or no 
 difficulty. Men are like sheep, gregarious in their 
 fallacies. Thus it was that the mercantile system was 
 not, at an early period, formulated and exposed, as it 
 would have been had six men instead of several nations 
 been responsible for it. 
 
 It has been said that the mercantile system was 
 really, in practice as distinguished from theory, a set of 
 tendencies, commonly found in combination, though 
 severally prevailing in different degrees in different 
 minds. These tendencies have been summed up as 
 the over-estimation of the importance of possessing a 
 large quantity of the precious metals ; an improper esti- 
 mation of the relation of foreign to domestic trade ; the 
 undue exaltation of the industries which work up mate- 
 rials over those that provide them ; and an undue readi- 
 ness to invoke State interference for commercial purposes. 
 It would seem that the last two of these kinds of 
 tendencies are consequences of the first. How they 
 came to be so is well explained by Smith himself. 
 
 After pointing out that one result of the policy above 
 described was an attempt on the part of the different 
 nations of Europe to prohibit the exportation of the 
 precious metals, he goes on to show that as these 
 countries became more engrossed with commerce, their 
 merchants found the restriction extremely inconvenient. 
 They could often most conveniently buy goods for im- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 81 
 
 portation in foreign, markets by paying for these goods 
 in gold and silver. They came, therefore, to represent, 
 first, that the exportation of gold and silver, in order to 
 purchase foreign goods, did not always diminish the 
 quantity of those metals in the kingdom. That, on the 
 contrary, it might frequently increase the quantity,, 
 because, if the consumption of foreign goods was not 
 thereby increased, those goods might be re-exported to 
 foreign countries, and being there sold for a large profit, 
 might bring back much more treasure than was originally 
 sent to purchase them. They represented, secondly, 
 that the prohibition could not hinder the exportation of 
 gold and silver, which, on account of the smallness of 
 their bulk in proportion to their value, could easily be 
 smuggled abroad. That this exportation could only be 
 prevented by a proper attention to what they called the 
 balance of trade. That when the country exported to a 
 greater value than it imported, a balance became due to 
 it from foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to it 
 in gold and silver, and thereby increased the quantity of 
 those metals in the kingdom. But that when it im- 
 ported to a greater value than it exported, a contrary 
 balance became due to foreign nati6ns, which was neces- 
 sarily paid to them in the same manner, and thereby 
 diminished that quantity. That in this case to prohibit 
 the exportation of these metals could not prevent it, 
 but only by making it more dangerous render it more 
 expensive. That the exchange was merely turned more 
 against the country which owed the balance than it 
 otherwise might have been; the merchant who pur- 
 chased a bill upon the foreign country being obliged to 
 
 6 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 pay the banker who sold it, not only for the natural risk, 
 trouble, and expense of sending the money thither, but 
 for the extraordinary risk arising from the prohibition. 
 But that the more the exchange was against any country, 
 the more the balance of trade became necessarily against 
 it, the money of that country becoming necessarily of so 
 much less value in comparison with that of the country 
 to which the balance was due. 
 
 Smith pointed out that arguments of this kind were 
 partly solid and partly sophistical. They were solid so 
 far as they asserted that the exportation of gold and 
 silver in trade might frequently be advantageous to the 
 country. They were solid, too, in asserting that no pro- 
 hibition could prevent their exportation when private 
 people found any advantage in it. But they were sophis- 
 tical in supposing that either to preserve or to augment 
 the quantity of those metals required more the attention 
 of Government than to preserve or to augment the 
 quantity of any other useful commodity, which the free- 
 dom of trade, without any such attention, never fails to 
 supply in the proper quantity. They were sophistical, 
 perhaps, also, in asserting that the high price of ex- 
 change necessarily increased what they called the un- 
 favourable balance of trade, or occasioned the exportation 
 of a greater quantity of gold and silver. That high 
 price, indeed, was extremely disadvantageous to the 
 merchants who had any money to pay in foreign countries. 
 They paid so much dearer for the bills which their 
 bankers granted them upon these countries. But though 
 the risk arising from the prohibition might occasion some 
 extraordinary expense to the bankers, it would not neces- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 83 
 
 sarily carry any more money out of the country. This ex- 
 pense would generally be laid out in the country in smug- 
 gling the money out of it, and could seldom occasion the 
 exportation of a single sixpence beyond the sum drawn 
 for. The high price of exchange, too, would naturally 
 dispose the merchants to endeavour to make their 
 exports balance their imports, in order that they might 
 have this high exchange to pay upon as small a sum as 
 possible. The high price of exchange, besides, must 
 necessarily have operated as a tax in raising the price of 
 foreign goods, and thereby diminished their consumption. 
 It would tend, therefore, not to increase, but to diminish 
 what they called the unfavourable balance of trade, and 
 consequently the exportation of gold and silver. 
 
 But the arguments of the merchants, insufficient though 
 they were, prevailed with those to whom they were 
 addressed in exactly the way intended. The most famous 
 of these converts, the one to whom Adam Smith does 
 not tire of alluding, was Colbert, the great minister of 
 Louis XIV. Colbert was by no means a bigoted ad- 
 herent of the mercantile system. He saw its weakness, 
 but he was none the less strongly attached to it as a 
 means of developing the resources of France. The 
 industry and commerce of that country he proceeded to 
 regulate much as he would have regulated the depart- 
 ments of a public office. The State interfered at every 
 turn. Not only did he confer privileges on some 
 industries, and impose disabilities on others, but he 
 favoured the industries of the towns at the expense of 
 the industries of the country. In order to encourage 
 the manufactures of the great cities by rendering pro- 
 
84 LIFE OF 
 
 visions cheap, he prohibited the exportation of corn 
 altogether, to the great disadvantage of the farmers of 
 France. But if the benefit was outweighed by the cost 
 of securing it, if the public were taxed for the sake of 
 particular enterprizes, at least the manufactures of France 
 flourished under Colbert. It is a fault which all free- 
 traders are prone to commit (and Adam Smith was hardly 
 more free from it than his successors have been), that they 
 overstate their case. If the aim be, as all the old and 
 most of the new economists have assumed it to be, to 
 increase to a maximum the aggregate production of 
 wealth in a particular community, unquestionably free- 
 dom in trade is the best means to adopt for its accomplish- 
 ment. But in the process, particular industries, such as 
 the sugar-refining industry in our times, may and do suffer. 
 This fact affords no argument against free-trade, but its 
 denial affords an opening for the attack of an enemy, 
 who otherwise would have none. Colbert was no blind 
 protectionist. He saw what he was about. He developed 
 the commerce of France much as Prince Bismarck has 
 developed that of Germany. And it is as 'much, and no 
 more, a moot point to-day whether France did not get 
 value for the price she paid in the seventeenth century 
 under Colbert, as it is a moot point whether Germany 
 has not benefited on balance by the policy of Bismarck. 
 The fallacy of the protectionist lies in the suggestion that 
 it is equally a moot point whether the system of these 
 statesmen would be beneficial if applied to a country 
 the commerce of which has become, as is the case 
 of the United Kingdom and the United States, fully 
 developed. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 85 
 
 What was going on in France in the end of the seven- 
 teenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries was also 
 going on in England. In both countries the State was 
 interfering, to an extent which was irritating to the 
 apostles of freedom, with the affairs of individuals. The 
 result was a reactionary movement, which, like all reaction- 
 ary movements, whether Conservative or Liberal in their 
 tendencies, was presently carried to an extreme. Mercan- 
 tilism had become associated with the power, not merely 
 of Governments, but of those aristocracies which at that 
 time represented Governments. It was in France that 
 the movement againstjhis state of things, both in politics 
 and in political economy, took most definite shape. The 
 doctrines of Rousseau and of Voltaire had their counter[ 
 part in the tendencies of the time. The Encyclopaedists 
 of Paris became closely identified with a school of 
 economists who were violently and bitterly opposed to 
 mercantileism ; a school of which it is evident that both 
 Hume and Smith saw much during their respective 
 sojourns in Paris. Agriculture was at this time in a most 
 depressed condition, and it was neither unnatural nor 
 unreasonable that the cause of this condition should be 
 sought in the restrictions which the State had imposed 
 on the free pursuit of agricultural industry. But the 
 complaint did not stop here. Men found out, or thought 
 they had found out, that agriculture was the only pursuit 
 which was really productive. Agriculture does, they 
 maintained, really add to the quantity of materials 
 available for the purposes of man. How different it is 
 with the so-called manufacturing industries ! The labour 
 of the artificer replaces only the stock which employs 
 
86 - LIFE OF 
 
 him, together with its ordinary profits. The stock 
 consists in the materials, tools, and wages necessary 
 for his employment and maintenance, and advanced 
 to him by his employer. Its profits are- the fund 
 destined for the maintenance of the employer himself. 
 The profits of manufacturing stock are not, therefore, 
 like the rent of land, a net produce, which remains after 
 completely paying the whole expense whjch must be laid 
 out in order to obtain them. The stock of the farmer 
 yields him a profit as well as that of the master-manu- 
 facturer, and it yields a rent likewise to another person, 
 which that of the master-manufacturer does not. The 
 expense, therefore, laid out in employing and main- 
 taining workmen and manufacturers does no more 
 than continue the existence of its own value, and 
 does not produce any new value. It is therefore 
 altogether a barren and unproductive expense. The 
 expense, on the other hand, laid out in employing 
 farmers and country labourers, over and above con- 
 tinuing the existence of its own value, produces a 
 new value, the rent of the land. It is therefore a pro- 
 ductive expense. 
 
 We have given these statements of the mercantile and 
 agricultural systems as nearly as possible in Adam 
 Smith's words, because it is important to realize ac- 
 curately the point of view from which he challenged 
 them. He never was a bigoted adherent of abstract 
 principles. He took things as he found them. He 
 saw that the former system was exercising an evil 
 influence on the ideas of the British Government of the 
 time in relation to trade and commerce generally. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 87 
 
 From the point of view of expediency he criticized 
 these ideas. The agriculturalists were in a different 
 position. In this country their doctrines had made 
 little or no way. Smith's duty was merely to separate 
 the elements of truth from the fallacies which were 
 to be found in their teachings, and to warn 
 against, the latter. But while he gave thi: 
 
 was none the less deeply indebted to the te^mnjf gf 
 school. Its doctrines could not fail to be f^scffiating 
 any man who knew, and appreciated, the purity of the 
 motives of two of their chief exponents, Quesnay and 
 Turgot. Quesnay was one of those eminent Frenchmen 
 with whom Smith had become intimate when in France. 
 He speaks of him as one whose system of political 
 economy, " with all its imperfections," was " the nearest 
 approximation to the truth that has yet been published 
 on the principles of that very important science." And 
 his admiration for Quesnay as a man was not less. We 
 know that it was only his death that prevented Smith 
 from dedicating to him "The Wealth of Nations.'' Of 
 Turgot it is not necessary to speak here. The record of 
 his life, and of his (n^Wcj failure to save France, is one 
 of those few records which seem to exercise an increasing 
 influence upon us as time interposes an evergrowing 
 barrier between our generation and that in which its 
 hero lived. Turgot and Quesnay were both associated 
 with that new school of thinkers whose work it was to 
 burst the bonds by which France was held down in their 
 time. If the theory of natural rights and of a social 
 contract, the consequent equality of all men, and the 
 limited nature of the title of the State to interfere,' is 
 
88 LIFE OF 
 
 not the be-all and end-all of human thought, at least it 
 is a theory to which we, who live in the latter part of the 
 nineteenth century, owe too much not to regard it with 
 affectionate reverence. No false fear of the conse- 
 quences of following out their premises to their conclu- 
 sions prevented our forefathers from working out for us 
 the political salvation which they failed to attain for 
 themselves. 
 
 We have seen the general nature of the two great 
 fallacies with which Adam Smith had to grapple, and it 
 only remains, before proceeding to the story of how he 
 did so, to glance very briefly at the literature of political 
 economy at the time when he wrote. 
 
 Whatever may be the case in literature, strictly so- 
 called, X has rarely, if ever, happened in science and 
 philosophy that the originality of the world's men of 
 genius has (Jisplayed itself in a great deal more than the 
 form in which they have stated what they had to say. 
 When we understand the exact nature of the previously 
 existing doctrine\at any particular period in the history 
 of either of these\two great departments of intellectual 
 activity, it is easy tia throw the step taken in the next 
 period into the shape\ of an inference from what went 
 before. The more, fonexample, mathematicians attend 
 to the investigations 6i Pascal into the theory of 
 indivisibles ; of Descartes, x Fermat, and Barrow into the 
 application of algebra to geometry, and the development 
 in their hands of the infinitesimal method, the less aston- 
 ishing does the apparent creation of the infinitesimal 
 calculus in the hands of Newt6n and Leibnitz appear. 
 Again, the Platonic theory of Id\as comes in the light 
 
ADAM SMITH. 
 
 of a mere logical Necessity to any one who has grasped 
 the doctrine that ill things, including the material ele- 
 ments in sense-perdeption, are in the state of flux asserted 
 by Heraclitus of Ephesus. For this proposition we have 
 the authority of Pllto himself in the " Theaetetus," and 
 we need not resortt to the more doubtful authority of 
 Lassalle. In precisely the samfe sense>thre was much 
 to suggest to the intellect of a^Qarwin the theories of 
 Natural Selection anfl of the drigiri of Species. 
 
 If in pure literature the c"ase is different, the reason 
 is not far to seek. Vln literature, and especially in 
 poetry, what 'may b4 Njalled form predominates. In 
 poetry thete is rniiclJ that can only be conveyed in 
 verse. PoeW as Gobthe used tcCsay, is form, and 
 forfta is essjtati^lly the\ producV 6f the individuality of 
 its author. \Therefore itris that literature never gets out 
 of aar^jjlhat men cart^read Homer and Horace to- 
 day with as little sens of the interval between their 
 time and ours as they caki read Milton and Shakespeare. 
 Whereas, if we try to extract knowj^dge from Galen, or 
 from the writings of the JBologna Aristotelians, we shall 
 find ourselves out of sympathy with their ideas, from 
 the absence on their palt of relationship to what we 
 regard as the context of knowledge. There are, of 
 course, apparent exceptionB. There is absolutely nothing 
 in the writings of his German and English predecessors 
 which throws light on me invention by Kant of the 
 hypothesis that intelligence constitutes experience, and 
 not experience intelligence.) But in such a case we see 
 that his exception is appareht only, when we reflect that 
 the consequence of pushing the inferences which Hume 
 
90 LIFE OF 
 
 drew from Bishop Berkeley's premises only a very little 
 further than Hume himself pushed them, is apparently 
 to suggest, as a necessity of the situation, the very theory 
 which Kant devised. Kant, in fact, stands to Hume 
 much in the same relation as Plato does to Heraclitus. 
 
 If Hume indirectly prepared the ground for Kant, he 
 directly prepared it for Adam Smith. The intellectual 
 life of Smith can, in truth, no more than his social life, 
 be separated from that of Hume. Take, for example, 
 Hume's essay on "The Balance of Trade." Sir William 
 Petty, Sir Dudley North, and Locke had already exposed 
 the unsoundness of the mercantile system. Hume there- 
 fore writes about it with a confidence which is the 
 counterpart of the inimitable ease of his style. After 
 laughing at the current apprehensions in regard to a 
 wrong balance of trade, and declaring that they appear 
 to be of the nature which discovers itself whenever "one 
 is out of humour with the ministry, or is in low spirits," 
 he formulates what he calls a ' general argument/ which 
 is so clearly stated that it is well worth quoting : 
 
 " Suppose four-fifths of all the money in Great Britain 
 to be annihilated in one night, and the nation reduced 
 to the same condition, with regaid to specie, as in the 
 reigns of the Harrys and Edwards, what would.be the 
 consequence? Must not the price of all labour and com- 
 modities sink in proportion, and everything be sold as 
 cheap as they were in those ages ? What nation could 
 then dispute with us in any foreign market, or pretend to 
 navigate, or to sell manufactures at the same prices which 
 to us would afford sufficient profit ? In how little time, 
 
ADA M SMITH. 91 
 
 therefore, must this bring back all the money which we 
 had lost, and raise us to the level of all the neighbouring 
 nations; where, after we have arrived, we immediately 
 lose the advantage of the cheapness of labour and com- 
 modities, and the further flowing in of money is stopped 
 by our fulness and repletion. 
 
 " Again, suppose that all the money of Great Britain 
 were multiplied fivefold in a night, must not the contrary 
 effect follow ? Must not all labour and commodities rise 
 to such an exorbitant height that no neighbouring nations 
 could afford to buy from us ; while their commodities, on 
 the other hand, become so comparatively cheap that, in 
 spite of all the laws which could be formed, they would 
 run in upon us, and our money flow out; till we fall 
 to a level with foreigners, and lose the great superiority 
 of riches, which had laid us under such disadvantages ? 
 
 " Now it is evident that the same causes which would 
 correct these exorbitant inequalities, were they to happen 
 miraculously, must prevent their happening in the ordinary 
 course of nature, and must, for ever, in all neighbouring 
 nations, preserve money nearly proportionable to the art 
 and industry of each nation. All water, wherever it 
 communicates, remains always at the same level. Ask 
 naturalists the reason ; they tell you that, were it to be 
 raised in any one place, the superior gravity of that part 
 not being properly balanced, must depress it, till it metts 
 a counterpoise ; and that the same cause, which redresses 
 the inequality when it happens, must forever prevent it, 
 without some violent internal operation." 
 
 Again, " From these principles we may learn what 
 judgment we ought to form of those numberless bars, 
 
92 LIFE OF 
 
 obstructions, and imposts, which all nations of Europe, 
 and none more than England, have put upon trade, from 
 an exorbitant desire of amassing money, which will never 
 heap up beyond its level, while it circulates ; or from an 
 ill-grounded apprehension of losing their specie, which 
 never will sink below it. Could anything scatter our 
 riches, it would be such impolitic contrivances. But this 
 general ill-effect, however, results from them, that they 
 deprive neighbouring nations of that free communication 
 and exchange which the Author of the world has intended, 
 by giving them soils, climates, and geniuses, so different 
 from each other. Our modern politics embrace the only 
 method of banishing money, the using of paper credit ; 
 they reject the only method of amassing it, the practice 
 of hoarding; and they adopt a hundred contrivances, 
 which serve to no purpose but to check industry, and 
 rob ourselves and our neighbours of the common benefit 
 of art and nature." 
 
 It may probably be said, with strict accuracy, that \ 
 nowhere in " The Wealth of Nations " is there a passage 
 which refutes, with so clean a cut, or in so graceful a style, 
 the main theory of the mercantile system. The fact is, 
 that Smith currently gets credit for what he does not 
 deserve, and does not get credit for what he really did. 
 He was not the first to denounce and expose the 
 economical heresies of the period. But Jhe was the 
 first to throw the true principles of modern political 
 economy into something approaching to a systematic 
 form, and to apply them to current political problems 
 with a wide knowledge of the facts to which they were to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 93 
 
 be applied, jgjyell as a. .complete grasp of the principles 
 themse 
 
 The ideas which we find in the pages of Smith are 
 many of them to be found in the pages of Hume'p 
 essays. But Hume had neither Smith's minute knoW- 
 ledge of the circumstances of the mercantile community, 
 nor his practical instincts. That they discussed thje 
 topics of which the former treats in his essays on sucK 
 subjects as Money, Interest, the Taxes, and the Public 
 Credit, we have evidence in their correspondence. 
 That the mind of Hume was the more original if 
 the two we know ; but it does not follow that 
 though Hume wrote first, he could have written as he 
 did without the suggestions and information which pre- 
 sumably came to him in his intercourse with his greatest 
 and most intimate friend. 
 
 The other great writer who influenced Smith deeply, 
 wa^Quesnay, of whom, as has already been remarked, 
 he had seen a great deal during his stay in Paris. Ques- 
 nay had originally pursued the profession of medicine, in 
 which he had attained to great eminence. Through the 
 influence of Madame de Pompadour he had been 
 appointed physician to Louis XV., a position where he 
 saw much that made a deep impression on his mind. 
 The"Maximes GnralesduGouvernement Economique," 
 which he published by command of the king in 1758, 
 had on it an epigraph, which is remarkable, not merely 
 for the candour of its suggestion, but as containing the gist 
 of the teaching of the agriculturalists or physiocrats whose 
 chief exponent Quesnay was : " Pauvres paysans, pauvre 
 royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre Souverain." To 
 
94 LIFE OF 
 
 regard agriculture as the only source of wealth, and from 
 this principle to deduce a cast-iron system, was, as Smith 
 very clearly saw, to offer an explanation of social phe- 
 nomena which was wholly inadequate to the facts. The 
 theory of government which the system necessitated by 
 its denial of the productiveness of any industry other than 
 agriculture, was still more clearly insufficient. The only 
 real addition to the wealth of the community consisting, 
 according to the school of Quesnay, in the prodnit 
 net of the difference between the value of the sum of 
 agricultural products and that of their cost of production, 
 the only legitimate subject of taxation was a single impost 
 in the nature of a land tax. But while Smith had made 
 up his mind in common with Hume that it was altogether 
 an error to regard manufacturing industry as unproductive, 
 he saw very clearly that there was much light to be got 
 from the entirely original criticisms which the political 
 and economical consequences of the mercantile system 
 received at the hands of Quesnay and Turgot. It is to 
 the French writers of the physiocrat type that we must 
 look as the other great source from which Smith derived 
 what is characteristic in the standpoint of " The 
 Wealth of Nations." 
 
 It became at one time a characteristic of the great 
 writers of the English school in political economy, that 
 they deliberately set before themselves certain abstract 
 assumptions, and from these deduced their system. The 
 substance of these assumptions was that men are by 
 nature absorbed in the selfish pursuit of wealth, and that 
 this motive is the only one we need take account of. 
 Such was the principle which lay at the root of the system 
 
ADAM SMITH. 95 
 
 of Ricardo, and to a less degree of that of Mill. And 
 undoubtedly political economy has gained enormously in 
 the clearness of its doctrine by this assumption. No 
 competent person supposed that it was strictly, or even 
 approximately true, but they recognized in it a useful 
 method of isolating and examining in detail the working 
 of a certain very powerful set of tendencies in human 
 nature. It cannot be too constantly borne in mind that 
 political economy is not politics ; that in politics we are 
 bound to take into account the whole of the springs of 
 action, and that so certainly as we proceed by the method 
 of political economy, looking at one aspect only at a time, 
 so certainly shall we come to political grief. The statutes 
 at large contain a melancholy record of such mistakes, in 
 the shape of Acts which, from the very fact that they over- 
 looked motives and tendencies other than those which 
 were in the minds of those who framed them, have either 
 proved nugatory, or, what is worse, worked the grossest in- 
 justice. Politics, if a science at all, is inductive and not 
 deductive in its nature. 
 
 The method of Adam Smith is not the abstract method 
 of the political economists who came after him. He is 
 rather an observer, a man of the world, writing about the 
 mercantile world in which he lived. He recognizes in 
 the desire for wealth the most powerful of all motives, 
 but he does not seek to exalt it into the foundation on 
 which a system is to be based. It is just this fact that 
 makes him somewhat unsatisfactory as a writer. He is 
 always passing from subject to subject, after the fashion 
 of those who observe details rather than draw conclu- 
 sions from general features \ and as the field of human 
 
96 LIFE Of 
 
 nature is too wide to admit of systematic and exhaustive 
 mapping out, we cannot avoid feeling a certain sense of 
 dissatisfaction with his somewhat ill-arranged book. 
 But this very defect is in another aspect a merit. Proba- 
 bly no one who has written before or after him has ever 
 been so practical, or made us feel in such living contact 
 with men and things. In Adam Smith, though he is no 
 partizan, we see how little politics and political economy 
 were separated in the hands of the great writers of the 
 eighteenth century. With us, in the days when every 
 specialist, if he is to do his work well, has to know every- 
 thing that has been done in his own . department, the 
 attempt to blend the abstract investigation of human 
 affairs with their management has certainly not proved 
 a conspicuous success. The mixed character of Adam 
 Smith's method is the key to his book. It prepares us 
 for surprises of such a kind as the defence of the 
 Navigation Acts on the ground that the national defences 
 are more important than the accumulation of wealth, and 
 his praise of the art of war and the advantages of a war- 
 like spirit. He does not consider such topics irrelevant, 
 and consequently " The Wealth of Nations " is far more 
 a description of the industrial system of the England 
 and Scotland of his time, and a comparison of what that 
 system was with what it ought to have been, than a body 
 of cosmopolitan doctrine relating to the production and 
 distribution of wealth all over the habitable world. 
 Bearing this fact in mind, it will be convenient, in the 
 first place, to describe generally the character of the book, 
 and then to go on to the statement of some of its particu- 
 lar teachings. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 97 
 
 The peculiar character of the arrangement in "The 
 Wealth of Nations," an arrangement which has caused it 
 to be likened to a series of monographs, makes it desir- 
 able to attempt to give a brief account of the arrangement 
 of the contents of the book. It contains four different 
 kinds of matter : disquisitions on the science of political 
 economy properly so-called; refutations of economical 
 heresies which existed at its date; historical accounts of cer- 
 tain political institutions; and discussions on the practical 
 application of economical principles. These four kinds 
 of subject are kept fairly distinct in the plan of the book, 
 and the recollection of this circumstance ought to have 
 saved Smith from a good deal of criticism at the hands 
 of persons who blamed his method of discussing abstract 
 topics in close, and not always apparent, connection with 
 those of a concrete character. The first two books are 
 devoted to political economy proper, as the term is cur- 
 rently understood. The third, a short one, deals with 
 . the history of agriculture, and the rise and progress of 
 cities andTowns after the fall of the Roman Empire, and 
 with the effect of the commerce of manufacturing towns 
 on the agriculture of the country districts. The fourth 
 examines and refutes the mercantile and agricultural 
 systems; and the fifth and last is concerned with the 
 revenue and expenditure of the commonwealth, and the 
 principles of taxation and of State interference. We 
 shall refer to these books in their order, making the pre- 
 liminary observation that while the fourth is the one by 
 which the author is by far the best known, the first two 
 and the last are hardly less important. In stating his 
 doctrine, and especially what is put forward ia the first 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF 
 
 book, we shall endeavour when possible to reproduce it 
 as nearly as practicable in the words of the original. 
 
 After declaring, not with perfect accuracy, that the 
 annual labour of every nation is the fund that originally 
 supplies it with all those necessaries and conveniences of 
 life which it annually consumes, Smith commences his 
 task with the general remark that these necessaries and 
 conveniences consist either in the immediate produce of 
 that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce 
 from other nations, and further, that according as this 
 produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or 
 less proportion to the number of those who are to con- 
 sume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied. 
 Yet this proportion must, in every nation, be regulated 
 by two different circumstances. First, by the skill, 
 dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally 
 applied; and secondly, by the proportion between the 
 number, of those who are employed in useful labour, and 
 of those who are not so employed. But the abun- 
 dance or scantiness of this supply depends more on the 
 former of these two circumstances than on the latter. 
 " Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every 
 individual who is able to work is more or less well em- 
 ployed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as 
 well as he can, the necessaries and conveniences of life 
 for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either 
 too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a-hunting and 
 fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, 
 that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or at 
 least think themselves reduced, to the necessity some- 
 limes of directly destroying, and sometimes of aban.- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 99 
 
 cloning, their infants, their old people, and those afflicted 
 with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger or to be 
 devoured by wild beasts. Among civilized and thriving 
 nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people 
 do not labour at all, many of whom consume the pro- 
 duce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more 
 labour than the greater part of those who work yet the 
 produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, 
 that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, 
 even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and 
 industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries 
 and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage 
 to acquire." 
 
 Such is the passage in which Smith introduces the 
 subject of his first book, the causes of improvement in the 
 productive powers of labour, and the order according to 
 which its produce is naturally distributed among the 
 different ranks and conditions of men in society. 
 
 The first of the causes of the improvement in produc- 
 tive power with which he deals, he finds in the division 
 of labour. The effects of this division he ascertains, by 
 induction from a number of illustrations, to be three- 
 fold : increase of dexterity in particular workmen ; 
 the saving of time, which is commonly lost in passing 
 from one species of work to another; and the inven- 
 tion of machinery, which enables one man to accom- 
 plish the work of many. But how does this useful 
 division originate? Not in prudent calculation, but 
 in an instinct, the development of which is probably in 
 its turn the result of reason and speech, the propensity to 
 
100 LIFE OF 
 
 truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Only 
 those animals which possess the faculties of reason and 
 speech display it. " No one ever saw a dog make a fair 
 and deliberate exchange of one bone for another, with 
 another dog." And yet even a beggar barters the old 
 clothes which are given to him for food or lodging. 
 " The certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus 
 part of the produce of his own labour, which is over 
 and above his own consumption, for such parts of the 
 produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion 
 for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular 
 occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection what- 
 ever talent or genius he may possess for that particular 
 species of business." The continuation of this passage 
 is well worth quoting in full. 
 
 "The difference of natural talents in different men is 
 in reality much less than we are aware of, and the very 
 different genius which appears to distinguish men of 
 different professions when grown up to maturity, is not, 
 upon many occasions, so much the cause as the effect of 
 the division of labour. The difference between the most 
 dissimilar characters between a philosopher and a 
 common street porter, for example seems to arise, not 
 so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and educa- 
 tion. When they came into the world, and for the first 
 six or eight years of their existence, they were very much 
 alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could 
 perceive any remarkable difference. About that age or 
 soon after, they came to be employed in very different 
 occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be 
 
ADAM SMITH. 101 
 
 taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the 
 vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce 
 any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, 
 barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to 
 himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he 
 wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform 
 and the same work to do, and there could have been no 
 such difference of employment as could alone give 
 occasion to any great difference of talents. 
 
 " As it is this disposition which forms that difference 
 of talents so remarkable among men of different pro- 
 fessions, so it is this same disposition which renders that 
 difference useful. Many tribes of animals, acknowledged 
 to be all of the same species, derive from nature a much 
 more remarkable distinction of genius than what, ante- 
 cedent to custom and education, appears to take place 
 among men. By nature, a philosopher is not in genius 
 and disposition half so different from a street porter as a 
 mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a 
 spaniel, or this last from a shepherd's dog. These 
 different tribes of animals, however, though all of the 
 same species, are of scarce any use to one another. 
 The strength of the mastiff is not in the least supported 
 either by the swiftness of the greyhound, or by the sagacity 
 of the spaniel, or by the docility of the shepherd's dog. 
 The effects of these different geniuses and talents for 
 want of the power or disposition to barter and exchange, 
 cannot be brought into a common stock, and do not in 
 the least contribute to the better accommodation and 
 conveniency of the species. Each animal is still obliged 
 to support and defend itself separately and independently, 
 
102 LIFE OF 
 
 and derives no sort of advantage from that variety of 
 talents with which nature has distinguished its fellows. 
 Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses 
 are of use to one another, the different produces of their 
 respective talents by the general disposition to truck, 
 barter, and exchange, being brought as it were into a 
 common stock, where every man may purchase what- 
 ever part of the produce of other men's talents he has 
 occasion for." 
 
 The next step in the argument is to show that as it is 
 the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division 
 of labour, so the extent of this division must always be 
 limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by 
 the extent of the market. When the market is very 
 small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate 
 himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power 
 to exchange all that surplus produce of his own labour, 
 which is over and above his own consumption, for such 
 parts of the produce of other men's labours as he has 
 occasion for. There are some sorts of industry, even of 
 the lowest kind, which can only be carried on in a great 
 town. A porter, for instance, can find employment and 
 subsistence in no other place, any more than can a 
 barrister. But for other kinds of industry, and notably 
 for commerce, the means of transport, and especially 
 water carnage, open up the whole world as a market. 
 This conclusion opens the way for an explanation of the 
 origin and use of money. 
 
 The further division of labour proceeds, the smaller 
 the part of his wants which the produce of the individual 
 
ADAM SMITH. 103 
 
 man's labour can supply. What he has to do, is to ex- 
 change the surplus part of the produce of his own labour 
 for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he 
 has occasion for. Thus every man becomes in some 
 measure a merchant, and society itself grows to be what 
 is properly a commercial society. But the produce of a 
 particular kind of labour will not always suit the wants of 
 the other man who, in his turn, has the required produce 
 of his labour to dispose of. The baker may not at the 
 moment require, or be capable of availing himself of, the 
 labour of the barrister. Therefore every prudent person 
 must naturally endeavour to manage his affairs in such a 
 manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar 
 produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some 
 commodity which most people will accept in exchange 
 for the produce of their own labour. Such commodities 
 are the precious metals, and it is in this manner that 
 money has become in all civilized countries the universal 
 instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which 
 goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for 
 one another. Smith sets himself, at this point, to ascer- 
 tain the rules which determine the basis on which the 
 exchange takes place ; in other words, the nature of value. 
 This expression he finds has two different meanings. It 
 expresses sometimes the utility of some particular object, 
 and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods 
 which the possession of that object conveys. The one may 
 be called "value in use," the other "value in exchange." 
 The things which have the greatest value in use, often 
 have little or no value in exchange ; and, on the contrary, 
 those which have the greatest value in exchange, have 
 
104 LIFE OF 
 
 frequently little or no value in use. " Nothing is more 
 useful than water ; but it will purchase scarce anything ; 
 scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A 
 diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use ; 
 but very great quantity of other goods may frequently be 
 had in exchange for it." Wealth, as Hobbes had already 
 shown, is the power of purchasing or commanding the 
 produce of labour in the market. And the exchangeable 
 value of everything must always be precisely equal to the 
 extent of this power which it conveys to the owner. But 
 though labour is the real measure of the exchangeable 
 value of all commodities, it is not that by which their 
 value is commonly estimated. It is not easy to 
 find any accurate measure either of hardship or 
 ingenuity. 
 
 In exchanging the different productions of different sorts 
 of labour the one for the other, some allowance is made 
 for both. That allowance is adjusted, however, not by any 
 accurate measure, but by what Adam Smith, in a famous 
 phrase, terms the higgling and bargaining of the market. 
 And it comes to pass that the exchangeable value of any 
 commodity is naturally more frequently estimated by the 
 quantity of money, than by the quantity either of labour 
 or any other commodity which can be had in exchange 
 for it. But gold and silver themselves vary in price. 
 They are therefore misleading as the measure of the 
 value of commodities. Of these commodities they 
 constitute the nominal price only; the ultimate and real 
 e price being always labour itself. It follows that equal 
 r^o/ quantities of labour will at distant times be purchased 
 more nearly with equal quantities of corn, the subsistence 
 
ADAM SMITH. 105 
 
 of labour, than with equal quantities of gold and silver, 
 or, perhaps, of any other commodity. 
 
 " The subsistence of the labourer, or the re 
 labour, is very different upon different occasii 
 liberal in a society advancing to opulence, 
 that is standing still ; and in one that is standing still, 
 than in one that is going backwards. Every other com- 
 modity, however, will at any particular time purchase a 
 greater or smaller quantity of labour in proportion to 
 the quantity of subsistence which it can purchase at 
 that time. A rent, therefore, reserved in corn, is liable 
 only to the variations in the price of labour which a 
 certain quantity of corn can purchase. But a rent 
 reserved in any other commodity is liable, not only to 
 the variations of the quantity of labour which any 
 particular quantity of corn can purchase, but to the 
 variations in the quantity of corn which can be purchased 
 by any particular quantity of that commodity." 
 
 Of course Smith does not intend in this passage to 
 convey that a corn rent represents an unvarying value 
 the diminution in the cost of production of corn effected 
 by improvement in agricultural methods would in itself 
 cause such a value to vary very greatly. And he points 
 out that a corn rent, though it varies much less from 
 century to century, varies more from year to year. But he 
 states the principle the best illustration of which in 
 modern times is probably the fall in the value of silver 
 relatively to gold, and the importation as a consequence 
 into this country of Indian corn obtained in exchange 
 
106 LIFE OF 
 
 for a relatively depreciated rupee, the purchasing power 
 of which remains, so far as Indian labour is concerned, 
 intact. This portion of the book concludes with a 
 description of the system under which the gold and 
 silver coinage of Great Britain had grown up, and of the 
 existing mint regulations. 
 
 We now come to quite a different subject. In a 
 primitive state of society " the whole produce of labour 
 belongs to the labourer, and the quantity of labour 
 commonly employed in acquiring or producing any 
 commodity is the only circumstance which can regulate 
 the quantity of labour which it ought commonly to 
 purchase, command, or exchange for. But as soon as 
 stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, 
 some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work 
 industrious people, whom they will supply with materials 
 and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of 
 their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of 
 the materials. In exchanging the complete manufacture 
 either for money, for labour, or for other goods, over and 
 above what may be sufficient to pay the price of the 
 materials and the wages of the workmen, something 
 must be given for the profits of the undertaker of the 
 work who hazards his stock in this adventure. The 
 value which the workmen add to the materials there- 
 fore resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which 
 the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their 
 employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages 
 which he advanced." But it would be a fallacy to draw 
 the inference here that the profits of stock are only, 
 under another name, wages of that kind of labour which 
 
ADAM SMITH. 107 
 
 consists in superintendence. In many businesses the 
 entire work of superintendence is done by a manager or 
 clerk, whose wages are really wages of superintendence, 
 bearing no necessary proportion to the capital under his 
 control. In such cases the owner of the capital, though 
 he may have no active duty to perform, still expects that 
 his profits should bear a regular proportion to his capital. 
 These profits are therefore regulated by principles quite 
 different from those which govern the wages of labour of 
 whatever kind. In his edition of the "Wealth of Nations," 
 Professor Thorold Rogers remarks upon the passage 
 where this doctrine is laid down, that where any profit 
 greater than the ordinary rate of interest can be made 
 out of a business, the superintendence of which is thus 
 delegated, it will always be found that the business is 
 one in which goodwill or connection, which is really a 
 part of the capital embarked, is a conspicuous element. 
 And he adds that the experience of joint-stock enterprise 
 proves that, on the whole, the'rate of profit attainable in 
 such a business as can be done under the superintendence 
 of paid officials, is not much, if at all, in excess of the 
 ordinary rate of interest, and that the introduction of a 
 system under which such officials are paid proportionately 
 to profits, does not materially alter this rule, although it 
 imparts security to the transactions entered on. It may 
 be added, by way of comment on this, that what are 
 called merchant's profits must consist, in cases where the 
 merchant himself superintends the business, of the two 
 elements of wages of superintendence and of interest 
 on capital, such wages and interest varying with the 
 difficulty and the risk of the undertaking. 
 
108 LIFE OF 
 
 But there is yet another deduction to be made, in a 
 civilized country, from that which would otherwise be 
 shared between the labourer and the capitalist. " As 
 soon as the land of any country has all become private 
 property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap 
 where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for 
 its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass 
 of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which 
 when the land was in common, cost the labourer only 
 the trouble of gathering them, come even to him to 
 have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then 
 pay for the license to gather them, and must give up to 
 the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects 
 or produces. This portion, or what comes to the same 
 thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of 
 land, and in the price of the greater part of the com- 
 modities makes a third component part." Whether or 
 not we are content with the theory of rent as it was after- 
 wards propounded by Ricardo, we must acknowledge that 
 this is very loose reasoning in one point. In his letter 
 of congratulation on the appearance of " The Wealth of 
 Nations," Hume writes to Smith, " If you were here at 
 my fireside I should dispute some of your principles. I 
 cannot think that the rent of farms makes any part of 
 the price of produce, but w that the price is altogether 
 determined by the quantity and the demand." Hume 
 himself is not perfectly accurate in this suggestion, but 
 he saw clearly that rent (and he might have added 
 the profits of stock) in no way enter into cost of 
 production or price. Rent is a consequence of, and not 
 a component element in, price. One of the most re- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 109 
 
 markable of the steps in the reasoning of his great 
 treatise is Smith's conclusion as to the nature of rent. 
 But, as we shall see, if it is unsound it at least possesses 
 this merit, that it is based on an observation of the facts, 
 which relieves it of the abstract character that renders the 
 deductive theory of Ricardo so difficult a formula to 
 apply in the investigation of concrete cases. 
 
 In every society or neighbourhood there is an ordinary 
 or average rate of wages, profit, and rent, which may be 
 called the natural rate. This natural rate is determined 
 by the general circumstances of the community. When 
 a particular commodity is sold for what is neither more 
 nor less than is sufficient to pay the rent of the 
 land, the wages of labour, and the profits of the stock 
 employed in raising, preparing, and bringing to market, 
 according to their natural rates, the commodity is sold 
 for what may be called, according to Smith, its natural 
 price. But the actual price at which the commodity is 
 sold may be either above, or below, or exactly equal to 
 the natural price. This actual price he terms the 
 market price. The market price of every particular 
 commodity is regulated by the proportion between the 
 quantity which is actually brought to market, and the 
 demand of those who are willing to pay the natural price 
 of the commodity, or the whole value of the rent, 
 labour, and profit which must be paid in order to bring 
 it thither___Such people may be called effectual de- 
 rnanders, and their demand the effectual demand ; still 
 it may be sufficient to effectuate the bringing of the com- 
 modity to market. It is very different from the actual 
 demand. A poor man may be said in some sense to 
 
110 LIFE OF 
 
 , , , r <^yz%jt^~i^>-3j) 
 
 nave a demand for a ci.i.v.h qua m, he might like to 
 
 have it, but his demand is not an effectual demand, 
 as the commodity can never be brought to market in 
 order to satisfy it. According as the quantity of the 
 commodity which is brought to market falls short of, 
 exceeds, or is equal to, the effectual demand, the market 
 price exceeds, falls below, or is the same as the natural 
 price, which is the central price to which the market 
 prices are always gravitating, the variations from it falling 
 chiefly upon those parts of the market price which 
 resolve themselves into wages and profits, and least upon 
 rent 
 
 This brings the inquiry to the point where it becomes 
 necessary to investigate the variation of the natural price 
 with the natural rate of each of its component parts, 
 wages, profits, and rent, and to determine the causes of 
 these different variations. Had that condition of un- 
 civilized existence continued, in which the whole produce 
 of labour goes to the labourer, all things would gradually 
 have become cheaper. The wages of labour would have 
 augmented with all those improvements in its productive 
 power to which the division of labour has given occasion. 
 " But," remarks Smith, the characteristic dislike of land- 
 lordism which appears throughout his book leading him 
 to assign a somewhat doubtful period as the origin of 
 private property in land, "as soon as land becomes 
 private property, the landlord demands a share of almost 
 all the produce which the labourer can either raise or 
 collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from 
 the produce of the labour which is employed on the 
 land." It would be hardly less incorrect to say that 
 
ADAM SMITH. Ill 
 
 private property in land preceded agriculture. The two 
 institutions were probably in fact contemporaneous in 
 their origin, and have operated beneficially on each 
 other. 
 
 He proceeds to illustrate the causes of rise in wages 
 in a passage which is so interesting that it is worth 
 quoting : 
 
 " It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but 
 its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the 
 wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest 
 countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are 
 growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are 
 highest. England is certainly, in the present times, a 
 much richer country than any part of North America. 
 The wages of labour, however, are much higher in 
 North America than in any part of England. In the 
 province of New York common labourers earn three 
 shillings and sixpence currency, equal to two shillings 
 sterling a day ; ship carpenters, ten shillings and six- 
 pence currency, with a pint of rum, worth sixpence 
 sterling; house carpenters and bricklayers, eight shillings 
 currency, equal to four shillings and sixpence sterling; 
 journeymen tailors, five shillings currency, equal to 
 about two shillings and tenpence sterling. These 
 prices are all above the London price; the wages are 
 said to be as high in the other colonies as in New York. 
 The price of provisions is everywhere in North America 
 much lower than in England. A dearth has never been 
 known there. In the worst seasons they have always had 
 a sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. 
 
112 LIFE OF 
 
 If the money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it 
 is anywhere in the mother country, its real price, the real 
 command of the necessaries and conveniences of life 
 which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a 
 still greater proportion." 
 
 He proceeds to point out the conditions under which 
 there might arise a pressure of population upon the 
 means of subsistence, in a passage which contains the 
 foundation upon which the Malthusian theory of popu- 
 lation was based. He reminds us that even when the 
 wealth of a country is very great, still, if that country be 
 stationary, we must not expect to find wages high in it. 
 The funds, he says, " destined for the payment of wages, 
 the revenue and stock of its inhabitants, may be of the 
 greatest extent, but if they have continued for several 
 centuries of the same, or nearly the same, extent, the 
 number of labourers employed every year could easily 
 supply, and even more than supply, the number wanted 
 the following year. There could seldom be any scarcity 
 of hands, nor could the masters be obliged to bid one 
 against the other in order to get them. The hands, on 
 the contrary, would in this case naturally multiply beyond 
 their employment. There would be a constant scarcity 
 of employment, and the labourers would be obliged to 
 bid one against the other in order to get it. If in such 
 a country the wages of labour had ever been more than 
 sufficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable him to 
 bring up a family, the competition of the labourers and 
 the interest of the masters would soon reduce them to 
 the lowest rate which is consistent with humanity. This 
 
ADAM SMITH. 118 
 
 proposition he proceeds to illustrate at some length by a 
 description of the state of the labour market in China. 
 But bad as he finds the condition of China to be, he 
 considers that of Bengal to be worse. Here the funds 
 destined for the maintenance of labour are not only not 
 increasing, but are, in his judgment, decreasing. 
 
 " In a fertile country, which had before been much 
 depopulated, where subsistence, consequently, should 
 not be very difficult, and where, notwithstanding, three 
 or four hundred thousand people die of hunger in one 
 year, we may be assured that the funds destined for the 
 maintenance of the labouring poor are fast decaying. 
 The difference between the genius of the British Consti- 
 tution, which protects and governs North America, and 
 that of the mercantile company which oppresses and 
 domineers in the East Indies, cannot, perhaps, be better 
 illustrated than by the different state of those countries." 
 
 And then he sums up : ^ 
 
 " The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the 
 necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing 
 national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labour- 
 ing poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that 
 things are at a stand, and their starving condition that 
 they are going fast backward. In Great Britain the wages 
 of labour seem, in the present times, to be evidently 
 more than what is precisely necessary to enable the 
 labourer to bring up a family. In order to satisfy our- 
 selves upon this point, it will not be necessary to enter 
 into any tedious or doubtful calculation of what may be 
 
 8 
 
114 LIFE OF 
 
 the lowest sum upon which, it is possible to do this. 
 There are many plain symptoms that the wages 
 of labour are nowhere in this country regulated by 
 this lowest rate which is consistent with common 
 humanity." 
 
 After examining a number of facts bearing upon this 
 conclusion, Smith goes on to point out that what he calls 
 the liberal reward of labour is not only the effect, as we 
 have already seen it to be, of increasing wealth, but is the 
 cause of increasing population, and that to complain of 
 it is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the 
 greatest public prosperity. 
 
 We have already remarked that in all this there is 
 the foundation upon which Malthus raised a theory of 
 society, depending upon the proposition that population 
 is ever tending to press upon the means of subsistence. 
 But although Smith recognized this doctrine also, he 
 characteristically regarded it as true, not in the shape of 
 an abstract principle, but only hypothetically, upon the 
 assumption of the truth of the further proposition that 
 society was in a stationary condition. He therefore 
 rejected its application to the England and Scotland of 
 his time. A more questionable part of his teaching is 
 the covert assumption of a fixed wage fund, which under- 
 lies the whole of this portion of his book. It is remark- 
 able that his high sense of the necessity of reasoning 
 with reference to concrete facts should not have led him 
 to see that the proportion of the produce of labour which 
 goes in payment of wages is not, in point of fact, a fixed 
 proportion, but one which, on the contrary, is of a most 
 
ADAM SMITH. 115 
 
 varying and inconstant character, depending on a variety 
 of causes which alter as the constitution and character 
 of society in general alter. 
 
 Passing from the subject of wages to that of profits, he 
 lays down the maxim that wherever a great deal can be 
 made by the use of money, a great deal will be given for 
 it, and that, consequently, the ordinary rate of profit 
 varies with the market rate of interest. He proceeds, 
 accordingly, to form an historical estimate of the changes 
 in the rate of profit from the regulations of the rate of 
 interest created by the Usury laws. His investigation 
 leads him to the conclusion that high profits tend much 
 more to raise the price of work than do high wages. A 
 rise in wages means only an addition to a certain part of 
 the cost in the various stages of the process of manu- 
 facture. But if the profits of the various employers of 
 the workmen engaged in the various stages of the manu- 
 facture of the article are raised, say 5 per cent., that 
 part of the price of the commodity which resolves itself 
 into profit, will, through all the stages of the manufacture, 
 rise, not as in the case of the wages in arithmetical, but 
 in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit. The 
 employer of flax-dressers will, in selling his flax, require 
 an additional 5 per cent, on the whole value of the 
 material, and on the wages he has paid to his workmen. 
 The employer of the spinners will require an additional 
 5 per cent., both upon the advanced value of the flax, 
 and upon the wages of the spinners. And the employer 
 of the weavers will require a like 5 per cent., both on 
 the advanced price of the linen yarn, and on the wages of 
 the weavers. 
 
H6 LIFE OF 
 
 " In raising the price of the commodities the rise of 
 wages operates in the same way as simple interest 
 does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit 
 operates like compound interest. The merchants and 
 master- manufacturers complain much of the bad effects 
 of high wages in raising price, and thereby lessening the 
 sale of the goods both at home and abroad. They say 
 nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They 
 are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own 
 gains. They complain only of those of other people." 
 The world, at the time when Adam Smith wrote- his 
 book, was not very different from what it is to-day. 
 
 In some forms of employment the remuneration is 
 great ; in others it is small. What are the determining 
 and counterbalancing considerations which preserve the 
 level of demand and supply ? These Smith finds to be 
 five-fold. First, the agreeableness and disagreeableness 
 of the employments themselves; ^second, the easiness and 
 cheapness, or difficulty and expense of learning them ; 
 thiixlly^ the constancy or inconstancy of employment 
 in them ; fourthly^ the small or great trust which must be 
 reposed in those who exercise them; and fifthly, the 
 probability or improbability of success in them. His 
 remarks under these five different heads are most acute 
 and curious, and it is to be regretted that the limits of 
 these pages do not admit of their reproduction. One 
 passage, however, deserves to be quoted : 
 
 " The probability that any particular person shall ever 
 be qualified for the employment to which he is educated, 
 is very different in different occupations. In the greater 
 
 r\ 
 
ADAM SMITH. 117 
 
 \ 
 part of mechanic trades success is almost certain, but 
 
 very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put your son 
 apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his 
 learning to make a pair of shoes, but send him to study 
 the law, it is at least twenty to one if ever he makes such 
 proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In 
 a perfectly fair lottery those who draw the prizes ought 
 to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In 
 a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that 
 one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the 
 unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor at law, who per- 
 haps at near forty years of age begins to make something 
 by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not 
 only of his own so tedious and expensive education, but 
 of that of more than twenty others who are never likely 
 to make anything by it. HQW extravagant s^^ r *\\* *&** / 
 
 \ 
 
 of counsellors qt law may finnr"** 1 '^ nC Anr J their real 
 retribution is never equal to this. Compute in any par- 
 ticular place what is likely to be annually gained, and 
 what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different 
 workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoe- 
 makers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum 
 will generally exceed the latter. But make the same 
 computation with regard to all the counsellors and 
 students of law in all the different inns of court, and you 
 will find that their annual gains bear but a very small 
 proportion to their annual expense, even though you rate 
 the former as high and the latter as low as can well be 
 done. The lottery of the law therefore is very far from 
 being a perfectly fair lottery, and that, as well as many 
 other liberal and honourable professions, are in point of/ 
 pecuniary gain evidently imder-recompensecl, 
 
118 LIFE OF 
 
 " Those professions keep their level, however, with 
 other occupations, and notwithstanding these discourage- 
 ments, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to 
 crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to 
 recommend them. First, the desire of the reputation 
 which attends upon superior excellence in any of them ; 
 and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man 
 has more or less not only in his own abilities, but in his 
 own good fortune. 
 
 " To excel in any profession in which but few arrive at 
 mediocrity, is the most decisive mark of what is called 
 genius or superior talents. The public admiration, which 
 attends upon such distinguished abilities, makes always a 
 part of their reward ; a greater or smaller in proportion 
 as it is higher or lower in degree. It makes a consider- 
 able part of that reward in the profession of physic ; a 
 still greater perhaps in that of law ; in poetry and philo- 
 sophy it makes almost the whole. 
 
 " There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents 
 of which the possession commands a certain sort of 
 admiration, but of which the exercise for the sake of 
 gain is considered, whether from reason or prejudice, as 
 a sort of public pr^slifctrtttrn. The pecuniary recompense, 
 therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner 
 must be sufficient, not only to pay for the time, labour, 
 and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit 
 which attends the employment of them as a means of 
 subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of players, opera- 
 singers, opera-dancers, &c., are founded upon those two 
 principles, the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the dis- 
 credit of employing them in this manner. It seems absurd 
 
ADAM SMITH. 119 
 
 at first sight that we should despise their persons, and yet 
 reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. 
 While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do 
 the other. Should the public opinion or prejudice ever 
 alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary 
 recompense would quickly diminish. More people would 
 apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce 
 the price of their labour. Such talents, though far from 
 being common, are by no means so rare as is imagined. 
 Many people possess them in great perfection who dis- 
 dain to make this use of them, and many more are 
 capable of acquiring them if anything could be made 
 honourably by them. 
 
 "The over-weening conceit which the greater 
 men have of their own abilities is an ancient evil remarked x 
 by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their 
 absurd presumption in their own good fortune has been 
 less taken notice of; it is, however, if possible, still more 
 universal. There is no man living who, when in tolerable 
 health and spirits, has not some share of it. The chance 
 of gain is by every man more or less over- valued, and y 
 the chance of loss is by most men under-valued, and 
 scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and spirits, 
 valued more than it is worth." 
 
 We now come to a part of the book where the author 
 not only states principles, but attacks institutions. He 
 considered and the history of Europe during the present 
 century has proved him to be right that certain municipal 
 organizations and industrial codes, which were accounted 
 of great importance in his day, were exercising a pernicious 
 
120 LIFE OF 
 
 influence. The first of these institutions with which he deals 
 is one that has become almost entirely obsolete since he 
 wrote, mainly owing to the success of his teaching. We 
 associate Smith's name chiefly with his attack upon the 
 doctrines of Protection ; we ought equally to associate it 
 with that attack upon the exclusive trade privileges of the 
 corporations and guilds, which, in his day, restrained 
 competition at every turn. To become free of the trade 
 of such a body, it was necessary to have served a long 
 apprenticeship as one of a limited number of apprentices. 
 By the 5th of Elizabeth, the Statute of Apprentices, it was 
 enacted that no person should for the future exercise any 
 trade, craft, or mystery at that time exercised in England, 
 unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of 
 seven years at least ; and what before had been the bye- 
 law of many particular corporations, became in England 
 the general and public law of all trades carried on in 
 market towns. This statute has been repealed since 
 Smith wrote, but in his time it was in full force. Its 
 principle he exposes and denounces. He shows the 
 futility and evil of long apprenticeships, and the bad 
 consequences that attended the monopolies of corpora- 
 tions and guilds, in language which has become classical. 
 The effect of their bye-laws and regulations he declares 
 to be, simply to enable their members to raise their prices 
 without the fear of being undersold, either by the free 
 competition of their fellow-countrymen, or by foreigners. 
 The enhanced price he finds is everywhere paid by the 
 landlords, farmers, and labourers of the country. 
 
 The next point of attack is that policy which occasions 
 another inequality of a different kind, by increasing the 
 
ADAM SMITH. 121 
 
 competition in some employments beyond what it would 
 naturally be. His illustration of this is the establishment 
 of foundations for the education and maintenance of the 
 clergy. " Very few of them are educated at their own 
 expense. The long, tedious, and expensive education, 
 therefore, of those who are, will not always procure them 
 a suitable reward, the Church being crowded with people 
 who, in order to get employment, are willing to accept of 
 a much smaller recompense than what such an educa- 
 tion would otherwise have entitled them to ; and in this 
 way the competition of the poor takes away the reward 
 of the rich." " Whenever the law has attempted to 
 regulate the wages of workmen, it has always been rather 
 to lower them than to raise them. But the law has upon 
 many occasions attempted to raise the wages of curates, 
 and, for the dignity of the Church, to oblige the rectors of 
 parishes to give them more than the wretched main- 
 tenance which they themselves might be willing to accept 
 of. And in both cases the law seems to have been 
 equally ineffectual, and has never either been able to 
 raise the wages of curates, or to sink those of labourers to 
 the degree that was intended, because it has never been 
 able to hinder either the one from being willing to 
 accept of less than the legal allowance, on account of the 
 indigence of their situation and the multitude of their 
 competitors, or the other from receiving more, on account 
 of the contrary competition of those who expected to 
 derive either profit or pleasure from employing them." 
 The following passage is of interest as showing the 
 circumstances of the times : 
 
122 LIFE OF 
 
 "The unprosperous race of men, commonly called 
 men of letters, are pretty much in the situation which 
 lawyers and physicians probably would be in upon the 
 foregoing supposition. In every part of Europe the greater 
 part of them have been educated for the Church, but 
 have been hindered by different reasons from entering 
 into Holy Orders. They have generally, therefore, been 
 educated at the public expense, and their numbers are 
 everywhere so great as commonly to reduce the price 
 of their labours to a very paltry recompense." 
 
 Bad as he finds the policy of the then corporation laws 
 to be, its badness is, in his opinion, equalled, if not ex- 
 celled, by the policy of the then poor laws. The obstruc- 
 tion to the free circulation of labour, and consequently 
 of capital, from one employment to another, consisted 
 here in the difficulty which a poor man found in obtain- 
 ing a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his 
 industry in any parish but that to which he belonged. 
 He enters in detail into the history of the poor law, 
 quoting largely from Burn's treatise on the subject. It 
 is difficult to conceive anything more instructive, to the 
 student of politics, than the study of this chapter in the 
 light of the changes in the law which its teaching suc- 
 ceeded in bringing about. 
 
 The first book concludes with a lengthy statement of 
 the^theory of rent, a theory which, as propounded by 
 Adam Smith, has been the subject of much hostile 
 criticism at the hands of Ricardo and others. Rent, 
 according to Smith, is to .be regarded as the price paid 
 for the use of land, and is naturally the highest which 
 
ADAM SMITH. 123 
 
 the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances 
 of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the 
 landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the 
 produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from 
 which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and pur- 
 chases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of 
 husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming 
 stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the 
 smallest share with which the tenant can content himself 
 without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to 
 leave him any more. The rent of land, considered as 
 the price paid for the land, is a monopoly price. It is 
 not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have 
 laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what 
 he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford 
 to give. " Rent," continues Smith, " enters into the 
 composition of the price of commodities in a different 
 way from wages and profit. High or low wages or profit 
 are the causes of high or low price ; high or low rent is 
 the effect of it It is because high or low wages or 
 profit must be paid in order to bring a particular com- 
 modity to market that its price is high or low. But it is 
 because its price is high or low, a great deal more, or 
 very little more, or no more than what is sufficient to pay 
 these wages and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low 
 rent, or no rent at all." The first criticism to be made on 
 this statement is that rent does not enter at all into price. 
 Whether or not we accept Ricardo's theory of rent as a 
 satisfactory explanation of the origin of rent the theory 
 that rent is the price paid, not for the mere use of the land, 
 but for the extra fertility of the soil, which causes people 
 
124 LIFE OF 
 
 to pay more for it than they would do for the worst land 
 that will repay the cost of cultivation at least Ricardo 
 kept clear of the confusion which Smith's language leads 
 him into, and which, as we have seen, Hume pointed out. 
 Until ft is understood that rent does not enter at all into 
 cost of production, it is impossible to avoid obscurity in 
 treating of the subject. And accordingly, acute and 
 fertile as Smith's discussion of the theory of rent is, and 
 based, as his conclusions are, upon observations which 
 keep him from going far wrong, it is probable that the 
 theoretical part of the concluding chapter of the first 
 book is the least valuable portion of "The Wealth of 
 Nations." The remainder of it is devoted to a history 
 of the prices of produce, and to a digression on the 
 variations in the proportion between the values of silver 
 and gold. 
 
 In the first book the author dealt with the nature of 
 profits, and their division. In the second he turns to 
 what, throughout his work, he terms "stock," meaning 
 by this expression capital in the widest sense in which 
 we use the word. When the division of labour has once 
 been thoroughly introduced, the produce of a man's own 
 labour can supply but a small part of his occasional 
 wants. The far greater part of them are supplied by 
 the produce of other men's labour, which he purchases 
 with the produce, or what is the same thing, the price 
 of the produce, of his own. But this purchase cannot 
 be made till such time as the produce of his own labour 
 has not only been completed, but sold. A stock of 
 goods of different kinds, therefore, must be stored 
 up somewhere, sufficient to maintain him, and to sup- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 1:25 
 
 ply him with the materials and tools of his own 
 work, till such time, at least, as both these events can 
 be brought about. As the accumulation of stock 
 must, in the nature of things, be previous to the 
 division of labour, so labour can be more and more 
 subdivided in proportion only as stock is previously 
 more and more accumulated. The quantity of materials 
 which the same number of people can work up, 
 increases in a great proportion as labour comes to be 
 more and more subdivided; and as the operations of 
 each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree 
 of simplicity. A variety of new machines came to be 
 invented for facilitating and abridging these operations. 
 As the division of labour advances, therefore, in order to 
 give constant employment to an equal number of work- 
 men, an equal stock of provisions and a greater stock 
 of materials and tools than would have been necessary 
 in a ruder state of things, must be accumulated before- 
 hand. And the quantity of industry, not only increases 
 in every country with the increase of the stock which 
 employs it, but in consequence of that increase, the 
 same quantity of industry produces a much greater 
 quantity of work. 
 
 Certain capital is set aside as the source from which 
 a revenue is yielded. Other part is made use of for 
 consumption. The first kind may be used in the pur- 
 chase and resale at a profit of goods. Such capital is 
 always changing its form, and is called by Smith 
 circulating capital. The second kind may be employed, 
 for example, in the improvement of land or the establish- 
 ment of machinery or instruments of trade ; it is called 
 
126 LIFE OF 
 
 fixed capital. And just as the capital of the individual 
 is divided into these three kinds, so the capital of a 
 nation is divided into consumable, circulating, and fixed. 
 The first is illustrated by food, furniture, and clothes; 
 the second, by machinery, profitable buildings, land, 
 improvements, and acquired and useful abilities ; the 
 third, by that kind of capital which, like the capital 
 requisite for carrying on a business, is only remunerative 
 in so far as it is used. These distinctions led Smith 
 into a discussion of the functions of money as a part of 
 the circulating capital of the country, and finally into an 
 examination of the part performed by the banking 
 systems of Scotland and England, a topic to which he 
 devotes considerable space, and which he handles from 
 the point of view of the practical knowledge which must 
 have come to him in Glasgow, as well as from that of a 
 theoretical economist. In this mixed kind of inquiry he 
 is at his very best. 
 
 He goes on to distinguish labour into productive and 
 unproductive, making, among other statements, the 
 somewhat more than questionable assertion, that the 
 labours of churchmen, statesmen, lawyers, physicians, 
 men of letters of all kinds, players, buffoons, musicians, 
 opera singers, and opera dancers, all stand on the same 
 footing, and belong to the second category. Like the 
 declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or 
 the tune of the musician, he thinks that the work of all of 
 them perishes in the very instant of its production ; for- 
 getting that to deny that any labour is productive which 
 does not give its result in a material form, is to deny the 
 name of wealth to anything but visible objects. In the 
 
ADAM SMITH. 127 
 
 end, however, he returns to safer ground in his distinction 
 between the effects of productive and unproductive 
 expenditure. 
 
 " Whatever, therefore, we may imagine the real wealth 
 of a country to consist in, whether in the value of 
 the annual produce of its land and labour, as plain 
 reason seems to dictate, or in the quantity of the 
 precious metals which circulate within it, as vulgar pre- 
 judices suppose ; in either view of the matter, every 
 prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal 
 man a public benefactor. The effects of misconduct are 
 often the same as those of prodigality. Every in- 
 judicious and unsuccessful project in agriculture, mines, 
 fisheries, trade, or manufactures, tends in the same 
 manner to diminish the funds destined for the main- 
 tenance of productive labour. In every such project, 
 although the capital is consumed by productive hands 
 only, yet, as by the injudicious manner in which they 
 are employed, they do not reproduce the full value of 
 their consumption, there must always be some diminu- 
 tion in what would otherwise have been the productive 
 funds of the society." 
 
 Smith passes on from this subject to examine and 
 demolish the crude notion, put forward by no less 
 eminent men than Locke and Montesquieu, that the 
 increase of the quantity of gold and silver, in conse- 
 quence of the discovery of the Spanish West Indies, was 
 the real cause of the lowering of the rate of interest in 
 Europe. These metals, they said, having become of less 
 
128 LIFE OF" 
 
 value themselves, the use of any particular portion of 
 them necessarily became of less value too, and conse- 
 quently the price which could be paid for it. Smith 
 points out conclusively that, whatever were the causes 
 which lowered the value of the capital, these causes must 
 necessarily have lowered that of the interest in exactly 
 the same proportion, and that the only effect of the 
 increase in the amount of the precious metals was to 
 diminish the value of the metals themselves. 
 
 Remarking that no kind of labour and expenditure 
 of capital is more really productive than that which 
 takes place in agriculture, he traces the principal cause 
 of the rapid progress of our American colonies to the fact 
 that their capital has mainly been employed in agricul- 
 ture. But productive as agriculture is, its profits have, 
 apparently, so far as Europe is concerned, no superiority 
 over those of other employments. For he records that, 
 even in his time, notwithstanding the proposals and 
 promises of projectors, there was no instance on record 
 of a great fortune acquired by agriculture. 
 
 The third book is almost purely historical, and need 
 not be noticed at length here. In it he proceeds to state 
 the natural course of things to be the direction of the 
 greater part of the capital of every growing society 
 first, to agriculture ; secondly, to manufactures ; and last 
 of all, to foreign commerce. But though this natural 
 order of things must, he thinks, have taken place in 
 some degree in every such society, it has, in all the 
 modern states of Europe, been in many respects entirely 
 inverted. The foreign commerce of some of their cities 
 has introduced all their finer manufactures, or such as 
 
ADAM SMITH. 129 
 
 were fit for distant sale ; and manufactures and foreign 
 commerce together have given birth to the principal im- 
 provements of agriculture. The manners and customs 
 which the nature of their original government introduced, 
 and which remained after that government was greatly 
 altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and 
 retrograde order. 
 
 He goes on to give, at some length, reasons for 
 thinking that, since the downfall of the Roman Empire, 
 the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, 
 manufactures, and commerce, the industry of the towns, 
 than to agriculture, the industry of the country. In a 
 part of this book which consists too much of detail to 
 be reproduced here he traces the origin of primo- 
 geniture and entail to the desire to keep the land under 
 the control of one powerful hand in barbarous and 
 disorderly times, a desire which remained, though with- 
 out a justification, as civilization advanced. The origin 
 of the practice of granting leases to tenants he finds in 
 the circumstance that, by degrees, it became more and 
 more necessary to protect the tenant against the growing 
 necessities of the landlord class, which led them to raise 
 rents after a fashion unknown to their forefathers. 
 
 In the early part of this chapter some account was given 
 of Smith's arguments against the mercantile and agricul- 
 tural systems, and it is not, therefore, necessary to analyse 
 that portion of the fourth book which deals with them. 
 But no account of that book would be complete which 
 omitted to notice the chapters which deal with the true 
 principles of colonial policy. 
 
 The establishment of the European colonies in the 
 9 
 
130 LIFE OF 
 
 West Indies and America did not, he thinks, arise from 
 that pressure of population on territorial limits which led 
 to the colonial expansion of Greece and Rome. The 
 hope of gain, especially through the discovery of gold 
 and silver mines, gave the real initiative to the policy 
 of conquest in the former case. But whatever the cause 
 of the foundation of these colonies, unquestionably that 
 foundation has been attended with great advantage to all 
 parties. The enormous amount of land available in a 
 new country sends labour up to a premium. With high 
 wages, population tends to increase rapidly. Although 
 wages are high, still they constitute almost the entire 
 price of the land, and are therefore not excessive. 
 
 Thus it is that colonies have developed and flourish. 
 But they have done so in spite of the policy which the 
 mother country forced upon them at the time when 
 Smith wrote. On no subject is he more pronounced and 
 severe than upon the protective and restrictive regulations 
 of the commerce of the time. 
 
 " When those establishments had been effectuated, and 
 had become so considerable as to attract the attention 
 of the mother country, the first regulations which she 
 made with regard to them had always in view to secure 
 to herself the monopoly of their commerce, to confine 
 their market and to enlarge her own at their expense; 
 and, consequently, rather to damp and discourage than 
 to quicken and forward the course of their prosperity. 
 In the different ways in which this monopoly has been 
 exercised consists one of the most essential differences 
 in the policy of the different European nations with 
 
ADAM SMITH. 131 
 
 regard to their colonies. The best of them all, that 
 of England, is only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive 
 than that of the rest. In what way, therefore, has the 
 policy of Europe contributed either to the first estab- 
 lishment or to the present grandeur of the colonies 
 of America? In one way, and one way only, it has 
 contributed a good deal. Magna virum mater / It bred 
 and formed the men who were capable of achieving such 
 great actions, and of laying the foundation of so great 
 an empire ; and there is no other quarter of the world 
 of which the policy is capable of forming, or has ever 
 actually and in fact formed such men. The colonies 
 owe to the policy of Europe the education and great 
 views of their active and enterprising founders; and 
 some of the greatest and most important of them, so far 
 as concerns their internal government, owe to it scarce 
 anything else." 
 
 On the other hand, while he thinks that the mother 
 countries derive, in the form not merely of new markets, but 
 of increased support, great advantages from their colonies, 
 he points out that an exclusive policy in colonial commerce 
 is attended with considerable dangers. In the case of 
 Great Britain, for example, the monopoly of the colony 
 trade had, in his opinion, forced towards it so much greater 
 a proportion of capital than it would naturally have 
 attracted, that it had seriously disturbed the natural balance 
 which would otherwise have taken place between the 
 different branches of British industry. Her commerce 
 had thus become directed principally into a single 
 channel, and he likens her condition to that of an 
 
132 LIFE OF 
 
 unwholesome body, in which some of the vital parts 
 have become overgrown, and which, upon that account, 
 has become liable to many dangerous disorders scarce 
 incident to the body in which all the parts are properly 
 proportioned. The only remedy for all this he sees in 
 moderate and gradual relaxation of the laws which in his 
 time gave to Great Britain the exclusive trade to the 
 colonies, until that trade could be rendered altogether 
 free. It is characteristic of Smith that he here advocates 
 his Free Trade policy as one to be adopted with mode- 
 
 "/ration and caution. But he is none the less bitterly 
 impatient of any hesitation about such a policy in the 
 interests of the mercantile section of the community. 
 "To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up 
 a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit 
 only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project 
 altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely 
 fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shop- 
 keepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are 
 capable of fancying that they will find some advantage 
 in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow- 
 citizens to found and maintain such an empire." 
 
 In the fourth book, after concluding his denunciation 
 of the mercantile system, and having examined in a 
 somewhat more tender spirit, the agricultural system, he 
 concludes by showing that the latter, by encouraging 
 agriculture unduly in order to promote it through the 
 medium of restraints on manufactures and foreign trade, 
 defeats its own object, and indirectly discourages that 
 , very system of industry which it means to further. The 
 
 / true policy, therefore, is one of natural liberty. Every man, 
 
ADAM SMITH. 133 
 
 so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, should 
 be left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own 
 way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into 
 competition with those of any other man or order of men. 
 The sovereign should be completely discharged from a 
 duty, in attempting to perform which he must always 
 be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper 
 performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge 
 could ever be sufficient the duty of superintending the 
 industry of private people, and of directing it towards 
 employments most suitable to the interests of society. 
 Such is the individualism of Adam Smith. But it is an 
 individualism of no dogmatic type. It is rather the 
 result of a close study of actual men and things, the 
 result of the vicarious experience of one who had found 
 that, as a general rule, the affairs of the world were best 
 managed when the people whom these affairs concerned 
 were left as much as possible to their own devices. 
 
 According to this system of natural liberty, the 
 sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three 
 duties of great importance indeed, but plain and in- 
 telligible to common understandings : first, the duty of 
 protecting society from the violence and invasion of other 
 independent societies ; secondly, the duty of protecting, 
 so far as possible, every member of society from the 
 injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or 
 the duty of establishing an exact administration of 
 justice ; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintain- 
 ing certain public works and certain public institutions 
 which it can never be for the interest of any individual, 
 or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain, 
 
134 LIFE OF 
 
 because the profit could never repay the expense to any 
 individual, or small number of individuals, though it may 
 frequently do much more than repay it to a great society. 
 The proper performance of these several duties of the 
 sovereign necessarily supposes a certain expense, and 
 this expense again necessarily requires a certain revenue to 
 support it. The fifth and concluding book of "The Wealth 
 of Nations " therefore seeks to explain, first, what are the 
 necessary expenses of the sovereign or commonwealth ; 
 and which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the 
 general contribution of the whole society, and which of 
 them by that of some particular part or members only ; 
 secondly, the various methods by which this contribution 
 can be levied ; and, thirdly, the circumstances under 
 which incumbrances on the general revenue, or national 
 debts, have been created. The portions of this book 
 which deal with the expenses of defence, and of the 
 administration of justice, do not require notice here. 
 They are of a nature largely historical, and there is not 
 much that is specially characteristic of their author in 
 them. The parts, however, which deal with the public 
 means of facilitating the commerce of society, are full 
 of practical bearing on the legislation of his time. In 
 them Smith subjects to a minute examination such 
 questions as the policy of levying tolls at turnpikes, and 
 the justice of a carriage tax. Of such tolls and taxes he 
 complains that, in so far as they were regulated in pro- 
 portion to the weight and not the value of the goods 
 affected by them, they fell mainly upon coarse and bulky, 
 and not on valuable commodities, and were therefore 
 paid, not by the rich, but by the poor. In this connection 
 
ADAM SMITH. 
 
 he comes to the conclusion that it would not' 
 that the maintenance of the public highwa 
 in the hands, either of Government, who\j*ii|r)at 
 tempted to draw too high a revenue from the le 
 respect of them, or of private individuals who, having a 
 kind of monopoly, would be tempted to neglect their 
 maintenance. He thinks that the best system is that of 
 management by public commissioners or trustees, a 
 conclusion which modern experience has borne out, and 
 recent legislation has acted on. But his chief criticism 
 in this part of his work is on the policy which had led the 
 legislature in his time to confer on certain favoured corpo- 
 rations trade monopolies, in consideration of their under- 
 taking the performance of duties^ which were properly 
 discharged by the sovereign, such as the protection of 
 those exercising particular kinds of trade. After exam- 
 ining, in a somewhat hostile spirit, the history of certain 
 well-known regulated companies of his time, and criti- 
 cising by the way, and as an incidental matter, the policy 
 which dismembered Gibraltar from the Spanish monarchy, 
 a dismemberment which "perhaps never served any other 
 real purpose than to alienate from England her natural ally 
 the King of Spain, and to unite the two principal 
 branches of the House of Bourbon in a much stricter 
 and more permanent alliance than the ties of blood could 
 ever have united them," he comes to the East India 
 Company. His verdict on this corporation, then in the 
 zenith of its greatness, he gives in these words : 
 
 " But it seems impossible, by any alterations, to render 
 these courts," (the Courts of the proprietors and directors of 
 
136 LIFE OF 
 
 the Company,) " in any respect fit to govern, or even to 
 share in the government of a great empire ; because the 
 greater part of their members must always have too little 
 interest in the prosperity of that empire to give any 
 serious attention to what may promote it. Frequently a 
 man of great, sometimes even a man of small, fortune is 
 willing to purchase a thousand pounds' share in India 
 Stock, merely for the interest which he expects to acquire 
 by a vote in the Court of proprietors. It gives him a 
 share, though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment 
 of the plunderers of India; the Court of directors, 
 though they make the appointment, being necessarily 
 more or less under the influence of the proprietors, wko 
 not only elect these directors, but sometimes overrule the 
 appointments of their servants in India. Provided he 
 can enjoy this influence for a few yearsj and thereby 
 provide for a certain number of his friends, he frequently 
 cares little about the dividend, or even about the value 
 of the stock on which his vote is founded. About the 
 prosperity of the great empire, in the government of 
 which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. 
 No other sovereigns ever were, or, from the nature of 
 things, ever could be, so perfectly indifferent about the 
 happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvement or 
 waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their 
 administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the 
 greater part of the proprietors of such a mercantile 
 company are, and necessarily must be." 
 
 The next branch of the subject with which he deals 
 is that which relates to public institutions for purposes 
 
ADAM SMITH. 137 
 
 of instruction. He begins this inquiry by asking the 
 question whether educational endowments have fulfilled 
 their purpose. Now in every profession the exertion of 
 the greater part of those who exercise it is always in 
 proportion to the necessity they are under of making 
 that exertion. But that necessity, to be really effectual, 
 must not, as the bad example of the French Universities 
 had convinced Smith, be an arbitrary and extraneous 
 compulsion by an independent authority. If, as he 
 thinks, endowments diminish the necessity of application 
 in the teachers, the requisite motive can be supplied by 
 making success depend upon effort, in the same way as it 
 does, for example, in the profession of the law. Whatever 
 forces a certain number of students to any college or 
 university, independent of the merit or reputation of the 
 teachers, tends more or less to diminish the necessity 
 for that merit or reputation. The result is that the 
 discipline of the universities in his time appeared to 
 Smith to be contrived, not for the benefit of the students, 
 but for the ease of the masters. The only real argument 
 in favour of the universities is that, badly as things are 
 taught there, but for these institutions they would not 
 have been taught at all. 
 
 The chief defects in the university education of his 
 time he traces to the circumstance that university educa- 
 tion was originally intended only for the preparation of 
 the clergy. The result of this was that, even in his 
 time, the system was not well adapted to its end, and a 
 vicious alternative of travel had been generally adopted. 
 
 " In England it becomes every day more and more 
 
138 LIFE OF 
 
 the custom to send young people to travel in foreign 
 countries immediately upon their leaving school, and 
 without sending them to any university. Our young 
 people, it is said, generally return home much improved 
 by their travels. A young man who goes abroad at 
 seventeen or eighteen and returns home at one and 
 twenty, returns three or four years older than he was 
 when he went abroad ; and at that age it is very difficult 
 not to improve a good deal in three or four years. In 
 the course of his travels he generally acquires some 
 knowledge of one or two foreign languages ; a knowledge, 
 however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either 
 to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects 
 he commonly returns home more conceited, more un- 
 principled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any 
 serious application, either to study or to business, than 
 he could well have become in so short a time had he 
 lived at home. By travelling so very young, by spending 
 in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious years 
 of his life, at a distance from the inspection and control 
 of his parents and relations, every useful habit which 
 the earlier parts of his education might have had some 
 tendency to form in him, instead of being riveted and 
 confirmed, is almost necessarily either weakened or 
 effaced. Nothing but the discredit into which the 
 universities are allowing themselves to fall could ever 
 have brought into repute so very absurd a practice as 
 that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending 
 his son abroad a father delivers himself, at least for 
 some time, from so disagreeable an object as that of a son 
 unemployed, neglected, or going to ruin before his eyes." 
 
ADAM SMITH. 139 
 
 Very much to the disadvantage of the former, he 
 contrasts with the position of the modern public teacher 
 that of the public teachers of ancient Greece and Rome. 
 The reason why men of the enthusiasm, the industry, 
 and the position of the latter, do not exist in modern 
 times, he finds in the endowments of our modern schools 
 and colleges, which have not only, in his opinion, 
 corrupted the diligence of good teachers, but have 
 rendered it almost impossible, by what is in effect a most 
 injurious system of bounties, to have good private 
 teachers. Greatly, he thinks, to their advantage, the 
 absence of public institutions for the education of 
 women prevents their time being wasted in useless kinds 
 of study. " In every part of her life a woman feels 
 some conveniency or advantage from every part of her 
 education. It seldom happens that a man, in any part 
 of his life, derives any conveniency or advantage from 
 some of the most laborious and troublesome parts of 
 his education." 
 
 All this does not mean that the State is to abstain 
 from interfering for educational purposes. It should 
 only abstain from interfering improperly. In the case of 
 the poorer classes Smith is clear that it is the duty of the 
 State to facilitate education by the establishment of 
 parish or district schools, and by giving small premiums 
 to the children who excel in them. On the grounds for 
 such interference his language is unmistakable : 
 
 " A man, without the proper use of the intellectual 
 faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible 
 than a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed 
 
140 LIFE OF 
 
 in a still more essential part of the character of human 
 nature. Though the State was to derive no advantage 
 from the instruction of the inferior ranks of people, it 
 would still deserve its attention that they should not be 
 altogether uninstructed. The State, however, derives no 
 inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. The 
 more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the 
 delusions of enthusiasm and superstition which, among 
 ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful 
 disorders. An instructed and intelligent people, besides, 
 are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and 
 stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, 
 more respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect 
 of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more 
 disposed to respect those superiors. They are more 
 disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing 
 through, the interested complaints of faction and sedi- 
 tion, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be 
 misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the 
 measures of government. In free countries, where the 
 safety of government depends very much upon the 
 favourable judgment which the people may form of its 
 conduct, it must surely be of the greatest importance 
 that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or 
 capriciously concerning it." 
 
 Upon the second branch of the subject of public 
 educational institutions, that of religious establishments, 
 Smith is characteristically cautious. He quotes his friend 
 Hume, " by far the most illustrious philosopher of the 
 present age," for the proposition that the interested 
 
ADAM SMITH. 141 
 
 diligence of competition among the clergy, which would 
 be furthered by the absence of State interference in 
 reh'gion is, in this case, unlike that of secular education, 
 what every wise legislator will study to prevent, because 
 in every " religion except the true, it is highly pernicious, 
 and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true by 
 infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, 
 and delusion/' But he remarks on Hume's statement 
 that it is at least clear that whatever may have been the 
 good or bad effects of endowments, they were not 
 bestowed with any view to these effects. They originated, 
 he says, in the partizanship of political faction. And he 
 expresses the opinion that, in the absence of this 
 partizanship, the various sects would have lived peaceably 
 side by side, and the dangers which Hume feared from 
 competition among them would have been averted. In 
 such a case no establishment would have been needed, 
 and even if, he says, in the spirit of a true Scotch 
 moderate of the eighteenth century, there had been any 
 " unsocial or disagreeably rigorous on the morals of all 
 the little, sects into which the country would have been 
 divided," the State could have put this right by means of 
 two remedies. The first of these is the promotion of 
 the study of science and philosophy, " the great antidote 
 to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition." The 
 second is even more curious, and recalls to the reader of 
 "The Wealth of Nations" the times of the Stuarts. It 
 is " the frequency and gaiety of public diversions." 
 
 " The State, by encouraging, that is, by giving entire 
 liberty to all those who for their own interest would 
 
142 LIFE OF 
 
 attempt, without scandal or indecency, to amuse and 
 divert the people by painting, poetry, music, dancing, by 
 all sorts of dramatic representations and exhibitions, 
 would easily dissipate, in the greater part of them, that 
 melancholy and gloomy humour which is almost always 
 the nurse of popular superstition and enthusiasm. 
 Public diversions have always been the objects of dread 
 hatred to all the fanatical promoters of these popular 
 frenzies. The gaiety and good-humour which those 
 diversions inspire were altogether inconsistent with that 
 temper of mind which was fittest to their purpose, or 
 which they could best work upon. Dramatic representa- 
 tions, besides frequently exposing their artifices to public 
 ridicule, and sometimes even to public execration, were 
 upon that account, more than all other diversions, the 
 objects of their peculiar abhorrence." 
 
 Having thus curiously proposed an alternative to re- 
 ligious establishments, he goes on to inquire under what 
 conditions establishments, if they must exist, are most 
 tolerable. These he finds in equality of benefices and 
 small endowments. Such a state of things promotes 
 those exemplary morals which alone can give dignity to 
 the man of small fortune. This he finds to be the 
 reason why the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland have, as 
 he thinks, acquired more influence over the minds of the 
 common people than the clergy of any other established 
 church. 
 
 The general conclusion which he draws from all this 
 is, that the expense of the institutions for education and 
 religious instruction may, as- being beneficial to society. 
 
ADAM SMITH. 143 
 
 like that of the maintenance of justice, and, as he shows, 
 of the maintenance of the dignity of the chief magistrate, 
 be defrayed by a general contribution. Yet he qualifies 
 this by adding, somewhat inconsistently, that in the first 
 oise the expense might perhaps, with equal propriety and 
 advantage, be defrayed by those who receive the imme- 
 diate benefit of such education and instruction, or by 
 the voluntary contributions of those who think they have 
 occasion for either the one or the other. But in the 
 case of what are really local or provincial institutions 
 for example, local police the expense ought to be borne 
 by the local revenue only. 
 
 The main subject of interest in the rest of the book is 
 that of taxation, a subject on which Smith's views have, 
 in the main, become part of the traditions of ortho- 
 doxy. He begins by pointing out that the revenue of the 
 sovereign, like that of the subject, must be derived either 
 from stock, as, e.g., in the case of the Post Office, or from 
 land, as in the case of the land-tax. He divides taxes 
 according as it is intended they should fall on rent, or on 
 profits, or on wages, or on all three indifferently. He then 
 goes on to lay down four maxims with regard to taxation ; 
 first, that every subject ought to contribute in proportion 
 to his capacity, by which he means the revenue which that 
 subject enjoys under the protection of the State, 
 Secondly, that the tax ought to be certain, and not 
 arbitrary. Thirdly, that every tax ought to be levied at 
 the time, or in the manner, in which it is likely to be 
 most convenient for the contributor to pay. And fourthly, 
 that every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take 
 out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little 
 
144 LIFE OF 
 
 as possible over and above what it brings into the public 
 treasury, a maxim which strikes at every instance of 
 indirect taxation. Against the first of these canons, the 
 land-tax, in so far as the valuations in the various 
 counties and parishes are dissimilar, offends. And 
 tithes are equally objectionable, inasmuch as a certain 
 portion of the produce is, in different situations, equi- 
 valent to a different portion of the rent. Convert the 
 tithe into a rent-charge, and you are again face to face 
 with the vice of a land-tax. But, excepting in the par- 
 ticular aspect which he points out, a land-tax is theo- 
 retically unobjectionable, and he suggests that the defect 
 which characterizes it in this country under the existing 
 system might be completely remedied by a proper system 
 of official valuations of the land from time to time. 
 Indeed, ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are, 
 in Smith's opinion, the most suitable species of revenue 
 for taxation, in so far as the owner enjoys them without 
 the necessity of care and attention, and no industry is 
 therefore discouraged by their imposition. But it must 
 be remembered that no tax can properly be levied on 
 this, any more than on other kinds of revenues, which 
 does not conform to the maxim of equality in its in- 
 cidence. 
 
 His views upon such subjects as taxes on the income 
 or corpus of personal property, and taxes upon such 
 subjects as, for example, shops, are exactly the current 
 views of to-day. The former he objects to as in the 
 nature of an inquisition ; the latter as being in the 
 nature of an indirect imposition on persons other than 
 those who pay it. In a similar fashion he examines a 
 
ADAM SMITH. 145 
 
 very large number of the taxes of his time, both home 
 and foreign, in the light of his four maxims. The 
 chapter is one not merely of a theoretical interest, but 
 of close bearing upon a variety of propositions which 
 are accepted by modern British statesmen, propositions 
 about which Smith, whatever his bias (and against private 
 owners of land it certainly is considerable), is everywhere 
 judicially impartial. 
 
 Several curious passages, curious because of the 
 interest which always attaches to proposals upon which 
 the experience of a century has cast light, deserve to be 
 quoted in their entirety. We give them as the conclusion 
 of this account of the contents of " The Wealth of 
 Nations " : 
 
 "During the most profound peace, various events 
 occur which require an extraordinary expense, and 
 Government finds it always more convenient to defray 
 this expense by misapplying the sinking fund than by 
 imposing a new tax. Every new tax is immediately felt 
 more or less by the people. It occasions always some 
 murmur, and meets with some opposition. The more 
 taxes may have been multiplied, the higher they may 
 have been raised upon every different subject of taxation, 
 the more loudly the people complain of every new tax, 
 the more difficult it becomes, too, either to find out new 
 subjects of taxation, or to raise much higher the taxes 
 already imposed upon the old. A momentary sus- 
 pension of the payment of debt is not immediately 
 felt by the people, and occasions neither murmur nor 
 complaint. To borrow of the sinking fund is always an 
 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF 
 
 obvious and easy expedient for getting out of the present 
 difficulty. The more the public debts may have been 
 accumulated, the more necessary it may have become a 
 study to reduce them, the more dangerous, the more 
 ruinous, it may be to misapply any part of the sinking 
 fund, the less likely is the public debt to be reduced to 
 any considerable degree, the more likely, the more 
 certainly is the sinking fund to be misapplied towards 
 defraying all the extraordinary expenses which occur in 
 time of peace. When a nation is already overburdened 
 with taxes, nothing but the necessities of a new war, 
 nothing but the animosity of national vengeance, or the 
 anxiety for national security, can induce the people to 
 submit with tolerable patience to a new tax. Hence the 
 usual misapplication of the sinking fund. 
 
 " In Great Britain, from the time that we had first 
 recourse to the ruinous expedient of perpetual funding, 
 the reduction of the public debt in time of peace has 
 never borne any proportion to its accumulation in time 
 of war. It was in the war which began in 1688, and was 
 concluded by the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, that the 
 foundation of the present enormous debt of Great Britain 
 was first laid." 
 
 " By a union with Great Britain, Ireland would gain, 
 besides the freedom of trade, other advantages much 
 more important, and which would much more than com- 
 pensate any increase of taxes that might accompany that 
 union. By the union with England the middling and 
 inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete 
 deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had 
 
ADAM SMITH. 147 
 
 always before oppressed them. By a union with Great 
 Britain the greater part of the people of all ranks in 
 Ireland would gain an equally complete deliverance 
 from a much more oppressive aristocracy, an aristocracy 
 not founded, like that of Scotland, in the natural and 
 respectable distinctions of birth and fortune, but in the 
 most odious of all distinctions, those of religious and 
 political prejudices distinctions which, more than any 
 other, animate both the insolence of the oppressors and 
 the hatred and indignation of the oppressed, and which 
 commonly render the inhabitants of the same country 
 more hostile to one another than those of different 
 countries ever are. Without a union with Great Britain 
 the inhabitants of Ireland are not likely for many ages 
 to consider themselves as one people." 
 
 ' If it should be found impracticable for Great Britain 
 to draw any considerable augmentation of revenue from 
 any of the resources above mentioned, the only resource 
 which can remain to her is a diminution of her expense. 
 In the mode of collecting and in that of expending the 
 public revenue, though in both there may be still more 
 improvement, Great Britain seems to be at least as eco- 
 nomical as any of her neighbours. The military estab- 
 lishment which she maintains for her own defence in 
 time of peace is more moderate than that of any 
 European State which can pretend to rival her either in 
 wealth or in power. None of those articles therefore 
 seem to admit of any considerable reduction of expense. 
 The expense of the peace establishment of the colonies 
 was, before the commencement of the present disturb- 
 
148 LIFE OF 
 
 ances, very considerable, and is an expense which may, 
 and, if no revenue can be drawn from them, ought 
 certainly to be saved altogether. This constant expense 
 in time of peace, though very great, is insignificant in 
 comparison with what the defence of the colonies has 
 cost us in time of war. The last war, which was under- 
 taken altogether on account of the colonies, cost Great 
 Britain, it has already been observed, upwards of ninety 
 millions. The Spanish war of 1739 was principally 
 undertaken on their account; in which, and in the 
 French war that was the consequence of it, Great Britain 
 spent upwards of forty millions, a great part of which 
 ought justly to be charged to the colonies. In those 
 two wars the colonies cost Great Britain much more than 
 double the sum which the national debt amounted to 
 before the commencement of the first of them. Had it 
 not been for these wars, that debt might, and probably 
 would by this time, have been completely paid ; and had 
 it not been for the colonies the former of these wars 
 might not, and the latter certainly would not, have been 
 undertaken. It was because the colonies were supposed 
 to be provinces of the British Empire that this expense 
 was laid out upon them. But countries which contribute 
 neither revenue nor military force towards the support of 
 the empire cannot be considered as provinces. They 
 may, perhaps, be considered as appendages, as a sort of 
 splendid and showy equipage of the empire. But if the 
 empire can no longer support the expense of keeping up 
 this equipage, it ought certainly to lay it down, and if it 
 cannot raise its revenue in proportion to its expense, it 
 ought at least to accommodate its expense to its revenue, 
 
ADA M SMITH. 149 
 
 If the colonies, notwithstanding their refusal to submit 
 to British taxes, are still to be considered as provinces of 
 the British Empire, their defence in some future war may 
 cost Great Britain as great an expense as it ever has 
 done in any former war. The rulers of Great Britain 
 have, for more than a century past, amused the people 
 with the imagination that they possessed a great empire 
 on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, 
 has hitherto existed in imagination only. It has hitherto 
 been, not an empire, but the project of an empire ; not 
 a gold mine, but the project of a gold mine ; a project 
 which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if 
 pursued in the same way it has been hitherto, is likely to 
 cost, immense expense, without being likely to bring any 
 profit ; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony 
 trade, it has been shown, are, to the great body of the 
 people, mere loss instead of profit. It is surely now 
 time that our rulers should either realize this golden 
 dream in which they have been indulging themselves, 
 perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake 
 from it themselves, and endeavour to awaken the people. 
 If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given 
 up. If any of the provinces of the British Empire can- 
 not be made to contribute towards the support of the 
 whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should 
 free herself from the expense of defending those provinces 
 in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil 
 or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour 
 to accommodate her future views and designs to the real 
 mediocrity of her circumstances." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OCCASION has already been found to advert, in 
 these pages, to the difference between what is 
 mlled political economy and politics. The characteristic 
 feature of the former is abstraction from all but a par- 
 ticular kind of motive, for example, self-interest, and the 
 deduction of conclusions from the hypothetical premises 
 so found. The process of induction, in so far as it finds 
 a place, is applied in the same way. Certain features are 
 looked at, and certain features only ; others, such as the 
 operation of custom and habit, being left out of account. 
 The truth appears to be that this is not a characteristic 
 peculiar to economical science. There is no department 
 of exact knowledge which has not been built up by much 
 the same method. Physical science deals with only one 
 kind of the relationships of things. Anatomy, and even 
 I >hysiology, treat the interdependence of the parts of the 
 organism as if that interpendence were of a mechanical 
 character, and leave out of account what stares the 
 observer in the face in daily life, that these parts derive 
 their distinguishing significance from this, that they 
 are the parts of a whole which controls them in a non- 
 mechanical fashion. 
 
LIFE OF ADAM SMITH. 151 
 
 It is one of the qualities of Adam Smith's book, a 
 quality which is at once a virtue and a vice, that it is in 
 a measure free from this abstract character. A virtue, 
 because we have the sense that he is writing of real men 
 and a real world ; a vice, because the tendency to take 
 into account a plurality of aspects occasions a confusion 
 and absence of system. His immediate successors 
 displayed neither the virtue nor the vice. Malthus, 
 although he did not so entirely, as is popularly believed 
 of him, ignore the fact that there is a moral as distin- 
 guished from a physical irreducible minimum of comfort, 
 which forms the real limit of the increase of popu- 
 lation, a minimum which, just because it is of a 
 moral nature, can be raised by education and the 
 influence of better social surroundings, nevertheless 
 persisted in regarding human life as a struggle for 
 existence, in which each seeks only his own individual 
 ends, and in which, accordingly, no other motive can be 
 counted on. Ricardo developed this view into a hard 
 and fast system of premises, from which he proceeded to 
 draw a multitude of deductions. The result has been 
 an intense reaction against these premises. 
 
 "The only thing that interests us," writes Karl Marx, 
 in reference to America, in his book on ' Capital/ " is 
 the secret discovered in the New World by the political 
 economy of the Old World, and proclaimed on the 
 house-tops ; that the capitalist mode of production and 
 accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, 
 have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of 
 self-earned private property; in other words, the expro- 
 priation of the labourer." 
 
152 LIFE OF 
 
 It will have to be recognized that political economy 
 is either a hypothetical science, dealing only with one 
 phase of human existence, and based upon a single set 
 of assumptions, or that it is in the nature of an art rather 
 than a science, and consists of a series of maxims of 
 practice, not one of which can be applied without re- 
 gard to special circumstances, or apart from a previous 
 consideration of the end sought to be obtained. 
 
 The consequence of the attempt to follow out in prac- 
 tice the principles of an abstract science has been to 
 bring into somewhat sharp contrast two opposing schools 
 of thought. The one lays stress on the individual and 
 his rights as such. The other looks mainly to the fact 
 that man is man only in so far as he stands in a close 
 relationship to his fellow men, and to what has been 
 called a social organism, as real, because as important 
 in its influence on the units it embraces, as those units 
 themselves. 
 
 Smith was an individualist in the sense that he was 
 the opponent of State interference; but if he was an 
 advocate of the doctrine of laissezfaire, it was not as a 
 deduction from any abstract principle. He saw that the 
 State interference of his time was bad, and he wrote his 
 book with reference to his time. The truth is, that his 
 opposition to that system of interference was based on a 
 perception that in his day it not only missed, but was of 
 such a character that it necessarily missed, its mark. 
 There are indications throughout " The Wealth of 
 Nations," such, for example, as those in the chapter on 
 education, that, while no Socialist, he regarded it as 
 within the proper competence of a Government to 
 
ADAM SMITH. 153 
 
 meddle with individual liberty for the better training 
 and discipline even of full-grown men. Again, Smith 
 was a free-trader, not because everybody was in his 
 opinion entitled to trade on the same terms with every- 
 body else, but because he saw that free-trade was the 
 best way of making a nation rich. This is a fact which 
 has been often forgotten since Smith's time. What with 
 him was a result of observation, a rule of practice, a 
 means to an end, has been elevated to the position of a 
 sacred principle. The case for free-trade has been over- 
 stated. It is logically, whether practically so or not, 
 quite conceivable that if the end be not the production, 
 but the distribution of wealth in a particular country, 
 its circumstances may be such as to justify protection 
 as a means to this end. The ordinary reasons in 
 favour of free- trade do not touch such a case. For 
 example, if it be desirable to preserve the sugar- 
 refining industry in a condition of prosperity in this 
 country, even at some cost to the general body of con- 
 sumers of sugar, a departure from free- trade principles 
 would probably be necessary in order to accomplish it, a 
 departure of a kind different from those against which 
 Smith's reasoning is directed. Grant that it is not 
 expedient, in the interests of the commonwealth, that 
 the consumer should thrive at the expense of particular 
 producers, and that an indirect tax on the consumer is 
 justifiable, because, although wasteful, it is more willingly 
 paid than a direct levy for the maintenance of particular 
 manufacturers, and the case for what is called fair-trade 
 becomes very difficult to meet. It is on this question 
 that the battle between free-trade and protection is likely 
 
154 LIFE OF 
 
 once more to be fought out before the newly enfran- 
 chised electorate of this country. A very serious battle 
 it is likely to be. The safe ground for the free-trader to 
 occupy is that it is the right of the consumer to get his 
 goods as cheaply as possible, consistently with the welfare 
 of the community ; that it is to the interest of the com- 
 munity that he should do so ; and that experience has 
 shown that all attempts on the part of the State to inter- 
 fere with the natural distribution of wealth, prove in the 
 result to be failures. Such a position is practically in- 
 distinguishable from that occupied by Adam Smith, 
 though some of his more extravagant disciples have 
 passed beyond it. 
 
 It appears then that the opposition of Adam Smith to 
 Government interference with foreign commerce and 
 Government regulation of home industry, was really based 
 upon practical considerations. And this is doubtless the 
 safest ground to take up. Experience has shown that in 
 nine cases out of ten the State, when it does intervene, 
 intervenes foolishly. But this fact is often forgotten in 
 the contemplation of the tenth case, when the liberty of 
 every man to do what he likes is working injury to the 
 community. On the one hand, it is clear that there 
 should be as little interference as possible. On the other 
 hand there must be some. Whether or not it is possible 
 to refer to an abstract principle the question of the justi- 
 fication for such interference in a particular instance, it 
 is certainly expedient not to do so. There are two 
 reasons for this. In the first place, as has already been 
 observed, hardly any political problem can be treated as 
 a simple illustration of a single principle. Many con- 
 
ADAM SMITH. 155 
 
 siderations of different kinds intervene in each case. In 
 the second place, it is highly undesirable to turn Parlia- 
 ment and particularly the House of Commons into 
 an arena where combats in political philosophy are to be 
 fought out. There can be no sufficient theory of the rela- 
 tion of the State to the individual apart from some general 
 point of view on such philosophy. And the history of 
 the subject, quite apart from the training of British politi- 
 cians, is not such as to encourage us to hope for agree- 
 ment upon any speculative basis. 
 
 The possibility of a theoretical test being thus put 
 aside, we are face to face with the difficulty of finding a 
 practical substitute. The only way appears to be that ot 
 Adam Smith, who discussed each case on its own merits 
 with a strong bias, derived from experience, against 
 enlarging the duties of the Government in cases where 
 persons under no disability were concerned. To the 
 evils which Smith pointed out as arising from the devolu- 
 tion of new duties on the State, there may be added one 
 which is assuming serious proportions the tendency to 
 substitute outside protection for the safeguard of moral 
 qualities, and the weakening of motive which is con- 
 sequent upon it. In saying that the Ballot and Corrupt 
 Practices Acts are flagrant illustrations of legislation open 
 to grave criticism on this score, it is by no means in- 
 tended to convey that these measures may not have been 
 justifiable and necessary on a balance of considerations 
 of expediency. But their principle ought not to be 
 extended to any other cases where considerations of 
 expediency do not clearly turn the balance. Parliament 
 is likely almost immediately to be called on to deal with 
 
153 LIFE OF 
 
 a number of instances where the simple question will be 
 whether the existence of such considerations has been 
 clearly made out. And it is doubtful whether Parliament 
 will give this question the deliberate and judicial con- 
 sideration it deserves. At no period in its history has 
 the House of Commons been under greater and more 
 direct pressure from the constituencies. The increasing 
 practice of holding public meetings on every variety 
 of subject, has largely facilitated the organization of 
 opinion. The result is an immense amount of pressure 
 upon members pressure of a kind which is extremely 
 difficult to withstand. It may be, for example, that 
 considerations of expediency outweigh the presumption 
 in favour of leaving men and women to rely on their 
 own moral instincts as a protection from the temptations 
 of the publichouse. It may be that these considerations 
 are so strong as to justify, in the general interest, the 
 subjection of the sober section of the public to some in- 
 convenience for the sake of those whose motives are not 
 enduring enough to save them from intemperance. How- 
 ever this is, it is apparent that in certain localities, at all 
 events, although perhaps in fewer than is sometimes 
 supposed, the public have come to a decision upon the 
 point for themselves, and have returned members to 
 represent their opinion upon it. Even if returned un- 
 pledged, it is not easy for any one to justify, on a local 
 issue of fact, as distinguished from a general issue of 
 principle, a decision in the teeth of the opinion of a 
 majority of the only parties concerned. The main diffi- 
 culty is generally to find out what this opinion really is, 
 and to prevent decisions being come to on imperfect and 
 
ADAM SMITH. 157 
 
 misleading evidence. It is not only in such matters as 
 Local Option that pressure may be brought to bear under 
 circumstances which require closer scrutiny than they 
 generally get Neither of the great parties in the State is 
 free from the blame of being prone to yield unduly to 
 influences which ought to be resisted. Each of these 
 parties is subject to its own peculiar temptations. The 
 Protectionist movement in the Conservative ranks is 
 certainly not based upon any deliberate judgment about 
 the fallacious character of the current economical 
 reasoning. On the other hand, modern Radicalism is 
 tinged with an element of the least well-considered 
 Socialism. There is not the smallest appearance of a 
 division of parties taking place, or even tending to take 
 place, on economical grounds. The best that can be 
 hoped for from the immediate future is that each 
 party may, in an increasing degree, tend to fulfil 
 the real functions of an opposition by watching closely 
 and criticizing the tendencies of its opponents to violate 
 the concrete maxims of such thinkers as Adam Smith. 
 If modern politics came to be conceived from such a 
 point of view ; if the spirit and meaning of party came to 
 be with the many what they once were with the few, and 
 what they are to-day with fewer still, there would be 
 much to be looked for from popular government. 
 
 A juster view of democracies than that which at this 
 moment appears to be current with educated men 
 throughout Europe, may recognize that the outlook is 
 far from hopeless. 
 
 THE END. 
 

INDEX. 
 
 B. 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 59 
 
 Bismarck's commercial policy, 84 
 
 rucclcuch, Duke of, placed under 
 Smith's care, 29, 30, 31, 33 ; 
 Smith appointed through his in- 
 fluence to be one of the Com- 
 missioners of Customs, 50 
 
 Buckle, his opinion of the 
 " Wealth of Nations," 12 
 
 Burke, 25, 57 
 
 C. 
 
 Carlyle, Alexander, his descrip- 
 tion of Smith, 21, 22 
 
 Clergy, effects of endowments on, 
 121, 141 
 
 Colbert, 83, 84 
 
 Corporation Laws, 120 
 
 D'Alernbert, 33 
 
 East India Company, Smith's 
 mean opinion of, 135, 136 
 
 Education, effect of endowments 
 on, 137-140 
 
 F. 
 
 Ferguson, 26 I/ i/ 
 Free Trade, 84, 132, 153 
 
 G. 
 
 Garrick, 49 
 
 Gibbon, 36 
 
 Glasgow University, 17 ; Smith 
 elected to professorship of Logic, 
 19, and Moral Philosophy, 19, 
 24, 25 ; Smith elected Lord 
 Rector, 54, 55 
 
 PI. 
 
 Home, 24 
 
 Hume, u, 21, 24 ; letter on 
 Smith's "Theory of the Moral 
 Sentiments,'' 26-30 ; letter on 
 
160 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "The Wealth of Nations," 35, 
 36 ; question of publication of 
 his posthumous work, 38-40 ; 
 Smith's account of his last illness 
 and death, 40-47 ; 48, 55, 59, 
 61, 90 
 
 Ireland, 146 
 
 I. 
 
 J. 
 
 Johnson, 49, 50 
 
 K. 
 
 Kames, Lord, i3, 27 
 
 Kant, 59, 60, 90 
 
 Kirkcaldy, Smith's birthplace, 
 
 15, and afterwards his place of 
 
 residence, 33, 34 * 
 
 Locke, 59, 90 
 
 M. 
 
 Marx, Karl, 151 
 Mercantile System, 77, y 8 
 Millar, Professor, his account of 
 
 Smith as a lecturer, 20 ; 49 
 Morellet, Abbe", 32 
 Mure, Baron, 36 
 
 N. 
 
 Navigation Acts, 96 
 
 Necker, 32 
 
 Norwich, Bishop of, his attack on 
 
 Smith's account of Hume's 
 death, 52, 53 
 North, Sir Dudley, 90 
 
 Oxford, 17 
 
 O. 
 
 P. 
 
 Panmure House, 51 
 
 Paris, 30, 31, 32 
 
 Petty, 90 
 
 Pitt, his admiration for "Wealth 
 
 of Nations,'" 49, 74, 75, 76 
 Poker Club, 23 
 Protection, 84, 153 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quesnay, 32, 87, 93, 94 
 
 R. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 49 
 
 S. 
 
 Scott, 49 
 
 Smith, Adam, his birth in Kirk- 
 caldy June 5, 1723, 15 ; his 
 father, 15, 16 ; his mother, 16, 
 50, 55 ; his education, 16, 17, 
 1 8 ; is elected to the chair of 
 Logic at Glasgow, 19 ; and 
 afterwards of Moral Philosophy 
 19, 24 ; his intention to write 
 on Jurisprudence, 14, 73 ; his 
 manner as a lecturer, 20, 21 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 1G1 
 
 his manner generally, 21-23, 
 52 ; his life in Paris, 31-33 ; his 
 hesitation to undertake the 
 publication of Hume's posthu- 
 mous works, 36-40 ; his life in 
 Edinburgh, 51 ; his death, 55 ; 
 his works other than "The 
 Wealth of Nations " and 
 " Theory of Moral Sentiments," 
 
 71-73 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 50, 53 
 Strahan, 39, 40 
 
 T. 
 
 "Theory of Moral Sentiments"" 
 
 analyzed, 56-71 
 Townsend, 29 
 Turgot, 32, 87 
 
 W. 
 
 "Wealth of Nations," 
 
 analyzed, 74-149 
 Wedderburn, 18 
 
 the book 
 
 II 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 II. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 III. APPENDIX 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles. 
 
 IV. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OP WORKS. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Works of Adam Smith, 
 LL.D. ; with an account of his 
 life and writings, by Dugald 
 Stewart. 5 vols. London, 
 1811-12, 8vo. 
 
 II. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review. [To be 
 published every six months.] 
 Containing an account of all the 
 books and pamphlets that have 
 been published in Scotland from 
 the 1st of January to the 1st 
 of July 1755 (from July 1755 
 to January 1756). To each 
 number will be given an ap- 
 pendix, giving an account of 
 the books published in England 
 and other countries that are 
 most worthy of notice. [By 
 Dr. W. Robertson, Dr. A. 
 
 Smith, A. Wedderburn, Earl 
 of Rosslyn, Dr. H. Blair, and 
 others.] Nos. 1 and 2. Edin- 
 burgh, 1755 [56], 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith contributed the 
 article on Johnson's Dictionary, pp. 
 61-73, and a " Letter to the Authors 
 of the Edinburgh Review," pp. 63- 
 79. A second edition of this very 
 scarce magazine, with a preface, 
 explanatory notes, and the names 
 of the writers of the most important 
 articles, was published in London in 
 1818. 
 
 The Theory of Moral Sentiments ; 
 or, an essay towards an analysis 
 of the principles by which men 
 naturally judge concerning the 
 conduct and character, first of 
 their neighbours, and after- 
 wards of themselves ; to which 
 is added, a dissertation on the 
 origin of languages, etc. Lon- 
 don, 1759, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1761, 8vo. 
 
ii 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 
 Another edition. London, 1767, 
 8vo. 
 
 Fourth edition. London, 
 
 1774, 8vo. 
 
 Filth edition. London, 1781, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Sixth edition, with addi- 
 tions and corrections. 2 rols. 
 London, 1790, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 Bail, 1793, Svo. 
 
 Eighth edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1797, Svo, 
 
 Ninth edition. 2 vols. Edin- 
 
 buigh, 1808, Svo. 
 
 Twelfth edition. Glasgow, 
 
 1809, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1825, 24mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1819, Svo. 
 
 Another edition, with a bio- 
 graphical and critical memoir 
 of the author, by Dugald 
 Stewart. (Bohn's Standard 
 Library.) London, 1853, Svo. 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 
 
 2 vols. London, 1776, 4to. 
 Second edition. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1778, 4to. 
 
 Additions and Correc- 
 tions to the first and second 
 editions of Dr. Adam Smith's 
 Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 
 [London, 1784], 4to. 
 
 Third edition, with additions. 
 
 3 vols. London, 1784, Svo. 
 
 Fifth edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1789, Svo. 
 
 Fifth edition. 2 vols. Dub- 
 lin, 1793, 8vo. 
 
 Sixth edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1791, Svo. 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 
 Seventh edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1793, Svo. 
 
 Eighth edition. 3 vols. 
 
 London, 1796, Svo, 
 
 Ninth edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1799, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 4 vols in 2. 
 
 Basil, 1801, Svo. 
 Tenth edition. 3 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1802, 8vo. 
 
 Eleventh edition, with notes, 
 
 supplementary chapters, and a 
 life of Dr. Smith, by W. Play- 
 fair. 3 vols. London, 1805, Svo. 
 
 Another edition, comprehend- 
 ing a life of the author, and a 
 view of the doctrine of Smith 
 compared with that of the 
 French Economists [from the 
 French of G. Gamier]. 3 vols. 
 Glasgow, 1805, Svo. 
 
 Another edition, with a life 
 
 of the author. Also, a view of 
 the doctrine of Smith compared 
 with that of the French Econo- 
 mists ; with a method of 
 facilitating the study of his 
 works ; from the French of M. 
 Gamier. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 
 1806, Svo. 
 
 Another edition. 3 vols. 
 
 London, 1812, Svo. 
 
 A Reprint of preceding 
 
 edition. London, 1870, Svo. 
 One of A. Murray's reprints. 
 
 Filth edition, by A. 
 
 Murray. London, 1874, Svo. 
 
 Part of a series entitled : Murray's 
 Choice Reprints. 
 
 A careful reprint of edition, 
 
 1812. London, [1875], Svo. 
 
 Part of a series entitled: "The 
 World Library of Standard Books." 
 
 A reprint of the edition 
 
 in 3 vols., 1812. London. 
 [1878], Svo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 iii 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of tlie Wealth of Nations. 
 Another edition, with notes 
 and an additional volume, by 
 D. Buchanan. 4 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1814, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition, with a life 
 of the author, an introductory 
 discourse, notes, and supple- 
 mental dissertations. [With 
 portrait.] By J. R. McCulloch. 
 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1828, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition, with a com- 
 mentary by the author of 
 "England and America" (E. 
 G. Wakefield. Account of the 
 life and writings of A. S., by 
 D. Stewart. A short view of 
 the doctrine of Smith compared 
 with that of the French Econo- 
 mists. Translated from the 
 French of M. Gamier). 4 vols. 
 London, 1835-39, 12mo. 
 
 The words, ''In six volumes," 
 appear on the title-page of vol. i., 
 but the work was completed in four. 
 Mr. Wakefield only contributed 
 notes to vols. i. and ii. An edition 
 with the vols. bearing date 1840, 35, 
 36, 39, is a duplicate of the preceding, 
 with a new title-page to vol. i., and 
 without the portraits. 
 
 Fourth edition, corrected and 
 
 improved, by J. R. McCulloch. 
 Edinburgh, 1850, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition, by J. R. 
 
 McCulloch, revised, corrected, 
 and improved. Edinburgh. 
 1863, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Edited by 
 
 J. E. T. Rogers. 2 vols. Ox- 
 ford, 1869, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 [1880], 8vo. 
 
 Another edition, with an in- 
 troductory essay and notes by 
 J. S. Nicholson. London, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 A complete analysis or abridge- 
 ment of Dr. A. Smith's In- 
 quiry into the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 
 By J.Joyce. Cambridge, 1797, 
 8vo. 
 
 Third edition. London, 1821, 
 
 12mo. 
 
 A Reprint of preceding, re- 
 vised and edited by W. P. 
 Emerton. 2 pts. Oxford, 
 1877-80, 8vo. 
 
 An Abridgment of A. 
 
 Smith's Inquiry into the Nature 
 and Causes of the Wealth of 
 Nations, with notes by W. P. 
 Emerton. Oxford, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Analysis of A. Smith's 
 
 "Wealth of Nations." Boiks 
 I. and II. Arranged by F. A. 
 B. De Wilson. Oxford, 1885, 
 8vo. 
 
 Essays on Philosophical Subjects. 
 To which is prefixed an account 
 of the life and writings of the 
 author, by Dugahl Stewart. 
 [Edited by J. Black and J. 
 Hutton.] London, 1795, 4to. 
 
 Another edition. Dublin, 
 
 1795, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Basil, 1799, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Essays on i., Moral Sentiments 
 ii., Astronomical Inquiries ; iii. 
 Formation of Languages ; iv. 
 History of Ancient Physics ; v. 
 Ancient Logic and Metaphysics 
 vi., the Imitative Arts; vii. 
 Music, Dancing, Poetry ; viii. 
 the External Senses; ix., Eng- 
 lish and Italian Verses. Lon- 
 don, 1869, 8vo. 
 
 One of A. Murray's Reprints. 
 
 Essays Philosophical and Liter- 
 ary. London [1880], 8vo. 
 
 One of a series entitled "The 
 World Library of Standard Works." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 III. APPENDIX. 
 BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 Agazzini, Michele. Sconvenevo- 
 lezza delle Teoriche del Yalore 
 insegnate da Smith, etc. Mi- 
 lano, 1834, 8vo. 
 
 Aleksyeenko, M. M. Yzglyad na 
 razvitie ucheniya o nalogye u 
 ekonomistov A, Smita, Zh. B. 
 Seya, Rikardo, Sismondi u D. S. 
 Millya. Kharkov, 1870, 8vo. 
 
 Anderson, William. The Scottish 
 Nation ; or, the surnames, 
 families, literature, etc., of the 
 people of Scotland. 3 vols. 
 Edinburgh, 1863, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, vol. iii., pp. 480-483. 
 
 Baert, J. F. B. Adam Smith en 
 zyn Onderzoek naar den rykdom 
 der Volken. Leyden, 1858, 8vo. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter. Economic 
 Studies. Edited by Richard 
 Holt Huttou. London, 1880, 
 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith and our Modern 
 Economy, pp. 95-134. 
 
 Biographical Studies. Edited 
 
 by Richard Holt Button. Lon- 
 don, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith as a person, pp. 247- 
 281. Appeared originally in the 
 Fortnightly Review, vol. xx., 1876, 
 pp. 18-42. 
 
 Blakey, Robert History of Moral 
 
 Science. 2 vols. London, 
 
 1833, 8vo. 
 Dr. Adam Smith. Theory of 
 
 Moral Sentiments, vol. ii., pp. 178- 
 
 188. 
 Blanqui, J. A. Histoire de 
 
 1'Economie Politique en Europe, 
 
 etc. 2 Tom. Paris, 1860, 12mo. 
 
 Adam Smith, Tom 2, pp. 106-120. 
 Boswell, James. The Life of 
 
 Samuel Johnson, LL.D., etc. 
 
 With notes and appendices by 
 
 A.- Napier. 6 vols. London* 
 1884, 8vo. 
 
 In the various editions of Boswell's 
 Johnson there are numerous refer- 
 ences to A. S. 
 
 Brougham, Lord. Lives of Men 
 of Letters and Science who 
 flourished in the time of George 
 III. 2 vols. London, 1846, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, with medallion por- 
 trait, vol. ii., pp. 86-226. 
 
 Brown, Thomas. Lectures on the 
 
 Philosophy of the Human Mind. 
 
 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1820, 8vo. 
 
 On Dr. Smith's system, vol. iv., pp. 
 
 113-158. 
 
 Buckle, Henry T. History of 
 Civilisation in England. Newedi- 
 tion. 3 vols. London, 1869, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Burton, John Hill. Life and Cor- 
 respondence of David Hume. 
 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1846, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
 Cadet, Felix. Histoire de 
 1'economie politique. Les pre- 
 curseurs : Adam Smith, Frank- 
 lin. Paris, 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Carey, H. C. Principles of Social 
 Science. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 
 1877, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
 Carlyle, Alexander. Autobiogra- 
 phy of the Rev. Dr. Alexander 
 Carlyle, etc. Edinburgh, 1860, 
 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, pp. 279-281. 
 
 Chambers, Robert. Traditions of 
 Edinburgh. New edition. Lon- 
 don, 1869, 8vo. 
 Residence of A. Smith, p. 337. 
 
 A biographical dictionary of 
 
 eminentScotsmen. Newedition, 
 revised by the Rev. T. Thom- 
 son. London, 1870, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, vol. iii., pp. 368-376. 
 
 Chevalier, Michel. Cours d'Eco- 
 noniie Politique, etc. 3 Tom. 
 Paris, 1842-50, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Chevalier. Michel. Etude sur 
 Adam Smith, et sur la fondation 
 de la science economique. Paris, 
 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Coquelin,C.and Guillaumin,U. G. 
 Dictionnaire de 1* Economic 
 Politique, etc. 2 Tom. Paris, 
 1852-53, 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith, with portrait, vol. 
 ii., pp. 622-628. 
 
 Cossa, Luigi. Guide to the Study 
 of Political Economy. Trans- 
 lated from the second Italian 
 edition. With a preface by W. 
 Stanley Jevons. London, 1880, 
 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith and his immediate 
 successors, pp. 161-173. 
 
 Cousin, V. Cours d' histoire de 
 la Philosophic Morale au dix- 
 huitieme siecle, etc. 2 pts. 
 Paris, 1839, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, pt. ii., pp. 99-183. 
 
 Cunningham, George Godfrey. 
 The English Nation ; a History 
 of England in the Lives of 
 Englishmen. 5 vols. Edin- 
 burgh [1863-68], 4to. 
 Adam Smith, vol. iv., pp. 269-272. 
 
 Dieterici, Carolus F. Num. recte 
 Ad. Smithius contenderit, sor- 
 tem in agricultura positarn et 
 singulorum, et uuiversofum 
 opulentife esse commodissimam ? 
 Dissertatio, etc. Berolini 
 [1858], 8 vo. 
 
 Drake, Samuel Adams. Our 
 Great Benefactors ; short bio- 
 graphies, etc. Boston', 1884, 
 4to. 
 Adam Smith, pp. 49-54. 
 
 Eraerton, W. P. Questions and 
 Answers in Political Economy, 
 with references to Adam Smith, 
 etc. (Palcestra Oxoniensis. ) 
 Oxford, 1879, 8vo. 
 
 Enrv, loj'iedia Britannic*. '-*-The 
 Kncyclopsedia Britannica. 
 Eighth edition. Edinburgh, 
 1860, 4to. 
 
 Article Adam Smith, by J. K 
 McCuUoch, vol. xx., pp. 337-346. 
 
 Ninth edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1887, 4to. 
 
 Article Adam Smith, by J. K. 
 Ingram, vol. xxii., pp. 169-171. 
 
 Farrer, J. A. English Philoso- 
 phers. Adam Smith (1723- 
 1790.) London, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Fawcett, Henry. Manual of 
 Political Economy. Sixth 
 edition. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
 Franck, A. Dictionnaire des 
 sciences philosophiques. 6 torn. 
 Paris, 1844-52, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, torn vi., pp. 661-669. 
 
 Grant, James. Cassell's Old an i 
 New Edinburgh. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1882, 4to. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Gray, Simon. All Classes pro- 
 ductive of national wealth ; or, 
 the Theories of M. Quesnay, 
 Dr. Adam Smith, and Mr. 
 Gray concerning the various 
 classes of men as to the pro- 
 duction of wealth to the com- 
 munity, etc. London, 18 10, 8vo. 
 
 Home, George, Bishop of Norwich. 
 A Letter to Adam Smith on 
 the life, death, and philosophy 
 of his friend David Hume. By 
 one of the people called 
 Christians [G. Home, Bishop 
 of Norwich]. Oxford, 1777, 8vo. 
 
 Third edition. Oxford, 1777, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Fourth edition. Oxford, 1784, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1799, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1804, 12mo, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Home, George, Bishop of Norwich. 
 A Letter to Adam Smith. 
 Another edition. London, 
 1811, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1819, 8ro. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1836, 8vo. 
 
 Letters on Infidelity. To 
 
 which is prefixed a Letter to 
 Dr. Adam Smith. A new 
 edition. Oxford, 1806, 8vo. 
 
 Hume, David. The Life of David 
 Hume, written by himself. 
 [With a letter from Dr. A. 
 Smith to Mr. Strahan, upon 
 the death of Hume.] London, 
 1777, 8vo. 
 
 An Apology for the Writings 
 
 of David Hume, to which is 
 added an Address to one of the 
 people called Christians, by way 
 of reply to his letter to Adam 
 Smith, LL.D. London, 1777, 
 12mo. 
 
 Inama-Sternegg, C. T. von. 
 
 " Adam Smith und die Bedeu- 
 tung seines " Wealth of 
 Nations" fur die moderne 
 Nationalokonomie, etc. Inns- 
 bruck, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 Iversson, S. A. Adam Smith, 
 author of an Inquiry into the 
 Wealth of Nations, and Thomas 
 Paine, author of the Decline 
 and Fall of the English System 
 of Finance. A critical essay, 
 etc. Germany, 1796, 8vo. 
 
 Joyce, J. Analysis of Adam 
 Smith's Wealth of Nations. 
 London, 1818, 8vo. 
 
 Kaufmann, P. Untersuchungen 
 im Gebiete der politisch en 
 Oekonomie, betreffend Adam 
 Smith's und seiner Schule 
 staatswirthschaftliche Grund- 
 satze. Bonn, 1829-30, 8vo. 
 
 Law, Rev. James T. The Poor 
 Man's Garden ; or, a few brief 
 rules for regulating allotments 
 of land to the poor, for potatoe 
 gardens. With remarks, and a 
 reference to the opinions of Dr. 
 Adam Smith in his " Wealth of 
 Nations." London, 1830, 8vo. 
 
 Leser, Emanuel. Der Begriff des 
 Reich th urns bei Adam Smith. 
 Heidelberg, 1874, 8vo. 
 
 Leslie, T. E. Cliflfe. Essays in 
 Political and Moral Philosophy. 
 London, 1879, 8vo. 
 
 The Wealth of Nations and the 
 Slave Power, pp. 51-61 ; originally 
 appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, 
 February 1863. The Political 
 Economy of Adam Smith, pp. 148- 
 166 ; originally appeared in the 
 Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1, 1870. 
 
 List, Friedrich. The National 
 System of Political Economy. 
 Translated from the original 
 German by Sampson S. Lloyd. 
 London, 1885, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Lives. Liv<\s of Eminent Persons, 
 etc. (Library of Useful Know- 
 ledge.) London, 1833, 8vo. 
 Life of Adam Smith, 32 pages. 
 
 Lueder, August F. Ueber 
 Nationalindustrie und Staats- 
 wirthschaft. 2 Th. Berlin, 
 1800-2, 8vo. 
 
 References to A. S. 
 
 j M., T. A tetter to His Grace 
 the Duke of Buccleuch, on 
 National Defence : with some 
 remarks on Dr. Smith's chapter 
 on that subject, in his book 
 entitled "An Enquiry into the 
 Nature and Causes of the 
 Wealth of Nations." London, 
 1778, 8vo. 
 
 McCosh, James. The Scottish 
 Philosophy, biographical, ex- 
 pository, critical, etc. London, 
 1875, 8vo, 
 Adam Smith, pp. 162-173. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 MacCulloch, John Ramsay. 
 Treatises and Essays on subjects 
 connected with Economical Po- 
 licy ; with Biograj)hical Sketches 
 of Quesnay, A. Smith, and 
 Ricardo. Edinburgh, 1853, 8vo. 
 
 Second edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1859, 8vo. 
 
 A select collection of scarce 
 
 and valuable tracts and other 
 publications on Paper Currency, 
 etc. Edited by J. R. McCulloch. 
 London, 1857, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A, S. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James. On the 
 progress of Ethical Philosophy 
 chit-fly during the xviith and 
 xviiith centuries. Edited by 
 William Win-well. Fourth edi- 
 tion. Edinburgh, 1872, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, pp. 146-154. 
 
 Malthus, T. R. Principles of Po- 
 litical Economy, etc. London, 
 1820, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
 Maurice, Frederick D. Modern 
 Philosophy ; or, a treatise of 
 moral and metaphysical philo- 
 sophy, etc. London, 1862, 8vo. 
 Adinu Smith, pp, 578-580. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart. Principles of 
 Political Economy. Sixth edi- 
 tion. 2 vols. London, 1865, 
 8vo. 
 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Moore, Thomas. Memoirs, Jour- 
 nal, and Conespondence of T. 
 Moore. Edited by Lord John 
 Russell. 8 vols. London, 
 1853-56, 8vo. 
 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Neurath, Wilhelm. Adam Smith 
 im Lichte heutiger Staats und- 
 Socialauffrtssung. Wien, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 Oncken, August. Adam Smith 
 inder Culturgeschichte. Wien, 
 1874, 8vo. 
 
 Oncken, August. Adam Smith 
 und Immanuel Kant. Der Ein- 
 klang und das Weehsel verbal t- 
 niss ihrer Lehren iiber Sitte, 
 Staat und Wirthschaft. Leipzig, 
 1877, 8vo. 
 
 Pamphleteer. The Pamphleteer. 
 Vols. 23 and 24. London, 1824, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Opinions of the late Mr. 
 Ricardo and of Adam Smith on 
 some of the leading Doctrines of 
 Political Economy stated and com- 
 pared, vol. xxiii., pp. 518-526, and vol. 
 xxiv., pp. 60-58. 
 
 Partouiiau Du Puynode, M. G. 
 Etudes sur U-s principiux 
 Economistes, Turret, Adam 
 Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, J. B. 
 Say, Rossi. Paris, 1868, 8vo. 
 
 Paterson, James. Kay's Edin- 
 burgh Portraits. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith, vol. i., pp. 61-63. 
 
 Political Economy Club. Political 
 Economy Club (founded 1821). 
 Revised Report of the Proceed- 
 ings at the Dinner of 31st May 
 1876, held in celebration of the 
 hundredth year of the publica- 
 tion of the "Wealth of 
 Nations." London, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 Poor, Henry V. Money and its 
 Laws, embracing a history of 
 monetary theories, etc. Lon- 
 don, 1877, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Pownall, T. A Letter from 
 Governor Pownall to Adam 
 Smith, being an examination of 
 several points of doctrine, laid 
 down in his " Inquiry into the 
 Nature and Causes of the 
 Wealth of Nations." London, 
 1776, 4to. 
 
 Purves, George. All Classes pro- 
 ductive of National Wealth ; 
 or, the Theories of M. Quesnai, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Dr. Adam Smith, etc. London, 
 1817, 8vo. 
 
 Rae, J. Statement of some new 
 principles in political economy, 
 exposing fallacies in the 
 "Wealth of Nations." Boston, 
 1834, 8vo. 
 
 Ricardo, David. The Works of 
 David Ricardo, etc. London, 
 1846, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Ricca - Salerno, G. L'economia 
 politica di Adamo Smith 
 (Archivio Giuridico, Bologna, 
 vol. xvii., 1876, pp. 301-320). 
 
 Roesler, Hermann. Ueber die 
 Grundlehren der von Adam 
 Smith begriindeten Yolkswirth- 
 schafts theorie. Erlangen, 
 1868, 8vo. 
 
 Zweite Auflage. Erlangen, 
 
 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Rogers, James E. Thorold. His- 
 torical Gleanings, a series of 
 sketches. Montagu, Walpole, 
 Adam Smith, Cobbett (First 
 series.) London, 1869, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, pp 95-137. 
 
 Roscher, Wilhelm. System der 
 Volkswirthschaft. Zehnte Au- 
 flage. 2 Bd. Stuttgart, 1873- 
 75, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous References to A. S. 
 
 Principles of Political Eco- 
 nomy. Translated by John J. 
 Lalor. 2 vols. New York, 
 1878, 8vo. 
 
 Sandelin, A. Repertoire d' 
 Economic Politique ancienne et 
 moderne. 6 Tom. La Haye, 
 1846-48, 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith, Tom. v., pp. 657-668. 
 
 Sartorius, Georg. Yon den 
 Elementen des National- 
 Reichthums und von der Staats- 
 wirth sch aft, nach Adam Smith. 
 Gottingen, 1806, 8vo. 
 
 Say, Jean Baptiste. A Treatise 
 on Political Economy. Trans- 
 lated from the fourth edition of 
 the French, by C. R. Prinsep. 
 2 vols. London, 1821, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Secondat, C., Baron de Montes- 
 quieu. Du Subside, selon Mon- 
 tesquieu, Necker, Smith, etc. 
 Paris, 1832, 8vo. 
 
 Shadwell, John L. A System of 
 Political Economy. London, 
 1877, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to A. S. 
 
 Sidgwick, Henry. The Principles 
 of Political Economy. London, 
 1883, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 Outlines of the History of 
 
 Ethics, etc. London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 Adam Smith, pp. 205-207, and 212. 
 
 Simpson, A. L. Pioneers; or, 
 biographical sketches of leaders 
 in various paths. London, 1861, 
 8vo. 
 
 Pioneers of Economical Science- 
 Adam Smith, pp. 386-408. 
 
 Sinclair, Sir John. Memoirs of 
 the life and works of Sir John 
 Sinclair. By his son, the Rev. 
 John Sinclair. 2 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1837, 8vo. 
 
 Anecdotes of Adam Smith, vol. i., 
 pp. 36-43. 
 
 Skarzynski, Witold von. Adam 
 Smith als Moral pliilosoph und 
 Schoepfer der Nationaloekono- 
 inie. Berlin, 1878, 8vo. 
 
 Smellie, William. Literary and 
 Characteristical Lives of John 
 Gregory, Henry Home, Lord 
 Kames, David Hume, and Adam 
 Smith, etc. Edinburgh, 1800, 
 8vo. 
 
 Smith, Adam. Adam Smith and 
 recent Finance. By the author 
 of "Our Deficient Revenue," 
 etc. London [1881], 8vo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IX 
 
 Smith, Adam. The essential 
 Principles of the Wealth of Na- 
 tions, illustrated in opposition 
 to some false doctrines of Dr. 
 A. Smith and others, etc. Lon- 
 don, 1797, 8vo. 
 
 Stanhope, Philip H , Lord Mahon. 
 History of England. Lon- 
 don, 1854, 8vo. 
 Adam Smith, vol. vii., pp. 497, 498. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald. Biographical 
 Memoirs of Adam Smith, LL. D. , 
 of William Robertson, D.D., and 
 of Thomas Reid, D.D., read 
 before the Royal Society of 
 Edinburgh. Now first col- 
 lected into one volume, with 
 some additional notes. Edin- 
 burgh, 1>11, 4to. 
 
 Account of the life and writings 
 of Adam Smith, with a portrait from 
 a model by Taasie, pp. 3-152. Ap- 
 peared originally in tne Transactions 
 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
 vol iii., part 1, 1793, pp. 66-537. 
 
 Stopel, Franz. Ad;im Smith im 
 Lichte der Gegenwart. Volks- 
 wirthschaftliche Studie. Ber- 
 lin, 1879, 8vo. 
 
 Appeared originally in the Merkur 
 for 1878. 
 
 Walker, Francis A. Political 
 Economy. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 References to A. S. 
 
 West, Sir Edward. Price of Corn 
 and Wages of Labour, with 
 observations upon Dr. Smith's, 
 Mr. Ricardo's, and Mr. Mal- 
 thus's doctrines upon those sub- 
 jects, etc. London, 1826, 8vo. 
 
 Wilson, Daniel. Memorials of 
 Edinburgh in the Oldeii Time. 
 Edinburgh. 1872, 4to. 
 References to A. Smith. 
 
 Young, Sir U illiam. Corn Trade. 
 An Examination of certain 
 commercial principles, in their 
 application to agriculture and 
 the Corn Trade, as laid down 
 
 in the Fourth Book of Mr. 
 Adam Smith's Treatise on the 
 Wealth of Nations. New edi- 
 tion. London, 1800, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1800, 8vo. 
 
 The name of Sir William Young 
 appears on the title-page of th.s 
 edition. 
 
 MAGAZINE ARTICLES. 
 
 Adam Smith. North American 
 Review, vol. 64, 1S47, pp. 67- 
 72. Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 by L. de Lavergne, Tom. 24, 
 seconde pdriode, 1859, pp. 893- 
 929. Banker's Magazine (New 
 York), vol. 31, 1876, pp. 20-26. 
 Dublin University Magazine, 
 by Eric S. Robertson, vol. 2, 
 N.S., 1878, pp. 452-468. 
 
 and highland Laird, Con- 
 versation with. Black wood's 
 Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 3, 
 1818, pp. 419, 420. 
 
 and Ricardo. Blackwood's 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 52, 
 1842, pp. 338-353, 457-469, 718- 
 739. 
 
 and the United States. Boston 
 
 Monthly Magazine, vol. 1, 
 1825, pp. 517-521. 
 
 as a person. Fortnightly 
 
 Review, by Walter Bagehot, 
 vol. 20, N.S., 1876, pp. 18-42; 
 afterwards reprinted in Econo- 
 mic Studies, by W. Bagehot : 
 same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. 1:30, pp. 387-402 ; and 
 in the Eclectic Magazine, vol. 
 24, N.S., pp. 604-620. 
 
 Essays on Philosophical Sub- 
 jects. Monthly Review, Jan. 
 1797, pp. 57-68 ; May 1797, 
 pp. 18-34 and June 1797, pp. 
 152-166. British Critic, vol. 7, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Adam Smith 
 
 1796, pp. 665 - 672. London 
 Review, Jan. 1796, pp. 13-17. 
 
 German Critics of. Penn 
 
 Monthly, vol. 3, 1872, pp. 536- 
 596. 
 
 Political Economy of. Fort- 
 nightly Review, by T. E. Cliffe 
 Leslie, vol. 8, N.S., 1870, pp. 
 549-563. 
 
 Wealth of Nations. Mon th 1 y 
 
 Review, vol. 54, 1776, pp. 299- 
 308, 455 465, and vol. 55, pp. 
 16-26, 81-92 ; vol. 72, 1785, pp. 
 272-279; vol. 39, N.S., 1802, 
 pp. 509-514; vol. 50, N.S., 
 June, 1806, pp. 121-130. 
 Edinburgh Review, vol. 7, 1806, 
 pp. 470, 471, and vol. 70, 1840, 
 pp. 426-445. Penny Magazine, 
 vol. 1, 1832, pp. 118-120. 
 Westminster Review, vol. 1 7, 
 1832, pp. 267-311. Museum, 
 vol. 22, pp. 548, etc., and 661, 
 etc. Monthly Review, vol. 1, 
 N.S., 1844, pp. 368-381. 
 Banker's Magazine (New York), 
 
 Adam Smith 
 
 from Bohns Standard Cyclo- 
 pedia, vol. 4, 1849, pp. 130-138. 
 
 Centenary of Wealth of 
 
 Nations. Economist, June 3, 
 1876. Times, June 1 and 6, 
 1876. Daily News, June 1, 
 1876. Pall Mall Gazette, May 
 30, 1876. Capital and Labour, 
 June 7, 1876. Banker's Maga- 
 zine (New York), vol. 31, 1876, 
 pp. 185-190, and vol. 36, 1876, 
 pp. 610 634. 
 
 Wealth of Nations and 
 
 the Slave Trade. Macmillan's 
 Magazine, by T. E. Cliffe 
 Leslie, vol. 7, 1863, pp. 269- 
 276 ; afterwards reprinted in 
 Essays in Political and Moral 
 Philosophy, by T. E. C. Leslie ; 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 58, pp. 444-450. 
 
 Theory of Moral Sentiments. 
 
 Monthly Review, vol. 21, 1759, 
 pp. 1-18, and Feb. 1791, pp. 
 138-142. North American Re- 
 view, vol. 8, 1819, pp. 371-396. 
 
 IV. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Two articles in the " Edin- 
 burgh Review" for 1755, 
 viz., a Review. of 
 " Johnson's Dictionary," 
 and a "Letter to the 
 Authors of the Edinburgh 
 Review" . . . 1755 
 
 Theory of Moral Sentiments 
 and Dissertation on the 
 Origin of Languages . 1759 
 
 An Inquiry into the Nature 
 and Causes of the Wealth 
 of Nations . . .1776 
 
 Essays on Philosophical 
 
 Subjects . . .1795 
 The History of Astronomy. 
 History of the Ancient Physics. 
 The History of the Ancient Logics 
 
 and Metaphysics. 
 Of the Imitative A rts. 
 On certain English and Italian 
 
 Verses. 
 Of the External Senses. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
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