Smith Adam

Smith, ADAM, was born in 1723. He passed from the University of Glasgow to Baliol College, Oxford, where he spent seven years. Returning to Scotland, he made the acquaintance of Lord Kames and David Hume, through whom he got in 1751 the professorship of logic, and afterwards that of moral philosophy at Glasgow. His lectures were thoughtful yet popular, and they are summed up in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In 1763 he accompanied the young Duke of Buccleuch on a foreign tour, and made the acquaintance of Helvetius, Turgot, Marmontel, D'Alembert, and Quesnay, from the last of whom he is said to have imbibed certain economical doctrines. From 1766 to 1776 he remained with his mother at Kirkcaldy, engaged on his great work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the foundations of which were laid during his professorial career. It is scarcely possible to overrate the influence this treatise has exercised on the world, though its effects were not felt immediately. It established the law of supply and demand, made labour, not land or precious metals, the source of wealth, and paved the way for Free Trade. Smith for a couple of years lived in the best intellectual society of London but in 1778 went back home as commisioner of Customs at Edinburgh. The rectorship of Glasgow University was conferred on him in 1787 to his great delight, and in 1790 he succumbed to a long and painful malady.