FOOTNOTES
[1]Dugald Stewart wrongly describes him as a Writer to the Signet, confusing him with a contemporary of the same name.
[2]See W. R. Scott’s Hutcheson (1900).
[3]Even in 1763 there was but one stage-coach in Scotland “which set out [from Edinburgh] once a month for London, and was from twelve to fourteen days on the journey.”—George Robertson’s Rural Recollections, p. 4.
[4]See the Wealth of Nations, Book V. ch. i. art. 2.
[5]See the Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. ii.
[6]The advertisement goes on to say: “It is long since he found it necessary to abandon that plan as far too extensive; and these parts of it lay beside him neglected till he was dead.”
[7]First, Dugald Stewart declares that the History of Astronomy “was one of Mr. Smith’s earliest compositions.” Second, in a letter constituting Hume his literary executor, Smith describes it as a fragment of an intended juvenile work. Thirdly, Stewart heard him say more than once “that he had projected in the earlier part of his life a history of the other sciences on the same plan.” Fourthly, the work exactly fits in with all that we hear of his youthful bent for the Greek geometry and natural philosophy. Fifthly, it must have been written long before 1758, for he mentions a prediction that a certain comet will appear in that year.
[8]“The author at the end of his essay,” says the advertisement, “left some notes and memorandums from which it appears he considered this last part of his History of Astronomy as imperfect and needing several additions.” It consists of 135 pages, and the imperfections are not obvious to the reader.
[9]Moral Sentiments, Part III. chap. ii. p. 210 of the second, third, and fourth editions; chap. iii. of the sixth edition.
[10]Mr. Rae, usually the most accurate of authorities, states that the first edition appeared “in two volumes 8vo.”
[11]The crude theory that sympathy is the foundation of altruism was noticed by Hutcheson. In his System of Moral Philosophy (B. I. ch. iii.) he writes: “Others say that we regard the good of others, or of societies ... as the means of some subtiler pleasures of our own by sympathy with others in their happiness.” But this sympathy, he adds, “can never account for all kind affections, tho’ it is no doubt a natural principle and a beautiful part of our constitution.”
[12]Mr. Rae’s Life of Adam Smith, pp. 148-9. Mr. Rae also says that it contained none of the alterations or additions that Hume expected, and expresses surprise that the additions, etc., which had been placed in the printer’s hands in 1760 were not incorporated in the text until the publication of the sixth edition thirty years afterwards. On the other hand, he says that the Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was added. But the Dissertation was first appended in the third edition (1767).
[13]See Moral Sentiments, 1st edition, p. 464.
[14]Origine de l’inégalité. Partie première, pp. 376, 377. Édition d’Amsterdam des œuvres diverses de J. J. Rousseau. The reference is from Moral Sentiments, 3rd ed. p. 440.
[15]Millar adds: “The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton.”
[16]Cp. Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. iii.
[17]And even Hume, as Smith warned his class, had not quite emancipated himself from mercantilist misconceptions.
[18]Lectures, p. 241: “Excise raises the price of commodities and makes fewer people able to carry on business. If a man purchase £1000 worth of tobacco he has a hundred pounds of tax to pay, and therefore cannot deal to such an extent as he would otherwise do. Thus, as it requires greater stock to carry on trade, the dealers must be fewer, and the rich have, as it were, a monopoly against the poor.”
[19]Uztariz, Theory and Practice of Commerce and Maritime Affairs, translated by John Kippax, 1751, vol. ii. p. 52. The allusion has been discovered by Mr. Edwin Cannan. See Lectures, p. 246.
[20]Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V. chap. i. art. 2.
[21]Tytler’s Kames, i. p. 278.
[22]See Faujas Saint-Fond, Travels in England and Scotland, vol. ii. p. 241.
[23]See Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 549, 550.
[24]See letter from Adam Smith to T. Cadell printed in the Economic Journal for September 1898. It appears that the last two books he had ordered were Postlethwait’s Dictionary of Trade and Anderson’s Deduction of the Origin of Commerce. Neither appears in Mr. Bonar’s catalogue of his library.
[25]At Kirkcaldy George Drysdale, for some time Provost of the town and afterwards Collector of Customs, was a “steady and much esteemed friend.” His more distinguished brother, Dr. John Drysdale the minister, had been at school with Smith, and “among all his numerous friends and acquaintances,” says Dalzel, there was none “whom he loved with greater affection or spoke of with greater tenderness.” They often met in Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh. The death of James Oswald, who represented Kirkcaldy, early in 1769, was a serious loss to the little society, and particularly to Smith.
[26]Steuart’s Political Economy, 1767.
[27]The most important of these (in Book IV. chap, vii.) appear for the first time in the third edition (1784).
[28]Letter to Cullen, London, 20th September 1774.
[29]Mr. Macpherson’s recent abridgment is the only tolerable one I know of, and that solely because it carefully retains many of the finest chapters, and leaves the flesh on the bones.
[30]A public pawnshop.
[31]Charles Butler, the learned Catholic lawyer, once mentioned to Fox that he had never read the Wealth of Nations. “To tell you the truth,” said Fox, “nor I either. There is something in all these subjects which passes my comprehension; something so wide that I could never embrace them myself or find any one who did.”
[32]See Book IV. chap. vii.
[33]See Skarzinski’s Adam Smith (1878), quoted by Oncken, Economic Journal, vol. vii. p. 445.
[34]See Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera, letters 62 and 72.
[35]Smith avoids the error so commonly committed in modern doctrines of international trade, of regarding a nation as a trading unit.
[36]The second case is simple and uncontroversial. If there is an excise duty upon a home product, it seems reasonable, says Smith, that an equal tax should be imposed in the shape of an import duty upon the same product imported from abroad.
[37]The author of Douglas.
[38]Written from Kirkcaldy, November 9, 1776.
[39]In the Budget of 1778 North adopted two more important recommendations: the inhabited house duty, which is still with us, and the malt tax, which was commuted for the beer duty by Mr. Gladstone in 1880. The house tax proved very productive, as taxes went in those days, its yield rising from £26,000 in 1779 to £108,000 in 1782.
[40]Sir Gray Cooper was Secretary to the Treasury.
[41]Rae’s Life of Adam Smith, p. 326.
[42]See the Life of Smith by William Smellie, a contemporary.
[43]See Sinclair’s Life of Sir John Sinclair, vol. i. p. 39.
[44]Edinburgh, 15th December 1783. The letter is printed in the Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland, vol. i. p. 64.
[45]Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote from Edinburgh, July 25, 1782, to his wife:—“I have found one just man in Gomorrah, Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations. He was the Duke of Buccleuch’s tutor, is a wise and deep philosopher, and although made Commissioner of the Customs here by the Duke and Lord Advocate, is what I call an honest fellow. He wrote a most kind as well as elegant letter to Burke on his resignation, as I believe I told you before, and on my mentioning it to him he told me he was the only man here who spoke out for the Rockinghams.”—Life of Lord Minto, vol. i. p. 84.
[46]Afterwards Lord Lauderdale, a finished economist, who passed some ingenious criticisms on the Wealth of Nations.
[47]See Dugald Stewart’s Memoir, section V.
[48]Mr. Rae, the only one of Smith’s biographers, I think, who has noticed Saint-Fond’s visit, dates it wrongly (in 1782), and says the account was published in 1783. The journey took place in 1784, and the account was published in 1797. An English translation appeared two years later.
[49]This appeared in 1786 with a prefatory note expressing the author’s grateful obligations to Mr. Henry Hope of Amsterdam, for his information concerning the great Dutch Bank.
[50]In his first will Gibbon left a legacy of £100 to Adam Smith.
[51]In his Defence of Usury, “Letter XIII. to Dr. Smith,” Bentham had written: “Instead therefore of pretending to owe you nothing, I shall begin with acknowledging that, as far as your trade coincides with mine, I should come much nearer the truth were I to say I owed you everything.” Mr. Rae (Life of Adam Smith, p. 424) quotes a letter from George Wilson to Bentham, in the Bentham MSS., British Museum. I may add to this the following note which I find in Bentham’s Rationale of Reward (1825), p. 332, in chapter xvi. of Book IV., on Rates of Interest. “Adam Smith, after having read the letter upon Projects, which was addressed to him, and printed at the end of the first edition of the Defence of Usury, declared to a gentleman, the common friend of the two authors, that he had been deceived. With the tidings of his death Mr. Bentham received a copy of his works, which had been sent to him as a token of esteem.”