Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/9

Smith very nearly taken. The statement was referred to in the House of Commons on 23 May, in the debate on the navy estimates, and Mr. Cobden remarked that Smith was himself a pirate and deserved to be punished as such. The speech was reported in the ‘Times’ of the 24th, and on the 25th a Mr. E. Garbett wrote, in Smith's name, to Cobden, requesting an interview. This Cobden refused, and an angry correspondence followed (Times, 1 June), which brought up a Captain Cook, who wrote to say that Smith was certainly a pirate; that he himself had been captured and ill-treated by him (ib. 20 June). On this Smith brought an action for libel against Cook, who pleaded justification, and the case virtually resolved itself into trying Smith over again for acts of piracy said to have been committed twenty-eight years before, for which he had already been tried and acquitted. But by this time Smith's witnesses were either dead or lost sight of; there was no official report of the former trial, and Smith's ‘Narrative’ was clearly padded with a romantic love adventure, and necessarily open to suspicion. Eventually, however, a verdict was given in Smith's favour, but with damages of only 10l. (ib. 10 and 13 Dec.) He was at this time living in Camden Town, where he still was in 1852, after which his name disappears from the ‘London Directory.’

[Times, 20 Dec. 1823; Morning Chronicle, 20 Dec. 1823.] 

SMITH, ADAM (1723–1790), political economist, born at Kirkcaldy on 5 June 1723, was the only child of Adam Smith, writer to the signet, by Margaret, daughter of John Douglas of Strathendry, Fifeshire. The father, a native of Aberdeen, had been private secretary to Hugh Campbell, third earl of Loudoun [q. v.], who in 1713 gave him the comptrollership of customs at Kirkcaldy. The salary was 40l. a year, probably much increased by fees. The elder Smith died in April 1723 (he has been confused with a cousin, also named Adam Smith, who was living in 1740; see, Adam Smith, p. 3). The younger Adam Smith was brought up by his mother, and the bond between them came to be exceptionally close. When about three years old he was carried off by gipsies, but speedily recovered (, Works, x. 6). He was a delicate child, and already inclined to the fits of absence of mind which were a lifelong characteristic. He was sent to the burgh school of Kirkcaldy, and was beginning Latin by 1733, as appears from the date in a copy of Eutropius with his name. Among his school-fellows was John Oswald (afterwards bishop of Raphoe), brother of James Oswald [q. v.] The brothers Adam, the architects, who lived in Kirkcaldy, were also friends of his boyhood. Smith was sent to Glasgow for the session of 1737–8, and studied there for four sessions. He learnt some Greek under Alexander Dunlop [q. v.], and acquired taste for mathematics under Robert Simson [q. v.], to whom he refers with great respect (Moral Sentiments, pt. iii. chap. 2). Matthew, father of Dugald Stewart, whom he couples with Simson as a first-rate mathematician, was a fellow-student and lifelong friend. The most important influence, however, was that of Francis Hutcheson, whose teaching both on moral and economic questions had considerable affinity to the later doctrines of his pupil. A letter written by David Hume to Hutcheson (4 March 1740) shows that a ‘Mr. Smith’ had made an abstract of the ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ by which Hume was so well pleased as to send a copy of his book through Hutcheson to the compiler. Whether ‘Mr. Smith’ was Adam Smith is, however, uncertain. Smith obtained a Snell exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1740. The exhibitions were then worth 40l. a year. According to the founder's will, the exhibitioners were to take orders in the episcopal church in Scotland. The regulation was not enforced after the union. According to Stewart, however, Smith was intended to take orders, but did not find the ‘ecclesiastical profession suitable to his taste.’ Smith went to Oxford on horseback in June 1740, and stayed there without interruption till 1746. His name does not appear in the list of graduates, but Thorold Rogers infers from the title of ‘dominus’ given to him in the buttery books that he took the B.A. degree in 1744. Smith's famous remarks upon the English universities in the ‘Wealth of Nations’ imply that he owed little to the official system of tuition. He read, however, industriously for himself; he had access to the college library, obtained a wide and accurate knowledge of Greek as well as of English literature, and employed himself in translations from the French with a view to the improvement of his style. M'Culloch reports ‘on the best authority’ that he was once found reading Hume's ‘Treatise,’ and severely reprimanded. Letters from Smith to his mother, quoted by Brougham, show that he had suffered from ‘an inveterate scurvy and shaking of the hand,’ and had, as he thought, cured himself by tar-water. He also speaks of a ‘violent fit of laziness’ which had confined him to his elbow-chair