Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Smith, Adam
SMITH, Adam, the author of the "Wealth of Nations" and the "Theory of Moral Sentiments," was born in 1723 at Kirkcaldy, a small town in the county of Fife, where his father, who died a few months before his birth, held the office of controller of the customs. His mother was a daughter of Mr. Douglas of Strathenry. She lived to a good old age, and was made glad by the renown of the son, an only child, whom she had reared with the utmost tenderness and solicitude. In early life the constitution of Smith was delicate and infirm. He incurred, too, other hazards than the complaints incident to childhood. When three years old, he was stolen by a gang of those vagrants who in Scotland are called tinkers. Being pursued by his uncle, Mr. Douglas, with such assistance as he could obtain, the vagabonds were overtaken in Leslie wood, and the child was rescued from their clutches. Smith was educated at the grammar-school of Kirkcaldy until he was in his fifteenth year. He was then sent to the university of Glasgow, where his favourite studies are said to have been mathematics and natural philosophy. It is probable, however, that the teacher who exercised the most decisive influence on his future career, by making him feel where the true bent of his genius lay, was Hutcheson, the professor of moral philosophy, a liberal and enlightened instructor, of whom, and of whose lectures, he always spoke in terms of the warmest admiration. Having obtained at Glasgow a Snell exhibition, Smith entered Balliol college, Oxford, in 1741. Here he read extensively in the modern languages, as well as in Greek and Latin. He exercised himself largely in making translations from the French. He studied ethics, politics, and metaphysics on a more extensive scale than was prescribed, or even permitted, by the college authorities. It is recorded that being caught by his tutor perusing Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, then recently published, he received a severe reprimand, and the obnoxious book was taken from him. This illiberal usage (and we presume that the case referred to was not a solitary example) may have prejudiced him, as it afterwards did Gibbon, against the Oxford system of education, and may have led him to speak of it in the disparaging tone which he employs in the "Wealth of Nations." In spite, however, of his dislike, he remained at Oxford for the unusually long period of seven years. At first his intention had been to take orders in the Church of England; but the extensive moral and political researches in which he had been engaged led him to abandon this design, and to fix his view rather on the attainment of an academical chair in Scotland. On leaving Oxford in 1747 he returned to Kirkcaldy, where he resided with his mother for nearly two years. In the winter of 1748 he delivered a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres in Edinburgh. The applause with which these were received introduced him to the notice and friendship of Hume, Blair, Lord Kames, and other literary characters in the northern metropolis. Through their influence, backed by his own merits, he was appointed in 1751 to the professorship of logic in the university of Glasgow—a chair which, in the following year, he exchanged for that of moral philosophy.
Smith had now reached the position for which he was best qualified, both by the bent of his genius and by the nature of his studies. He held his professorship for thirteen years, and it would have been well for the world if he had retained it until the close of his life; for in that case, it is probable that he would have been able to bring into a fit state for publication the whole of his academical course of lectures, and not those parts of it merely which are embodied in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" and the "Wealth of Nations." As a lecturer his reputation stood very high. Multitudes of students resorted to Glasgow merely upon his account; and so much interest did his opinions excite, that they were frequently the chief topics of discussion in clubs and literary societies. The "Theory of Moral Sentiments," the substance of which formed the second division of his course of lectures, was published in 1759. In 1763 his professional career was unfortunately brought to a close. He received an invitation from Mr. Townshend, who had married the countess of Dalkeith, to accompany her son, the young duke of Buccleuch, on his travels. The terms were too liberal to be refused. An annuity of £300 was to be settled on him for life. Accordingly he resigned his professorship, and set out for the continent with his noble pupil in March, 1764. They remained abroad for nearly two years, residing principally at Paris, where, through the introductions of Hume, Smith formed an acquaintance with Turgot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Buffon, Rochefoucault, and the celebrated economist Quesnay. On their return to England in 1766, Smith retired to his mother's residence at Kirkcaldy, where he passed the next ten years of his life in close seclusion, which no persuasions of his friends could induce him to break through. He wrote to David Hume:—"My business here is study. My amusements are long and solitary walks by the sea-shore. I feel myself, however, extremely happy, comfortable, and contented. I never was, perhaps, more so in my life. You will give me great comfort by writing to me now and then, and letting me know what is passing among my friends in London." At length the mystery of his long seclusion was resolved. The "Wealth of Nations," on the composition of which these ten laborious years had been spent, was given to the world; and its author reaped, in the applause with which it was received, the well-earned reward of his genius, industry, and self-denial. It was published in 1776, and may be confidently pronounced the most important and influential work to which that century gave birth. The next two years of Smith's life were spent in London, where, amid the acclamations of the great, and in frequent intercourse with Pitt, Addington, Dundas (afterwards Lord Melville), and Lord Grenville, who hailed him as their master in political science, he may have sometimes looked back with regret to the quiet days and solitary walks by the sea-shore at Kirkcaldy. It is remarkable that while Pitt, extreme tory as he was thought, embraced cordially the doctrines of Smith, among which the principle and practice of free trade are zealously contended for, Fox, with all his whiggism and liberality, refused to give them even a hearing.
Through the influence of the duke of Buccleuch, Smith was appointed a commissioner of customs for Scotland in 1778. The emoluments being considerable, he offered to resign his annuity, but his grace would not listen to the proposal. The duties of the new office required that he should reside in Edinburgh, and here accordingly he spent the remainder of his days. It is much to be lamented that his time and attention should have been wasted on an employment for which thousands of inferior men were as well fitted as he. Could he have been replaced in a university chair, the occupation would have been both more congenial with his own tastes and more beneficial to mankind. The business of his life would then have been to give the requisite finish to those parts of his system, embracing natural theology and general jurisprudence, which, on account of their incompleteness, he deemed it due to his own reputation to destroy. In 1787 Smith was elected lord-rector of his old alma mater, the university of Glasgow. The terms in which he acknowledges the honour are memorable, both on account of his laudatory mention of Hutcheson, and of the regret with which he looks back to his academical occupations. Smith died on the 17th July, 1790, aged sixty-seven.
The works of Smith deserve a much ampler notice than they can here obtain. The "Theory of Moral Sentiments," whatever its defects may be, has the merit of resting on a very simple and comprehensive principle. It embraces two main questions:—First, on what ground do we form an estimate of the actions and affections of other men ? and secondly, on what ground do we form an estimate of our own conduct and affections? In both cases, answers Smith, the ground or principle of our judgment is sympathy. When we understand the circumstances in which a person is placed (for it is essential that we should be informed as to these), and when we sympathize with the conduct and sentiments arising out of these circumstances—in that case the person referred to obtains our moral approval. When we do not so sympathize with him, our approbation is withheld; or it may be, that we pronounce upon him a sentence of moral censure. To perceive and feel that a man's affections, actions, and situation are in harmony with each other, is to sympathize with that man; and to sympathize with him is to approve of him. While, conversely, to feel that his affections, actions, and situation are not in harmony with each other; that the affections and actions are disproportioned to the occasion—that his grief, for example, is greater than its cause justifies—to be sensible of this, is not to sympathize with him; and this want of sympathy, which may frequently rise to a degree of positive antipathy, is equivalent to a condemnatory judgment. Such, according to Smith, is the process by which our moral judgments of other people are formed. Then, in regard to our estimate of ourselves, the principle of sympathy is still the ground of our decision. By means of this principle we are able to take up a position apart, as it were, from ourselves, and to look at our own affections and actions with the eyes of other people; and according as we are sensible that we are objects of praise or of blame to them, do we become objects of praise or of blame to ourselves. We enter into the feelings of others towards us, and according as we perceive or believe these feelings to be fraught with sympathy or laden with antipathy, do we view ourselves with complacency or the reverse. Thus, in the power of sympathy, conscience has its origin. Such, stated very briefly, is Smith's theory of the process through which we form a moral estimate of ourselves. In regard to the other great question of moral philosophy—What is virtue? Smith's answer may be gathered from what has been already said. Virtue consists in propriety. And by propriety, he means a harmony between the circumstances in which a man is placed, the affection which he harbours, and the actions which he performs in these circumstances. For instance, when a man is slightly injured, he should be only slightly angry, and should only slightly retaliate. In such a case the anger would be suitable to the occasion, and the act would be suitable to the anger; it would be an instance of propriety of conduct, and the agent might be said to have acted virtuously, albeit in a very small matter. More important illustrations might be given, and will readily suggest themselves. One word of criticism may be added. This theory of morality, although defective, has scarcely met with the acceptance to which it seems entitled. The literary merits of the work, embellished as it is by the most apposite illustrations drawn from life, from history, and from the deepest recesses of the human heart, have been universally acknowledged; but its scientific claims, and the value of the principle on which it rests, have had but scant justice meted out to them. Perhaps the following considerations will exhibit the system in a fairer point of view. It will be admitted on all hands that the selfish principle is that which originally leads us to form an erroneous estimate both of ourselves and others. It exaggerates the importance of each man's own interests, and underrates in a corresponding degree those of his neighbour. This estimate, therefore, requires to be corrected; and it can be corrected only by a principle the opposite of selfishness. But sympathy is the opposite of selfishness; and this, therefore, is the principle which corrects our mistaken judgments, and changes them from false into true. Selfishness is partial and self-seeking; sympathy is impartial, and embraces others in its regard. From the selfish point of view we see ourselves in magnified proportions, while other people occupy but a small space on our moral retina: from the sympathetic point of view we see ourselves on a diminished scale, while the magnitude of our neighbours has increased. If we view sympathy (as we fairly may) as a principle of impartiality, by which the judgments of our original selfishness are suspended or put right, we cannot but attach a high scientific value to the system of Dr. Smith. We may hold his theory to be true to this extent, that sympathy, if it be not the source and origin of our moral sentiments, is at any rate their purifier and corrector.
The "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" is not written with the fervent eloquence which distinguishes so many pages of the "Theory of Moral Sentiments;" yet the style of this work is in admirable harmony with the topics of which it treats. It is at once popular and precise; homely, yet dignified; idiomatic, graphic, and unconventional, yet everywhere a model of propriety and good taste. The "Wealth of Nations," although not directly controversial, has the merit of correcting many serious errors, as well as of establishing many important truths in economical science. Before Smith's time two theories of wealth had prevailed, both of which exercised a pernicious influence on the nations of the world. These were the "mercantile system," as it is called; and the system of the French economists, of whom Quesnay was the chief. The first of these systems had its origin in the popular but mistaken notion, that money was the true wealth of nations. It was generally thought that a people was rich and prosperous in proportion to the abundance in which they possessed the precious metals, gold and silver—an error which seems to have originated partly in the conception that a nation whose coffers were well filled with coins was best fitted to wage war with energy and success, and partly in our proneness to mistake the sign for the thing signified. But whatever was the source of the error, it prevailed not only among the vulgar, but formed the foundation-stone of the political science generally in vogue previous to the time of Smith. Its consequences were very hurtful. It led the governments of different nations to hamper commerce with unwise restrictions; and thus, by repressing industry, to cut off their subjects from the enjoyment of many comforts and luxuries. The fate of Spain, in particular, may be pointed to in illustration of the foolish policy which supposes that the national wealth consists of gold and silver, rather than of the various commodities which gold and silver help to circulate, but which labour alone can produce. When the discovery of America poured into the coffers of that country an abundant supply of the precious metals—mistaking for wealth itself the mere instrument by which wealth is exchanged, abandoning her industrial pursuits, and realizing to her bitter cost the fable of King Midas, who prayed that whatever he touched might be turned into gold—Spain, hitherto one of the most powerful nations in the world, became gradually impoverished in the midst of her accumulated treasures. According to the policy inculcated by the mercantile system, a nation ought to deal as much as possible in exports, and as little as possible in imports, for then the balance would require to he paid in gold and silver; as if exports could be paid for ultimately by anything except imports; and as if the precious metals, and not the good things which these metals purchase, were the sources of the prosperity of a people! Although this system had begun to lose ground before Smith's time, he was the first who distinctly and effectually subverted it, by showing that the true policy of nations was to put forth industry, and not to accumulate coins; and that an industrious people could at all times command as much gold and silver as they required. The other theory which was destined to fall before the new doctrines of Smith was the "agricultural system" propounded by Quesnay and the French economists. According to this system, the only labour which is truly productive is that which is bestowed on the cultivation of the land. All other industry—that of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, however useful—is barren and unproductive. The ground on which this strange doctrine rests is twofold:—First, the earth is the quarter from which all the materials in use among mankind are produced, therefore the cultivation of the earth is the only productive species of industry; and secondly, agricultural labour not only replaces with a profit the capital employed in carrying it on, but yields moreover a "nett produce" or surplus, which is rent, and which belongs to the proprietor of the land; whereas manufacturing labour merely replaces the capital expended, together with its ordinary profits, but without any nett produce or surplus analogous to rent. This twofold ground involves a twofold mistake, and the answer to it is:—First, although all the materials which man uses come originally from the earth, they are, in their rude and unprepared state, for the most part quite useless. The labour, therefore, which renders them subservient to human purposes adds greatly to their value, and is as well entitled to be called "productive" as the other species of labour is which elicits them from the bosom of the earth. If agricultural industry is productive of materials, manufacturing industry is certainly productive of utilities; and the one form of production is no less important than the other. But secondly, it is not the fact that agricultural labour has in itself any advantage over manufacturing labour in the way of realizing a nett surplus which is the proprietor's rent. It is no doubt true that when the price of farm produce rises under the demands of an increasing population, and inferior soils are taken (as they now must be) into cultivation, a rent arises on the better soils; but it does so, not because the labour is agricultural, but because the land is of different degrees of fertility. Rent is simply the difference between the produce of the better soils in comparison with the produce of the worst, the farming expenses being the same. Labour, therefore, as applied to the land, has no peculiar title to be called "productive" on account of the nett surplus which it realizes; for this surplus or rent is owing neither to the labour nor to the land (considered as land), but to the circumstance that some lands are more fertile than others, or better situated in regard to their command of a market. The true theory of rent, by which alone the delusions of the French economists are dispelled, was not known to Adam Smith; and therefore, though he impugned their doctrines, he failed to indicate exactly where their error lay. The theory was first broached by Dr. James Anderson in 1777. It seems to have been understood by David Hume, who, in a letter to Smith, controverts rightly the opinion of the great economist on the subject of rent. "I cannot think," says Hume, "that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of produce." It was reserved, however, for Ricardo to show the signal importance of the theory of rent in its bearings on the whole doctrines of political economy. The theory has since been fully expounded by Macculloch, J. S. Mill, and in particular by De Quincy in his Logic of Political Economy. The only other writings which Smith left behind him were some "Essays on Philosophical Subjects." These, which are for the most part fragmentary, were published in a quarto volume, to which is prefixed an account of the life and writings of the author, by Dugald Stewart. Lord Brougham, in his Lives of Men of Letters and Science, has published an able memoir of Adam Smith, accompanied by an elaborate analysis of his work on the wealth of nations.—J. F. F.