ately after the Union to the post of | Kirkaldy at the time was fortunate in judge-advocate for Scotland. A year the possession of a school of exceplater he became private secretary to the tionally high order. It was probably Earl of Loudoun, the Scotch minister, due to this circumstance that the famiand when the latter left office, in 1713, lies of Oswald of Dunnikier and Adam Smith was rewarded with the comp- of Blairadam, to whom belonged controllership of the customs at Kirkaldy, siderable estates in the county of Fife, a post which he held, along with the were resident in Kirkaldy. "Lady judge-advocateship, till his premature Dunnikier" was the great lady of the death in the spring of 1723, some town. James Oswald, afterwards months before his son's birth. Very treasurer of the navy and a prominent little is known of Adam Smith the Scottish member of Parliament, had elder, or of his family; but doubtless preceded by seven or eight years young he belonged politically to the Whig and Adam Smith at the burgh school, Presbyterian party of his patron, Lord whilst Robert Adam, afterwards the Loudoun. His wife's family was better famous architect, was one of Smith's known, as her father was a Fifeshire schoolfellows. The Oswalds were old laird, Mr. Douglas of Strathendry, sev- friends of both Adam Smiths, and to eral of whose near kiusmen at the time the constaut friendship of James Oswere officers in the army. Adam Smith | wald young Smith owed much in after was an only son, and his mother was life. Even before that life began we the only parent he had ever known. hear of Oswald of Dunnikier befriendBetween mother and son the deepest ing the widow of the comptroller and affection existed. For many years of making the arrangements for his funehis life indeed, whenever he was ral, providing, according to a curious able to live at Kirkaldy or in Edin- receipt printed by Mr. Rae, the cakes burgh he made his home with her. and ale, and other “ necessars approHe never married, and till her death,priate to that occasion. after her son had passed his sixtieth year, it was to her he looked to make his house his home. At the burgh school the studious little Adam Smith worked hard at the classics from the age of ten to fourteen, The salary of the comptroller of the and to such good purpose that in 1737 customs at Kirkaldy in 1723 was but he was able to enter the University of 401. a year, and though the perquisites Glasgow with the well-founded hope attaching to that office were probably of winning a scholarship at Oxford. worth two or three times the salary, Glasgow was at that time a centre of the early death of the comptroller must intellectual activity, and from very dishave left his widow and his son ex- tant parts young men were flocking to tremely poor. Kirkaldy contained in sit under Dunlop, the professor of those days a population of only fifteen hundred inhabitants; yet, as Mr. Rae observes, the little provincial town and port would probably present a greater variety of life and manners, to an observant eye, than either a rural district or a large city, and many of the illustrations of the division of labor and the practices of commerce made famous in the Wealth of Nations" were taken from his early acquaintance with the naileries, the shipping, and the shopkeeping of his native town. Greek, and Robert Simson, the pro- Scotland has long been distinguished gave his mind its first bent in the for the excellence of the education direction of his later studies. "Adam proffered to her poorest sons; and Smith is sometimes considered a dis ciple of Hume, and sometimes a dis- | not help being struck with the increasciple of Quesnay; if he was any man's ing fertility and improved agriculture disciple, he was Hutcheson's" (p. 11). that everywhere met his eyes. The Dugald Stewart tells us of the extraor- Scottish Borders at that time, and for dinary impression produced by Hutche- many years afterwards, presented as son's lectures upon his students, with wild and desolate an appearance as any whom, no doubt, he won additional tract of land in the kingdom, and he popularity from the courage with which little dreamt that the time would come he stood out against the assaults of the when from southern England men Presbytery upon his system, which would travel northwards to study scithey declared contravened the doc-entific agriculture and high farming in trines of the Confession of Faith. the well-tilled fields of Berwickshire Hutcheson was teaching that the will and the Lothians. He rode on to Oxof Heaven was known, not from signs ford, where he remained during term and wonders, "but rather from a broad time and vacation alike for seven years, consideration of the greater good of never being absent for a single night mankind the greatest happiness of till he took his final departure in Authe greatest number" — of which gust, 1746. phrase Hutcheson was the original If in those days the Scotch neglected author. In this the orthodox discov- to cultivate their fields, it cannot be ered a twofold heresy-first, that the said that they allowed their brains to standard of moral goodness was the lie fallow. To pass from the intellecpromotion of the happiness of others; tual life and energy of Glasgow to the secondly, that we could have a knowl- mental apathy which characterized edge of good and evil without, and Oxford at that period was a melancholy prior to, a knowledge of God. On change to the keen, inquiring spirit of those branches of study connected with young Adam Smith. We know from political economy Hutcheson undoubt- many sources that Mr. Rae's descripedly asserted the principal positions tion of the stagnation which prevailed afterwards so vigorously maintained at Oxford is not over-colored. "Learnand built upon by Adam Smith. Hutcheson's doctrine was essentially the doctrine of industrial liberty with which Smith's name is identified, and in view of the claims set up on behalf of the French Physiocrats, that Smith learnt that doctrine in their school, it is right to remember that he was brought into contact with it in Hutcheson's class-room at Glasgow some twenty years before any of the Physiocrats had written a line on the subject, and that the very first ideas on economic subjects which were presented to his mind contained in the germ-and in very active and sufficient germ - the very doctrines about liberty, labor, and value on which his whole system was afterwards built (p. 15). Adam Smith spent three years at Glasgow, and having won a Snell exhibition worth 401. a year in July of 1740, he began his undergraduate life at Balliol. He was just seventeen, and as for the first time he rode across the Border into England, the boy could ing at that university lay under a long and almost total eclipse." Adam Smith was taught little, yet, thanks to his persevering love of study, he learnt much. Balliol was not then a reading college, and the extensive and exact acquaintance which he afterwards possessed with the Greek and Latin classics must have been due, for the most part, to the hard, independent reading of these six years in his college library. Whether from exclusive devotion to study, or from ill-health, or from other causes, his Oxford life seems to have been the He made no friends there, and after only unsocial period of his existence. quitting the university, in 1746, he never set foot in Oxford again. Various causes may have contributed to the somewhat isolated life of Adam Smith at Balliol. The college was violently Tory and Jacobite, and the events of the time made party feeling bitter to the last degree. Out of a hundred students at Balliol, there were no fewer than eight Scotch exhibition- | nomics, "advocating the doctrines of ers in Adam Smith's time on the Snell commercial liberty on which he was and the Warner foundations, and there nurtured by Hutcheson, and which he was doubtless much narrow English was afterwards to do so much to adprejudice in the undergraduate world vance." against the group of hardworking It was, however, in his old univeryoung Scotchmen who had come sity of Glasgow, and not in Edinburgh, amongst them. Mr. Rae tells us he that Adam Smith first obtained a perhas carefully searched amongst the manent position, for on the death of names of those who were contempora- the professor of logic in Glasgow in ries of Adam Smith at Oxford, and 1750 he was appointed to the vacant finds them "a singularly undistin- chair. During his first winter session, guished body of people; " but for our besides his own special duty, he carpart we altogether decline to believe ried on, during the illness of the prothat between the years 1740-46 there fessor, the class of moral philosophy, were not many men at Oxford with which at that time included jurispruwhom Smith might not have made val-dence and politics. Upon the death, uable friendships. Why, too, during which shortly occurred, of that prothe whole six years did he never once fessor, Smith was transferred from the go to London? Lord Brougham had logic to the moral philosophy chair, access to Adam Smith's letters to his doing his best, but in vain, to secure mother during his Oxford life, and the succession of David Hume, the hisfrom these he derived the impression torian, to the logic chair he had vacated. that over-study had brought Smith al-The scepticism of the latter philosopher most to a condition of hypochondria. was, however, notorious, and he was Complaints of "an inveterate scurvy and shaking of the head" are frequent, for which he declares that "tar water" was the remedy most in vogue; and it is probably largely due to this ill-health that Adam Smith's Oxford life was so unlike, in social habit, to the rest of his career. easily defeated by a Mr. Clow, a young minister of the Church, doubtless of unimpeachable orthodoxy, but whose name has not achieved fame. For thirteen years Adam Smith retained his Glasgow professorship, spending, of course, his winter sessions in that city, and finding ample time during the rest of the year to become intimate with the eminent men who then shone in the social and learned circles of Edinburgh. After leaving Oxford Smith returned to Kirkaldy, where he lived with his mother for nearly two years, until, through the appreciative kindness of James Oswald and Lord Kames, then One of Smith's earliest and favorite the great authority in Scotland on all pupils at Glasgow was the future dismatters of literary criticism, he ob- tinguished Professor John Millar, the tained his first chance of winning pub-author of an "Historical View of the lic distinction. He took full advantage, English Government." Another, of as he was well fitted to do, of the op- later date, was the eccentric Earl of portunity afforded, and gave in Edin- Buchan (eldest brother of the two brilburgh, in the winter of 1748-49, a most liant Erskines), who, though he had successful series of lectures upon En- already attended classes at St. Andrews glish literature. During the same and Edinburgh and had studied at Oxperiod he collected and edited the ford, came to yet another university, in poems of Hamilton of Bangour, the order that he might, in his own words, author of "The Braes of Yarrow," "after the manner of the ancients, whose Jacobitism had entailed his out- walk in the porticoes of Glasgow with lawry, and necessitated his residence Smith and with Millar, and be imbued abroad until, a couple of years later, he with the principles of jurisprudence received the royal pardon. The fol- and law and philosophy." The prolowing winter Smith lectured on eco-fessors, we are afraid, were almost as which is mentioned in the conclusion of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments," he did not live to fulfil. are much impressed by the high rank of their pupil as was the pupil by the wisdom of the professors, for Adam Smith, In the last of his lectures he examined "honeying at the whisper of a lord," once confided to the ear of a friend those political regulations which who was astonished at the fuss made in founded, not upon the principle of justice, but that of expediency, and which are calGlasgow about a personage to all ap-culated to increase the riches, the power, pearance so foolish as Lord Buchan, and the prosperity of a State. Under this that" of course we are all aware of his view he considered the political institufolly; but he is the only peer in our tions relating to commerce, to finances, to college." ecclesiastical and military establishments.. What he delivered on those subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published under the title of "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the It is from Professor Millar that the fullest account comes to us of the performance by Adam Smith of his duties in the professorial chair. Very early, as regards logic, he saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by Wealth of Nations." In lecturing, Smith trusted entirely often on points of controversy imaginto his power of extemporary speaking, his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more in- ing an opponent and wrestling with teresting and useful character than the him-doubtless to the delight of his logic and metaphysics of the schools. Ac- class-in vehement disputation. The cordingly, after exhibiting a general view | mind of Glasgow became stirred upon of the powers of the mind, and explaining as much of the ancient logic as was requisite to gratify curiosity with respect to an artificial method of reasoning which had once occupied the entire attention of the learned, he dedicated all the rest of his time to the delivering a system of rhetoric and belles lettres. His course of lectures the topics discussed; wealthy merchants sent their sons to his classes, stucco busts of him appeared in the booksellers' windows, and though some of the old-fashioned might dread the growing influence over young men of "the friend of Hume the atheist," he was admired and respected by the gen on moral philosophy was divided into four parts. The first contained natural the-eral public, and before he quitted his ology, in which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those principles of the human mind upon which religion is founded. The second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of the doctrines which he afterwards published in his "Theory of Moral Sentiments." In the third part he treated at more length of that branch of morality which relates to justice, and which, being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and particular explanation. chair he had made amongst the most eminent citizens of the town many converts to the principles of free trade. As an active member of the governing body of the university, it is interesting to find Adam Smith brought face to face in practical affairs with the difficulties due to those protectionist habits of the time which his writings have done so much to extirpate. In those days one privilege was often best resisted by another. When, for inUpon this subject he followed the plan stance, the students at Glasgow brought that seems to be suggested by Montesquieu, with them, as was then common, from endeavoring to trace the actual progress of their homes sufficient oatmeal to keep jurisprudence, both public and private, them at college, and the town claimed from the rudest to the most refined ages, upon this importation the customary and to point out the effects of those arts tax, Smith asserted a counter-privilege which contribute to subsistence and to the of the students to bring in their meal accumulation of property in producing cor- free of duty, a claim which he pressed responding improvements or alterations in with such zeal that the provost ordered law and government. This important branch of his labors he also intended to the money which had actually been give to the public; but this intention, levied from the students to be returned to them. The memorable case of the | Broomielaw; a few cobles were the only attempted exclusion of James Watt craft on the river, and the rude wharf was from Glasgow is well known. Who the resort of idlers, watching the fishermen can estimate the debt which Glasgow on the opposite side cast for salmon and and the valley of the Clyde owe to the draw up netfuls on the green bank (p. 87). young mathematical instrument maker The Clyde was not deepened till Adam who proposed in 1756 to set up business Smith had left Glasgow. Travellers in that city? Mr. Rae tells the strange were struck mainly by the beauty of tale : the situation of the town and the hand Though there were no other mathemat ical instrument-makers in Glasgow, the Corporation of Hammermen refused to permit his settlement because he was not the son or son-in-law of a burgess, and had not served his apprenticeship to the craft within the burgh. But in those days of privileges the universities also had their privileges. The professors of Glasgow enjoyed an absolute and independent authority over the area within college bounds, and they defeated the oppression of Watt by making him mathematical instrumentmaker to the university, and giving him a room in the college buildings for his workshop, and another at the college gates for the sale of his instruments. Mr. Rae goes on to quote, very appropriately, the "Wealth of Nations" as follows: - some buildings of its two principal streets. "St. Enoch Square was a private garden, Argyle Street an ill-kept country road; and the townherd still went his rounds every morning with his horn, calling the cattle from the Trongate and the Saltmarket to their pasture on the common meadows in the now densely populated district of the Cowcaddens." Nevertheless, the commercial importance of Glasgow was rapidly rising. "It had reached a stage of development of special value to the philosophical observer." The Clyde was already the great emporium for American tobacco, whence it was re-shipped by Glasgow merchants to all ports of the Continent, between which Andrew and the British colonies no direct trade was permitted. Iron was imported The property which every man has in his from Russia and from Sweden, to be labor, as it is the original foundation of all manufactured in the Glasgow ironworks other property, so it is the most sacred and into tools for the negroes of Maryland. inviolable. The patrimony of the poor In various directions a beginning of man lies in the strength and dexterity of new trades and manufactures had been his hands, and to hinder him from employ-made. The whole town was seething ing this strength and dexterity in what with energy. It was said that "the manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor is a plain violation of the very children were busy." most sacred property. Cochrane, late provost, and the leading merchant of the Clyde, became one of Adam Smith's most intimate friends. He had founded a political economy club, of which naturally Adam Smith became a member, and there, once a week, the problems at that time chiefly interesting to the commercial world were discussed. To a literary society founded by Adam Smith another evening of every week was dedicated, whilst a third was kept sacred to the Whilst Glasgow was thus learning from Smith, Smith was also learning much from Glasgow. The prosperity of that city was the direct result of the Union, which for the first time opened the English colonial markets to Scottish enterprise, and enabled the merchants of the Clyde to avail themselves of the natural advantages of their situation in trading with the American plantations. Yet, according to modern ideas, Glas- convivialities gow in the middle of the eighteenth Club." century was but a small place. In size and appearance it was a mere provincial town of twenty-three thousand inhabitants. Broom still grew on the of "Robin Simson's Mr. Rae gives a delightful description of these social gatherings of the Glasgow professors, and draws a graphic portrait of their learned and genial chairman : |