SCOTLAND is justly proud of her gifted sons, and, among the most gifted, delights to rank the author of the Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Both of these works indicate the highest order of mind, and by universal consent bear the stamp of immortality. Each of them is great in its own province of thought: the ethical treatise, though unphilosophical in its treatment, has the keen analysis and literary charm of Montaigne's Essays; while it may be said of the other, without exaggeration, that it has created an epoch in the history of economic thought. In his Economic Studies, Bagehot says that no other form of political philosophy has ever had one-thousandth part of the influence upon us; its teachings have settled down into the common sense of the nation, and have been irreversible.'

After studying mathematics and philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and proceeding as Snell Exhibitioner to Balliol College, Oxford, he returned to his native town of Kirkcaldy, and three years afterwards was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow University. Seven years later, in 1759, he published his work on the Theory of Moral Sentiments. That theory is founded on the law of Sympathy, which Smith thus defines: 'We either approve or disapprove of the conduct of another man, according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely

sympathise with the sentiments and motives which directed it. And, in the same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, according as we feel that, when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathise with the sentiments and motives which influenced it.'

In 1763 he was invited to accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch on his continental travels, and for this purpose he resigned his Professorship. About three years were spent abroad, chiefly in France, at Paris and Toulouse. During a ten months' stay in Paris, he made the acquaintance of Turgot, Quesnay, Necker, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and other shining lights of the Illumination period. Having a powerful and accurate memory, he laid up all that he saw and heard among that extraordinary group of philosophers and reformers. Such men as Turgot and Quesnay must have had a peculiar fascination for him. Their love of economic research was equally great, and they burned with a like zeal for the best interests of mankind. On returning to this country, Adam Smith, rich with mental stores, buried himself for ten years in his native Kirkcaldy, from which his life-long friend, David Hume, sought in vain to allure him to the metropolis. From his house in James' Court, commanding a view of the Fife coast, Hume wrote to him in 1769 I propose to you to come hither, and pass some days with me in this solitude. I want to know what you have been doing, and propose to exact a rigorous account of the method in which you have employed yourself during your retreat.' Seven years later, a reason for this long retreat was given in the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Hume hailed the treatise, though doubting its immediate popularity, and spoke of its depth, solidity, and acuteness, and assured the author that as it was illustrated by so many curious facts it must at last take the public attention. In the course of fifteen years, it passed through six editions, and was translated into the principal languages of Europe.

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Statesmen, like Pitt and Cobden, drew their ideas from it; slowly but surely it leavened the public mind, and with such success that, according to Buckle the historian, eighty years after its publication there is not to be found anyone of tolerable education who is not ashamed of holding opinions which, before the time of Adam Smith, were universally received.

The charm of the book consists in the lucidity of its style and the wealth of its illustrations, qualities which have obtained for it a greater influence on practical affairs than belongs to any other book of the eighteenth century. Knowledge of actual fact is the striking feature on every page, and blends so constantly with every enunciation of principle that theorists dispute whether he drew his theories from his facts, or made use of his facts to verify his theories.

It must not be supposed that no political economy existed before Adam Smith's time. He had his predecessors, as James Watt had in connection with the steam-engine; he owed much, and makes acknowledgment of it, to the Physiocrats of France, who were the first to proclaim the doctrine of Free Trade. In 1766, ten years before Smith published his treatise, Turgot wrote an essay on the 'Formation and Distribution of Wealth,' in which he anticipated some of the leading principles of the Wealth of Nations, such as those of the division of labour, free trade, loans and interest, and processes in the formation of capital. But Turgot's essay lacks the breadth of historic outlook and amplitude of illustration that have given so unique a place to Smith's greater work in the education of the human understanding. Smith acknowledged Quesnay's system to be the nearest approximation to the truth that had been published on the principles of economic science; and he intended to dedicate to Quesnay the Wealth of Nations, but was prevented by Quesnay's death.

Some men of note in this country, like Sir Dudley North, had enlightened views on economic subjects, but Smith treated them with such breadth of view, such skill in the exposure of error, such mastery in the analysis of causes, and such copious

ness of apt detail, that political economy, as a science or art, may be said to date from the appearance of his work. While he has the merit of gathering up the best thought of those who went before, he has likewise the greater merit of anticipating the researches of those who came after him. Errors that had grown for ages, held by French economists regarding the produce of land as the main source of wealth, and by political arithmeticians of this country regarding a nation's wealth as dependent on a favourable balance of trade that had to be bolstered up with an elaborate machinery of protection,-errors such as these were shown to be false and absurd, and the great antithesis of Free Trade was stated with powerful and convincing clearness. It did not seem to him that such a tenet would ever be accepted in this country, for he tells us in the fourth book that 'to expect that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the people, but, what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.' Half a century later Peel abolished the Corn Laws, and uttered the memorable words: 'I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who, from less honourable motives, clamours for Protection, because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread with the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice.'

Perhaps no greater achievement is recorded in history than Adam Smith won by converting the British nation to adopt Free Trade. He vindicated the doctrine on a dual basis-on considerations drawn from the advantages of division of labour, and from conceiving rightly the functions of money as the instrument of commerce and the measure of value. With

division of labour springs up a universal opulence which extends to the lowest ranks of the people. The plenty of one country may be used to relieve the scarcity of another. Money is the instrument through the medium of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another. Wealth does not consist in money, but in what money purchases, in the abundant free exchange of commodities for commodities, of imports for exports, and vice versa. Were all nations,' Smith writes, 'to follow the liberal system of free exportation and free importation, the different states into which a great continent was divided would so far resemble the different provinces of a great empire.' This extension of unlimited commerce shows the generous fertility of Smith's reasoning, for it is an international carrying out of the Christian principles: 'Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Freely ye have received, freely give.' In several chapters of the fourth book, the author exposes with ruthless skill the fallacies of the Mercantile System, the meanness of its expedients for granting bounties upon exportation, and the unreasonableness of placing restraints upon importation. On the evils of such a system he writes with strong feeling, though some authorities do not see how his views of Mercantilism could have governed England's policy during the time when her great commercial supremacy was acquired.

The question of Smith's indebtedness to his predecessors deserves a passing notice. A recent perusal of the Inquiry led the present writer to ask the question, and try to answer it; and with that end in view John Morley's fine sketches of men of the Illumination period were taken up as a study, but no light could be found in that quarter. An attempt was then made to obtain a sight of Smith's library, only to find that it had been divided between two of his representatives, who were willing to sell it to any public body, but there was no offer. Most of the books in the part belonging to an Edinburgh relative have been presented to the Free Church College Library; the other part is said to have been inherited by a