Smith, ADAM, the founder of political economy as a separate branch of human knowledge, was born in the town of Kirkealdy, Fife, on 5th June 1723. His family belonged to the respectable middle class; his father was comptroller of the customs at the port of Kirkealdy, and his mother, Margaret Douglas, was the daughter of a small Fifeshire laird. His father died a short time before his birth, and the boy was the object of the care and solicitude of a widowed mother, to whom he was closely attached, and who lived to be proud of his attainments. When he was no more than three years old the poor woman got a sad fright, from a calamity hardly known at the present day—the child was stolen by tinkers; but he was tracked and recovered by his uncle as they were seeking a hiding-place in the neighbouring wood of Leslie. This was the only adventure in his quiet life. After getting the usual burgh-school education in Kirkealdy, he was sent, in 1737, to the university of Glasgow, where he seems to have devoted himself mainly to mathematics and natural philosophy, though Hutcheson was the professor of moral philosophy. He secured an exhibition on the Snell foundation, which took him to Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied for seven years, and left traditions as of a man of large acquirements and peculiar independence of thought. It is said that he was intended for the English Church, but if so his own convictions crossed the designs of his friends. He returned to Kirkcaldy, and lived for a while with his mother there in undisturbed seclusion and study. In 1748 he came to Edinburgh, where silently and unostentatiously he became one of the brilliant little circle of men of letters who were then rising to importance, amongst his friends being David Hume, John Home, Dr Hugh Blair, Lord Hailes, and Principal Robertson. In 1751 he got the chair of Logic in the university of Glasgow, and this was changed a year afterwards for that of Moral Philosophy. In 1759 appeared his Theory of Moral Sentiments, celebrated for its reference of the mental emotions to the one source of sympathy. The Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was published along with the later editions of this book. Both had a great reputation in their day, and, although they are now obscure books in comparison with that other by which the author's name is remembered, the position they held with respectable thinkers gave a hearing to his doctrines on political economy which they would hardly have otherwise obtained. In 1762 the university of Glasgow gave him the degree of Doctor of Laws. In the following year he undertook a task, which might at first seem very uncongenial to a mind like his, given to retired study and independent thought and action—he became 'governor' or travelling tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch. He was then sedulously collecting materials for his great work, and no doubt the inducement to accept the office was the opportunity it gave him for travelling and seeing for himself. He had the opportunity of being nearly a year in Paris, and of mixing in the circle of renowned wits and philosophers, of the reign of Louis XV., including Quesnay, Turgot, and Necker. In 1766 his engagement came to an end, and he returned to Kirkcaldy to live in the old house with his mother.
The year 1776 was an era in the history of the world as well as that of the Kirkcaldy recluse, by reason of the appearance of the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. If there was any living man to whose works he was indebted for the leading principles of this book it was David Hume, and it was from him, as best understanding the fullness and completeness of the exposition, that it had its first emphatic welcome. He wrote immediately on receiving it: 'Euge! Belle! Dear Mr Smith, I am much pleased with your performance; and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation by yourself, by your friends, and by the public that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt, for some time, of its being at first very popular. But it has depth, and solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts that it must at last take the public attention.' This was not destined to be exactly the literary history of this great work. Its startling doctrines, fine clear style, and abundant illustration from curious facts took at first; but counteracting influences arose when people saw how far the new doctrines went in playing havoc with old prejudices. The French revolution set the mind of the country bigotedly against everything that breathed of innovation. It was known that the younger Pitt participated at first in Smith's free-trade notions, but he had afterwards, whether from permanent conviction or temporary policy, to put himself in the foremost ranks of the enemies of innovation. It was not until long after the terrors of that epoch and the nervous vicissi- tudes of the war had passed over that Smith's work had an opportunity of revolutionising the public mind on matters of trade and finance. It came up, as it were, the leader of a great literary host, for expounders long crowded in numbers round The Wealth of Nations as the text-book of sound economy. It has been made matter of reproach against this work that it is not systematic in its form and that its nomenclature is not exact. But its author was not arranging the results of established knowledge—he was rather pulling down existing structures, compounded of ignorance and prejudice. Nor, indeed, have those who have attempted to make an exact science out of political economy practically vindicated the reproach they have cast on him of being unmethodical. Whatever we may yet come to, very few portions indeed of political economy admit of being treated as exact science; it is too closely connected with human passions and energies, and consequently with special results and changes, to be so treated.
In 1776 he lost his friend David Hume. He watched by him on his death-bed, and wrote an account of his last illness and death in a memorable letter to Mr Strahan in London. Soon afterwards he established himself in London, and became a member of the club to which Reynolds, Garrick, and Johnson belonged, though with the last Smith's relations were not uniformly amicable. In 1778 he was made a Commissioner of Customs. The only effect of this was to bring him to Edinburgh, and increase his means for indulging in his favourite weakness, the collection of a fine library; for he was, as he called himself, a 'beau in his books.' He lost his worthy mother in 1784; in 1787 he was chosen Lord Rector of Glasgow University; and he died 17th July 1790.
Smith's position in the history of political economy, his relation to his predecessors the physiocratic school, and his influence on later economists have been considered in the article POLITICAL ECONOMY. It is a mistake to hold that the barren principle of laissez-faire was the teaching of Adam Smith. Smith held it to be the duty of the state to protect its citizens from infectious diseases, to endow by charter joint-stock companies with exclusive trading privileges, to enforce military training on all males, and to establish compulsory and cheap education; state intervention being, however, justified only where the work cannot be done by individuals, or not so well as by the state. Smith's works were edited in 5 vols. by Dugald Stewart in 1811-12, and contain, besides the Theory of the Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, essays on the first formation of languages, on the history of astronomy, ancient physics, and ancient logic, and on the imitative arts. There have been numerous editions of the Wealth of Nations, by McCulloch (1850), Thorold Rogers (1880), and Professor Nicholson (1884). His system has been dealt with by all subsequent economists, and in all civilised languages. His Glasgow lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms were published in 1897. See Lives by Dugald Stewart (1811), Farrer ('English Philosophers,' 1881), Haldane ('Great Writers,' 1887), and John Rae (1895).