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SMI, 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