English Men of Letters

Adam Smith

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the sympathetic pen of a friend and disciple in the Corinthian style that Stewart loved, the memoir was too good to be superseded.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 Raes exhaustive Life of Adam Smith. Mr. Raes comprehensive researches cropped the ground so close that little seemed to have been left for his successors to glean. But the discovery of Smiths Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms, edited by Mr. Edwin Cannan and published in 1896, has furnished new and important materials. Of Smiths 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. Adam Smith was born on June 5, 1723, in the lang toun of Kirkcaldy. It was one of the mony royal boroughs yoked on end to end like ropes of ingans, with their hie-streets and their booths, and their kraemes and houses of stane and lime and forestairs, which led Andrew Fairservice to contrast the kingdom of Fife with the inferior county of Northumberland; nay, it furnished him with a special boast, Kirkcaldy, the sell ot, is langer than ony toun in England. It had been a royal borough from the time of Charles I., and had declined, like many other Scotch towns, in the religious wars of the seventeenth century. Many of its citizens who had fought for the Covenant had fallen on the fatal field of Tippermuir. But it still contained about 1500 inhabitants, who were variously employed as colliers, fishermen, salters, nailmakers, and smugglers. From the harbour you might walk a mile or more westward along the High Street, enjoying from time to time a glimpse of the sea and shelving beach, where the line of shops opened for a narrow wynd, or a still narrower close 2 threaded the high-walled gardens of a few substantial houses. In one of these Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations, and probably in one of these he was born. The father, who died a few weeks before the birth of his only child, had been a leading townsman. Adam Smith the elder was a man of note in his own day. From 1707 to his death he was a Writer,[1] i.e. solicitor, and Judge Advocate for Scotland. He had acted as private secretary to Lord Loudon, then Minister for Scotland; and Loudon, on leaving office in 1713, obtained for his secretary the Comptrollership of Customs at Kirkcaldya post worth about 100 a year. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 64753
Author: Hirst, Francis W. (Francis Wrigley)
Release Date: Mar 8, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English