Adam Smith

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS
BY FRANCIS W. HIRST
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR
Copyright in the United States of America, 1904
Early in 1793 Dugald Stewart read at two meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh his “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith.” Written with the sympathetic pen of a friend and disciple in the Corinthian style that Stewart loved, the memoir was too good to be superseded. A century passed, and in 1895 appeared Mr. John Rae’s exhaustive Life of Adam Smith . Mr. Rae’s comprehensive researches cropped the ground so close that little seemed to have been left for his successors to glean. But the discovery of Smith’s Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms , edited by Mr. Edwin Cannan and published in 1896, has furnished new and important materials.
Of Smith’s innumerable critics and commentators, Bagehot, Oncken, Ingram, and Hasbach seem to me to have understood him best. The misdirected erudition of some others has only proved the importance of allowing him to be his own interpreter.
Dr. David Murray of Glasgow has very kindly read portions of my proofs, and has contributed most generously from his wonderful store of learning.
F. W. H.
His widow lived to a great age, and saw her boy rise step by step to the fulness of fame. She is said to have been an over-indulgent mother; but her devotion was repaid by the life-long love of a most tender son. Mrs. Smith’s maiden name was Margaret Douglas, and she was the daughter of the Laird of Strathendry, in the county of Fife. At Strathendry the future economist had a narrow escape; for one day as he played at the door he was picked up and carried off by a party of vagrant tinkers. Luckily he was soon missed, pursued and overtaken in Leslie Wood; and thus, in the grandiose dialect of Dugald Stewart, there was preserved to the world “a genius, which was destined, not only to extend the boundaries of science, but to enlighten and reform the commercial policy of Europe.”