When Adam Smith arrived in Toulouse in March 1764, at the age of 40, he was not yet the âfather of political economyâ as he is now celebrated, following the publication in 1776 of his most famous work The Wealth of Nations (WN ). Yet he was already a recognized thinker of the Europe of the Enlightenment in which his native Scotland played a leading role. In 1759 he published his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS ), which was a great success and drew attention to him, so that students from Switzerland as well as from Russia or Scandinavia benefited from his teachings at Glasgow University.
This fame was noticed by Charles Townshend (1725â1767), a British politician later to be Chancellor of the Exchequer from August 1766 to his death in September 1767. Townshend was at the time in full ascension both politically and in terms of personal success after his marriage to Caroline Campbell, eldest daughter of the second Duke of Argyll and widow of Francis, Lord Dalkeith, the eldest son of the second Duke of Buccleuch (1695â1751). Lady Dalkeith had six children. The death of her eldest son in 1749 had made her second son, Henry (1746â1812), at the age of 4, heir to the title of Duke of Buccleuch after the death of his grandfather in 1751. At the beginning of the 1760s, it was time to complete the education of the young aristocrat, and Charles Townshend envisaged a Grand Tour on the continent and in particular in France, Great Britainâs principal rival power.
The Grand Tour, from the middle of the eighteenth century until the appearance of the railways, was considered a rite of passage to adulthood for the young people of the upper classes in Britain (as well as in Germany) in order to complete their training in the humanities and the courtly arts such as riding, fencing, music, and dance, but also to allow them to compare the political systems of Great Britain with those of the continental States. It also allowed them to forge ties with individuals of the same social background, promised similar diplomatic, military, political, or commercial future in other countries. The considerable means available to the families of young âtouristsâ enabled them to be provided with guides with combined duties of tutor, guardian, and chaperone. Naturally, in the case of the Duke of Buccleuch, who was of royal blood, the choice of the guide was much deliberated upon and was the subject of comments, not all of which were positive. Yet this journey would result in lasting ties between Smith and his student, which testified that both had benefited from the experience.
For Smith, whatever he might have said about the satisfaction he derived from his duties as a university professor, the Grand Tour was an opportunity to meet the French elite and particularly in Paris, the physiocrats, the first âeconomistsâ. It gave him lasting financial stability and also an opportunity to establish close relations with Charles Townshend. Smith would use this visit to deepen his knowledge of economic and financial mechanisms, skills he would put at Townshendâs service and which could have made him a valued adviser if Townshendâs untimely death had not sent him back to his writing.
1.1 Adam Smithâs Education
Adam Smith was born in June 1723 in the small town of Kirkcaldy, on the banks of the Forth estuary, a huge fjord that extends more than 30 kilometres inland, so that Scotland is shaped as an isthmus with the large cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh at either end. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the city was home to a large fleet that traded mainly with Europe and northern Scotland. But the local economy had suffered from the Anglo-Dutch wars and, after the Act of Union, from greater competition on foreign trade. According to the 1755 census made by Webster, the population of the parish had declined to 2296, despite the development of textile industries based around flax.
1.1.1 His Childhood World
In June 1723, when Adam Smith was born, his father had already been dead for five months. Born in 1679 in the port and university town of Aberdeen, 130 kilometres north of Kirkcaldy, in 1705 he became secretary to the new Secretary of State, Hugh Campbell, third Earl of Loudoun. The latter joined the Unionist side in the battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715, during the second great Jacobite rebellion. At the end of this indecisive battle, it is possible that he intervened in favour of the Jacobite prisoners. In 1707, Adam Smith Sr. became clerk to the Court Martial of Scotland, created to bring discipline to the Unionist troops through sanctions up to and including the death penalty. Smith was to refer to his fatherâs military experience in a letter to his editor in 1760 while the TMS contains a reflection on capital punishment (TMS II. ii.3.11). In 1714 he became the customs controller at Kirkcaldy, a post which in 1723 gave him a substantial annual income of 300 pounds sterling. Curiously his son was to occupy the same positions at the end of his life.
In 1710, Adam Smithâs father married Lilias Drummond, whose father, a prominent and wealthy politician, had represented Scotland during the negotiations in preparation of the Act of Union. The couple had given birth to a sickly son, Hugh, who was to die in 1749, and Adam would inherit from him. In 1720, Adam Smithâs father was to remarry Margaret Douglas, again an advantageous and successful marriage. Margaret was 25 years old, and the granddaughter of Sir William Douglas of Kirkness, heir to the important family of the Earls of Morton. Margaret Smith was part of the local aristocracy in Fife County.
Adam Smith held on to documents from his father that he kept during his long years at the University of Glasgow. Amongst them is his story of a short stay in Bordeaux at the age of 19. As Adam Smith Sr. owned books written in the French language, he had obviously a certain interest in the French culture.
The childhood of the little orphan was on the whole peaceful, troubled by an incident, either real, or imagined as part of family lore. At the age of three or four, while at his maternal uncleâs home in Strathendry (ten kilometres from Kirkcaldy), Adam Smith was reportedly abducted for a few hours by tinkers or gypsies, of which there was quite a large nomadic population in southern Scotland, before being recovered by his uncle. Since the same anecdote appears in the childhood of Charles Townshend, the Dukeâs father-in-law, it is undoubtedly representative of the prejudices regarding gypsies at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Adam Smith attended Kirkcaldy School from 1731 to 1737. He had the good fortune of benefiting from the teachings of David Miller, a renowned school teacher whose teachings were based on classical authors. Adam Smith mastered them well enough to be exempted from a preparatory year when he arrived at the University of Glasgow. Smith would pay tribute to David Miller and this period of his life in Book V of the WN :
The public can facilitate this acquisition by establishing in every parish or district a little school, where children may be taught for a reward so moderate that even a common labourer may afford it; the master being partly, but not wholly, paid by the public, because, if he was wholly, or even principally, paid by it, he would soon learn to neglect his business. In Scotland, the establishment of such parish schools has taught almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion of them to write and account. (WN , p. 785)
1.1.1.1 Smith, a Student in Glasgow
In 1738, at the age of 14, which was unexceptional in the eighteenth century, Smith entered the University of Glasgow. The choice of Glasgow may surprise since the University of Edinburgh was much more famous, and also geographically much closer to Kirkcaldy, but Smith did not regret this choice, and on November 16, 1787, when he had just been elected Rector of the university, he wrote in his letter of acceptance:
No man can owe greater obligations to a Society than I do to the University of Glasgow. They educated me, they sent me to Oxford, soon after my return to Scotland they elected me one of their own members, and afterwards preferred me to another office, to which the abilities and Virtues of the never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson had given a superior degree of illustration. The period of thirteen years which I spent as a member of that society I remember as by far the most useful, and, therefore, as by far the happiest and most honourable period of my life; and now, after three and twenty years absence, to be remembered in so very agreeable manner by my old friends and Protectors gives me a heartfelt joy which I cannot easily express to you. (Letter Nr. 274)
Glasgow was a modest city compared to the large European cities (31,700 inhabitants in 1755). But Glasgow underwent an important transformation thanks to a growing trade, particularly in tobacco with the American colonies. It was while he was an instrument repairman at the University of Glasgow that James Watt (1736â1819) perfected the steam engine, making it a symbol of the industrial revolution. The University of Glasgow was only a small building on the high street, and Andrew Skinner counted only twelve professors in charge of teaching when Smith arrived there (Skinner 1982, pp. 17â18). Little is known about the material conditions in which Smith found himself during his three years of study at Glasgow, from 1737 to 1740; probably he boarded with a university professor as was common at the time. A few years later, when he himself became a professor, he engaged in this practice, which established a close relationship between students and professors, as is evident from the letters he exchanged with Lord Shelburne, an Irish aristocrat. On July 23, 1759, Smith detailed there, next to the registration fees, his costs for laundry and other minor expenses, traditional in the case of both just accommodation and full board.
A decisive encounter for Smith quickly occurred when he met Francis Hutcheson (1694â1746), one of the figures of the âScottish Enlightenmentâ (Abitboul 2003, pp. 5â15). In December 1729 he had been chosen to fill the vacant chair of philosophy at the University of Glasgow by a majority vote, proof that the University was divided between conservatives and supporters of new ideas. Hutcheson had been prosecuted in 1728 by religious authorities:
for teaching to his students in contravention to Westminster confession the following two erroneous and dangerous doctrines, first that the standard of moral goodness was the promotion of the happiness of others, and second that we could have knowledge of good and evil, without and before knowledge of God. (W.R. Scott 1900, p. 84)
Hutchesonâs students mobilized and wrote a piece defending their master, who mocked this âgrotesque buffoonery concerning his heresyâ. He counter-attacked during the subsequent years to drive out the supporters of traditional Presbyterianism in favour of the âNew Lightâ (ibidem., p. 85 et seq.). Smith may have participated in these struggles while he was a student. Hutcheson also broke with tradition by teaching in English instead of Latin, and walking around the classroom instead of standing still at the lectern. He did not confine hi...