SMITH, ADAM, the founder of political economy as a separate branch of human knowledge, was b. in the town of Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, on June 5, 1723. His family belonged to the respectable middle class of Scotch life; his father was comp troller of the customs of the port of Kirkcaldy, and his mother, Margaret Douglas, was the daughter of a small Fifeshire laird. - His father died a short time before his birth, and he was the object of the care and solicitude of a widowed mother, to whom he was closely attached, and who long lived to be proud of his attainments. When he was no more than three years old, the poor woman got a sad fright, from a calamity hardly known at the present day—the child was stolen by gypsies; but he was tracked and recovered by his uncle as they were seeking a hiding-place in the neighboring wood of Leslie. This was the only adventure in his quiet life. After getting the usual burgh school education in Kirkcaldy, he was sent, in 1737, to the university of Glasgow. He there secured an exhibition on the Snell foundation, which took him to Balliol college, Oxford. He studied there for seven years, and left traditions as of a man of large ac quirements and peculiar independence of thought. It is said that he was intended for the English church, but if so, his own convictions crossed the designs of his friends. He returned to Kirkcaldy, and lived for a while wth his mother there in undisturbed seclu sion and study. It was said to be his practice to stand ruminating, with his back to the fire, and his head leaning against the chimney-piece—and over an old fireplace in Kirk caldy it used to be shown how lie had thus worn a piece off the paint. In 1748 he came to Edinburgh, where silently and unostentatiously be became one of the brilliant little circle of men of letters who were then rising to importance. In 1751 he got the chair of logic in the university of Glasgow, and this was changed a year afterward for that of moral philosophy. In 1759 appeared his Theory of 3Ioral Sentiments; celebrated for its reference of the mental emotions to the one source of sympathy. The Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was published along with the later editions of this book. Both had a great reputation in their day, and although they are now among obscure books in comparison with that other by which the author's name is remembered, the position they held with respectable thinkers gave a bearing to his doctrines on Political economy which they would hardly have otherwise obtained. In 1762 the university of Glasgow gave him the degree of doctor of laws. In the following year he undertook a task, which might at first seem very uncongenial to a mind like his, given to retired study and fade pendent thought and action. He became "governor" or traveling tutor to the young duke of Buccleuch. He was then sedulously collecting materials for his great work, and no doubt the inducement to accept of the office was the opportunity it gave him for tra veling and seeing for himself. He had the opportunity of being nearly a year hi Paris, and of mixing in the circle of renowned wits and philosophers of the reign of Louis XV. In 1766 his function came to an end, and he returned to Kirkcaldy to live in the old house with his mother. The year 1776 was an era in the history of the world as well as that of the Kirkcaldy recluse, in the appearance of the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth, of Rations. If there was any living man to whose works he was
indebted for the leading principles of this book, it was David Hume, and it was from him, as best understanding the fullness and completeness of the exposition, that it had its first emphatic welcome. He wrote immediately on receiving it: BELLE.—DEAR Ma. SMITII—I am much pleased with your performance; and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt, for some time, of its being at first very popular. But it has depth, and solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts, that it must at last take the public attention." This was not destined to be exactly-the literary history of this Feat work. Its startling doctrines, fine clear style, and abundant illustration from curious facts took at first; but fluences arose when people saw boil( far the new doctrines went in playing havoc with old prejudices. The French revolution set the mind of this country bigoted against everything that breathed of innovation. It was known that the younger Pitt partici pated at first in Smith's free,trade notions, but he had afterward, whether from permanent connection or temporary policy, to put himself in the'foremost ranks of the enemies of innovation. It was not until long after the terrors of that epoch and the nervous vicissi tude's of the war had passed over, that Smith's work bad an opportunity to revolutionize the public mind on matters of trade and finance. It came up, as it were, the leader of a great literary host, for expounders had crowded in numbers round The Wealth of Nations as the text-book of sound economy. Of a book so well known and so much read it is needless to speak. The only reproach brought against it is that it is not systematic in its form, and that its nomenclature is not exact. But its author was not arranging the results of established knowledge—he was rather pulling down existing structures, com pounded of ignorance and wejudice. Nor, indeed, have those who have attempted to make an exact science out of political economy practically vindicated the reproach they have cast on him of being unmethodical. Whatever we may yet come to, very few por tions indeed of political economy admit of being treated as exact science. It is too closely connected with human passions and energies, and consequently with special results and changes, to be so treated; and the best books on the subject are still characterized by the discursiveness and mixed philosophy and fact of the Wealth of Nations. In 1778, Smith Wag made a commissioner of customs. The on;y effect of this was to bring him to Edin. burgh, and increase his weans for indulging in his favorite weakness, the collection of a fine library; for he was, as he called himself, a "beau in his books." In 1784 he gut tered that affliction which was sure to come if he lived long enough for it—the loss of his worthy mother. He followed her six years afterward, dying in July, 1790.