Smith was accustomed to speak of his thirteen years' professor-
ship at Glasgow as the happiest portion of his life.
It is perhaps
not too much to say that the two following passages in the
"Wealth of Nations" were suggested by his own experience. He

is speaking of the discipline of colleges and universities, and he
expresses this opinion: "No discipline is ever requisite to force
attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as
is well known where any such lectures are given. Force and
restraint may no doubt be in some degree requisite in order to
oblige children or very young boys to attend to those parts of
education which it is thought necessary for them to acquire during
that early period of life; but after twelve or thirteen years of age,
provided the master does his duty, force or restraint can scarce
ever be necessary to carry on any part of education." The writer
of this passage cannot have had much difficulty with his own class.
In another place he writes: "To impose upon any man the
necessity of teaching, year after year, in any particular branch of
science, seems in reality to be the most effectual method for
rendering him completely master of it himself. By being obliged
to go every year over the same ground, if he is good for anything,
he necessarily becomes in a few years well acquainted with every
part of it; and if upon any particular point he should form too
hasty an opinion one year, when he comes in the course of his
lectures to reconsider the same subject the year thereafter, he is

very likely to correct it. As to be a teacher of science is certainly
the natural employment of a mere man of letters, so is it likewise
perhaps the education which is most likely to render him a man
of solid learning and knowledge."

In 1763, however, Smith resigned his chair in order to travel on the Continent with the young Duke of Buccleuch. A considerable portion of the time was spent in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the most distinguished men, among others being Quesnay, the author of the Agricultural System of Political Economy which Smith examines in the last chapter of his fourth book. In 1766 Smith returned to London, and soon after took up his residence at Kirkcaldy, where for the next ten years he was occupied with the composition of the "Wealth of Nations." During this period he describes himself to Hume as being extremely happy, comfort

able, and contented. At length, in 1776, the year of the Declaration of American Independence, the "Wealth of Nations" was given to the world. It immediately achieved a great reputation, but the pleasure derived from this success was marred by the death of Hume, whom, during his last illness, Smith affectionately attended.

In 1778 he was appointed a Commissioner of Customs for Scotland, and removed to Edinburgh. He must have found many curious examples of the evils of the restraints on trade imposed by Government, and have been fully confirmed in the truth of his conclusions in favour of natural liberty; but there is no reason to suppose, as M'Culloch does, that he found his duties very irksome, for he possessed a sufficient income apart from his official salary, and could without serious inconvenience have resigned the appointment. In 1787 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, an honour which he very much prized. But in 1784 his mother had died, and four years later his cousin, Miss Douglas; and this breaking up of his household accelerated the decline of his weakly constitution, and he died on the 17th July, 1790, after a painful illness, borne with perfect patience and resignation.

Of Smith's deportment Smellie writes: "When walking, there were some singularities. His head had a gentle motion from side to side, and his body at every step had a kind of rolling or vermicular motion, as if he meant to alter his direction, or even to turn back. In the street or elsewhere he always carried his cane on his shoulder, as a soldier does his musket. These may be considered as slight shades, but in a picture slight shades are often highly characteristic." To these characteristics M'Culloch adds: "Smith was about the middle size, well made, and stout, though not fat or corpulent. His disposition was, social in the extreme, especially in his own house, and in the company of his early friends. His Sunday suppers were long celebrated in Edinburgh circles."

Dugald Stewart, who was an intimate friend of Smith, gives some traits of character which one would hardly have expected to find in the author of the "Wealth of Nations." No book was ever written in which theory was more constantly brought to the test of fact; the written opinions of the writer seem to have been

always subjected to the closest and most judicial scrutiny, and yet his biographer writes: "The comprehensive speculations with which he had been occupied from his youth, and the variety of materials which his own invention continually supplied to his thoughts, rendered him habitually inattentive to familiar objects and to common occurrences, and he frequently exhibited instances of absence which have scarcely been surpassed by the fancy of La Bruyère......The opinions he formed of men, upon slight acquaintance, were frequently erroneous, but the tendency of his nature inclined him much more to blind partiality than to ill-founded prejudice. The enlarged views of human affairs on which his mind habitually dwelt left him neither time nor inclination to study in detail the uninteresting peculiarities of ordinary characters, and accordingly, though intimately acquainted with the capabilities of the intellect and the workings of the heart, and accustomed in his theories to mark with the most delicate hand the nicest shades both of genius and of the passions, yet, in judging of individuals, it sometimes happened that his estimates were in a surprising degree wide of the truth. The opinions too which, in the thoughtlessness and confidence of his social hours, he was accustomed to hazard on books and on questions of speculation were not uniformly such as might have been expected from the superiority of his understanding and the singular consistency of his philosophical principles."

The

Smith was probably one of the most widely read men of his time in all departments of science and literature. But in process of time the "Wealth of Nations" has been converted into Smithianismus, and the author of such a system has naturally been supposed to be an "economic" man in Mr. Ruskin's sense of the term. The publications of Adam Smith, as well as his valuable library, show the utter baselessness of this construction. foundation of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" is sympathythe natural complement to the self-interest and expediency of the 'Wealth of Nations.” The versatility of Smith's genius is further shown by his "Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages," and by the posthumous papers (which he exempted from destruction), "the greater number of which appear to be parts

of a plan he had once formed for giving a connected history of the liberal sciences and elegant arts." By the kindness of Smith's nearest surviving relations, I have had the opportunity of examining a large portion of his library, and a more varied collection it would be difficult to find. I was most struck by the large number of books of travel and of poetry, of some of which there were more than one edition, and occasionally editions de luxe. I had hoped to find marginal notes or references which might have thrown light on the authorities of some passages in the "Wealth of Nations" (for Smith gives no references), but even the ingenious, oft-quoted author of the Tracts on the Corn Laws has escaped without a mark. At the same time pamphlets have been carefully bound together, and indexes prefixed in Smith's own writing.

labour."

Adam Smith stands in the same relation to modern Political Economy as John Locke to modern Philosophy. In Locke there is the same combination of a priori and a posteriori reasoning. Locke's successors, unable or unwilling to carry on this double method, developed the antagonistic schools of transcendental philosophy and empirical psychology, the reconciliation of which was the great problem of Kant. And just as every important system of Philosophy may be traced through Locke, so the current schools of Political Economy may be traced through Adam Smith. German Socialists appeal to the dictum of the great master—“ The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense or wages of The celebrated American protectionist H. Carey claims to be the only true interpreter of the doctrines of Adam Smith; and certainly it is a fundamental position in the "Wealth of Nations" that "the capital employed in the home trade of any country will generally give encouragement and support to a greater quantity of productive labour in that country and increase the value of its annual produce more than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption; and the capital employed in this latter trade has in both respects still greater advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade." The genius of Ricardo attached an exaggerated importance to the hypothetical deductions of Adam Smith, neglecting to a great extent his careful verifications, and he thus gave to English Political Economy a bias in the a priori direction; and it must be confessed that John Stuart Mill, whilst

professing to give a modern Adam Smith, has given for the most part no more than a readable Ricardo.

Of late years the conflict between the inductive and deductive schools has been carried on very hotly, with the desirable result that the methods which appeared to be antagonistic are now seen to be complementary. The deductive method, especially in its quasi-mathematical form, has made the fundamental conceptions clear and distinct: for example, no one at the present day would search for a real universal measure of value, that alchemist's stone of Political Economy; no one would say that in manufactures "nature does nothing, man does all," or be content with defining wealth (and that only incidentally) as the annual produce of the land and labour of a society. At the same time, the recent controversy has made it abundantly clear that (if the dry bones of Political Economy are to be clothed with flesh, continual reference must be made to actual and historical conditions. Even as regards the Ricardian doctrine of rent, which it was customary to call the pons asinorum of Political Economy, a suspicion has begun to prevail that the part of it which is true is a mere truism;* the wages-fund theory has suffered the same process of attenuation, and the "economic man" has been banished to the planet Saturn. Even in Political Economy the confession is made that if matter without thought is blind, thought without matter is empty. No mere manipulation of conceptions can account for past or present economic forms, and still less indicate the stages of future development: if the economist is not to be ranked with the astrologer, he must perforce turn statistician and historian. Adam Smith was both, and hence avoided the pitfalls which beset the "natural method of inquiry.

It may be maintained (and generally it is maintained) that as a whole the "Wealth of Nations" is still the best system of Political Economy which this country has produced, chiefly owing to the fact that subsequent systematic writers have been too much under the influence of Ricardo; and yet it may be allowed (and generally it is allowed) that in nearly every department great advances have been made on Adam Smith. Even as regards the general scope of

*

Compare Leroy-Beaulieu, "Répartition des Richesses," ch. ii. ; and Prof. Thorold Rogers, "History of Agriculture and Prices," vol. iv., p. 134, and "Political Economy," ch. xii.

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