Adam Smith

Adam Smith FRSA (16 June [O.S. 5 June] 1723[4] – 17 July

Adam Smith
1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well
FRSA
as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key
figure during the Scottish Enlightenment,[5] also known as ''The
Father of Economics''[6] or ''The Father of Capitalism''.[7] Smith
wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of
Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern
work of economics. In his work, Adam Smith introduced his
theory of absolute advantage.[8]

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and

at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students
to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell.
After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public
lectures at the University of Edinburgh,[9] leading him to
Born 16 June [O.S. 5
collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment.
June] 1723
Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, teaching moral
Kirkcaldy, Fife,
philosophy and during this time, wrote and published The Theory
Scotland
of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position
that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other Died 17 July 1790
intellectual leaders of his day. (aged 67)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic Nationality Scottish
theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern
Alma mater University of
academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he
Glasgow
developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon
Balliol College,
how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic
Oxford
prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his
general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers Notable work The Wealth of
such as Horace Walpole.[10] Nations
The Theory of Moral
Sentiments

Contents Region Western philosophy

School Classical liberalism
Biography
Early life Main Political philosophy,
interests ethics, economics
Formal education
Teaching career Notable Classical
ideas economics, modern
Tutoring and travels
 Later years free market,
Death absolute advantage,
division of labour,
Personality and beliefs
the "invisible hand",
Character
economic liberalism
Religious views
Influences
Published works
The Theory of Moral Sentiments Aristotle · Cantillon[1] · Hume ·
Hutcheson · Mandeville · Quesnay ·
The Wealth of Nations
Locke · Burke
Other works
Influenced
Legacy
In economics and moral philosophy Bastiat · Friedman · Hayek · Mises ·
In British Imperial debates Rothbard · Rand · Krugman ·
Portraits, monuments, and banknotes Sowell · Hegel · Hodgskin · Keynes ·
Malthus · Marx · Mill · Proudhon[2] ·
Residence
Ricardo · Saint-Simon · Say ·
As a symbol of free-market economics
Sismondi · Chomsky · George ·
Criticism
Comte · Nash · Sieyès[3]
See also
Signature
References
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links

Biography

Early life
Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland. His father, also Adam Smith, was a
Scottish Writer to the Signet (senior solicitor), advocate and prosecutor (judge advocate) and also served
as comptroller of the customs in Kirkcaldy.[11] Smith's mother was born Margaret Douglas, daughter of
the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry, also in Fife; she married Smith's father in 1720. Two months
before Smith was born, his father died, leaving his mother a widow.[12] The date of Smith's baptism into
the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723[13] and this has often been treated as if it were also
his date of birth,[11] which is unknown.

Although few events in Smith's early childhood are known, the Scottish journalist John Rae, Smith's
biographer, recorded that Smith was abducted by Romas at the age of three and released when others
went to rescue him.[a] Smith was close to his mother, who probably encouraged him to pursue his
scholarly ambitions.[15] He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy—characterised by Rae as "one of the
best secondary schools of Scotland at that period"[14]—from 1729 to 1737, he learned Latin,
mathematics, history, and writing.[15]
Formal education
Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was 14 and studied moral philosophy under Francis
Hutcheson.[15] Here, Smith developed his passion for liberty, reason, and free speech. In 1740, Smith
was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under
the Snell Exhibition.[16]

Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, which he found
intellectually stifling.[17] In Book V, Chapter II of The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: "In the University
of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even
the pretence of teaching." Smith is also reported to have complained to friends that Oxford officials once
discovered him reading a copy of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and they subsequently
confiscated his book and punished him severely for reading it.[14][18][19] According to William Robert
Scott, "The Oxford of [Smith's] time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework."[20]
Nevertheless, Smith took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach himself several subjects by reading
many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library.[21] When Smith was not studying on his
own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, according to his letters.[22] Near the end of his time there,
Smith began suffering from shaking fits, probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown.[23] He left
Oxford University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.[23][24]

In Book V of The Wealth of Nations, Smith comments on the low quality of instruction and the meager
intellectual activity at English universities, when compared to their Scottish counterparts. He attributes
this both to the rich endowments of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which made the income of
professors independent of their ability to attract students, and to the fact that distinguished men of letters
could make an even more comfortable living as ministers of the Church of England.[19]

Smith's discontent at Oxford might be in part due to the absence of his beloved teacher in Glasgow,
Francis Hutcheson, who was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of
Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents with
the fervor and earnestness of his orations (which he sometimes opened to the public). His lectures
endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy, but also to make his students embody that philosophy in
their lives, appropriately acquiring the epithet, the preacher of philosophy. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was
not a system builder; rather, his magnetic personality and method of lecturing so influenced his students
and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson"—a
title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume
and influential mentor Francis Hutcheson.[25]

Teaching career
Smith began delivering public lectures in 1748 at the University of Edinburgh,[26] sponsored by the
Philosophical Society of Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames.[27] His lecture topics included
rhetoric and belles-lettres,[28] and later the subject of "the progress of opulence". On this latter topic, he
first expounded his economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty". While
Smith was not adept at public speaking, his lectures met with success.[29]

In 1750, Smith met the philosopher David Hume, who was his senior by more than a decade. In their
writings covering history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion, Smith and Hume shared closer
intellectual and personal bonds than with other important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.[30]
In 1751, Smith earned a professorship at Glasgow University teaching logic courses, and in 1752, he was
elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, having been introduced to the society by
Lord Kames. When the head of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow died the next year, Smith took over the
position.[29] He worked as an academic for the next 13 years, which he characterised as "by far the most
useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period [of his life]".[31]

Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This
work was concerned with how human morality depends on sympathy between agent and spectator, or the
individual and other members of society. Smith defined "mutual sympathy" as the basis of moral
sentiments. He based his explanation, not on a special "moral sense" as the Third Lord Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson had done, nor on utility as Hume did, but on mutual sympathy, a term best captured in modern
parlance by the 20th-century concept of empathy, the capacity to recognise feelings that are being
experienced by another being.

Following the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith

became so popular that many wealthy students left their schools in other
countries to enroll at Glasgow to learn under Smith.[32] After the
publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith began to give
more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lectures and less to
his theories of morals.[33] For example, Smith lectured that the cause of
increase in national wealth is labour, rather than the nation's quantity of
gold or silver, which is the basis for mercantilism, the economic theory
that dominated Western European economic policies at the time.[34]

In 1762, the University of Glasgow conferred on Smith the title of Doctor

of Laws (LL.D.).[35] At the end of 1763, he obtained an offer from François Quesnay, one of
Charles Townshend—who had been introduced to Smith by David Hume the leaders of the
—to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch. Smith physiocratic school of
resigned from his professorship in 1764 to take the tutoring position. He thought

subsequently attempted to return the fees he had collected from his

students because he had resigned partway through the term, but his
students refused.[36]

Tutoring and travels

Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, during which time he educated Scott on a variety
of subjects, such as etiquette and manners. He was paid £300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300
per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher.[36] Smith first travelled as a tutor to
Toulouse, France, where he stayed for a year and a half. According to his own account, he found
Toulouse to be somewhat boring, having written to Hume that he "had begun to write a book to pass
away the time".[36] After touring the south of France, the group moved to Geneva, where Smith met with
the philosopher Voltaire.[37]

From Geneva, the party moved to Paris. Here, Smith met Benjamin Franklin, and discovered the
Physiocracy school founded by François Quesnay.[38] Physiocrats were opposed to mercantilism, the
dominating economic theory of the time, illustrated in their motto Laissez faire et laissez passer, le
monde va de lui même! (Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself!).
The wealth of France had been virtually depleted by Louis XIV[b] and
Louis XV in ruinous wars,[c] and was further exhausted in aiding the
American insurgents against the British. The excessive consumption of
goods and services deemed to have no economic contribution was
considered a source of unproductive labour, with France's agriculture the
only economic sector maintaining the wealth of the nation. Given that the
English economy of the day yielded an income distribution that stood in
contrast to that which existed in France, Smith concluded that "with all
its imperfections, [the Physiocratic school] is perhaps the nearest
approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of
political economy."[39] The distinction between productive versus David Hume was a friend
unproductive labour—the physiocratic classe steril—was a predominant and contemporary of
issue in the development and understanding of what would become Smith's.
classical economic theory.

Later years
In 1766, Henry Scott's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly
thereafter.[40] Smith returned home that year to Kirkcaldy, and he devoted much of the next decade to
writing his magnum opus.[41] There, he befriended Henry Moyes, a young blind man who showed
precocious aptitude. Smith secured the patronage of David Hume and Thomas Reid in the young man's
education.[42] In May 1773, Smith was elected fellow of the Royal Society of London,[43] and was
elected a member of the Literary Club in 1775. The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and was an
instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.[44]

In 1778, Smith was appointed to a post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his
mother (who died in 1784)[45] in Panmure House in Edinburgh's Canongate.[46] Five years later, as a
member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh when it received its royal charter, he automatically
became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[47] From 1787 to 1789, he
occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.[48]

Death
Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness.
His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.[49] On his deathbed, Smith expressed disappointment
that he had not achieved more.[50]

Smith's literary executors were two friends from the Scottish academic world: the physicist and chemist
Joseph Black and the pioneering geologist James Hutton.[51] Smith left behind many notes and some
unpublished material, but gave instructions to destroy anything that was not fit for publication.[52] He
mentioned an early unpublished History of Astronomy as probably suitable, and it duly appeared in 1795,
along with other material such as Essays on Philosophical Subjects.[51]

Smith's library went by his will to David Douglas, Lord Reston (son of his cousin Colonel Robert
Douglas of Strathendry, Fife), who lived with Smith.[53] It was eventually divided between his two
surviving children, Cecilia Margaret (Mrs. Cunningham) and David Anne (Mrs. Bannerman). On the
death in 1878 of her husband, the Reverend W. B. Cunningham of Prestonpans, Mrs. Cunningham sold
some of the books. The remainder passed to her son, Professor Robert Oliver Cunningham of Queen's
College, Belfast, who presented a part to the library of Queen's College.
After his death, the remaining books were sold. On the death of Mrs.
Bannerman in 1879, her portion of the library went intact to the New
College (of the Free Church) in Edinburgh and the collection was
transferred to the University of Edinburgh Main Library in 1972.

Personality and beliefs

Character
Not much is known about Smith's personal views beyond what can be
deduced from his published articles. His personal papers were destroyed A commemorative plaque
for Smith is located in
after his death at his request.[52] He never married,[55] and seems to have
Smith's home town of
maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after Kirkcaldy.
his return from France and who died six years before him.[56]

Smith was described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as

comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a
smile of "inexpressible benignity".[57] He was known to talk to
himself,[50] a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile
in rapt conversation with invisible companions.[58] He also had
occasional spells of imaginary illness,[50] and he is reported to have had
books and papers placed in tall stacks in his study.[58] According to one
story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and
while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from
which he needed help to escape.[59] He is also said to have put bread and
butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst
James Tassie's enamel
cup of tea he ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly
paste medallion of Smith
went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24 km) provided the model for many
outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to engravings and portraits that
reality.[58][59] remain today.[54]

James Boswell, who was a student of Smith's at Glasgow University, and

later knew him at the Literary Club, says that Smith thought that speaking about his ideas in conversation
might reduce the sale of his books, so his conversation was unimpressive. According to Boswell, he once
told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "he made it a rule when in company never to talk of what he
understood".[60]

Smith has been alternatively described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding
lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment" and one whose "countenance was manly and
agreeable".[19][61] Smith is said to have acknowledged his looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in
nothing but my books."[19] Smith rarely sat for portraits,[62] so almost all depictions of him created
during his lifetime were drawn from memory. The best-known portraits of Smith are the profile by James
Tassie and two etchings by John Kay.[63] The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th-century
reprints of The Wealth of Nations were based largely on Tassie's medallion.[64]

Religious views
Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Smith's
religious views. Smith's father had shown a strong interest in Christianity
and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland.[65] The
fact that Adam Smith received the Snell Exhibition suggests that he may
have gone to Oxford with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church
of England.[66]

Anglo-American economist Ronald Coase has challenged the view that

Smith was a deist, based on the fact that Smith's writings never explicitly
invoke God as an explanation of the harmonies of the natural or the
human worlds.[67] According to Coase, though Smith does sometimes
refer to the "Great Architect of the Universe", later scholars such as
Jacob Viner have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam
Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God",[68] a belief for Portrait of Smith by John
which Coase finds little evidence in passages such as the one in the Kay, 1790
Wealth of Nations in which Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind
about the "great phenomena of nature", such as "the generation, the life,
growth, and dissolution of plants and animals", has led men to "enquire into their causes", and that
"superstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the
immediate agency of the gods. Philosophy afterwards endeavoured to account for them, from more
familiar causes, or from such as mankind were better acquainted with than the agency of the gods".[68]

Some other authors argue that Smith's social and economic philosophy is inherently theological and that
his entire model of social order is logically dependent on the notion of God's action in nature.[69]

Smith was also a close friend of David Hume, who was commonly characterised in his own time as an
atheist.[70] The publication in 1777 of Smith's letter to William Strahan, in which he described Hume's
courage in the face of death in spite of his irreligiosity, attracted considerable controversy.[71]

Published works

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

In 1759, Smith published his first work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, sold by co-publishers Andrew
Millar of London and Alexander Kincaid of Edinburgh.[72] Smith continued making extensive revisions
to the book until his death.[d] Although The Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as Smith's most
influential work, Smith himself is believed to have considered The Theory of Moral Sentiments to be a
superior work.[74]

In the work, Smith critically examines the moral thinking of his time, and suggests that conscience arises
from dynamic and interactive social relationships through which people seek "mutual sympathy of
sentiments."[75] His goal in writing the work was to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral
judgement, given that people begin life with no moral sentiments at all. Smith proposes a theory of
sympathy, in which the act of observing others and seeing the judgements they form of both others and
oneself makes people aware of themselves and how others perceive their behaviour. The feedback we
receive from perceiving (or imagining) others' judgment creates an incentive to achieve "mutual
sympathy of sentiments" with them and leads people to develop habits, and then principles, of behaviour,
which come to constitute one's conscience.[76]
Some scholars have perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of
Nations; the former emphasises sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-
interest.[77] In recent years, however, some scholars[78][79][80] of Smith's work have argued that no
contradiction exists. They claim that in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith develops a theory of
psychology in which individuals seek the approval of the "impartial spectator" as a result of a natural
desire to have outside observers sympathise with their sentiments. Rather than viewing The Theory of
Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations as presenting incompatible views of human nature, some
Smith scholars regard the works as emphasising different aspects of human nature that vary depending on
the situation. Otteson argues that both books are Newtonian in their methodology and deploy a similar
"market model" for explaining the creation and development of large-scale human social orders,
including morality, economics, as well as language.[81] Ekelund and Hebert offer a differing view,
observing that self-interest is present in both works and that "in the former, sympathy is the moral faculty
that holds self-interest in check, whereas in the latter, competition is the economic faculty that restrains
self-interest."[82]

The Wealth of Nations

Disagreement exists between classical and neoclassical economists about the central message of Smith's
most influential work: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).
Neoclassical economists emphasise Smith's invisible hand,[83] a concept mentioned in the middle of his
work – Book IV, Chapter II – and classical economists believe that Smith stated his programme for
promoting the "wealth of nations" in the first sentences, which attributes the growth of wealth and
prosperity to the division of labour.

Smith used the term "the invisible hand" in "History of Astronomy"[84] referring to "the invisible hand of
Jupiter", and once in each of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments[85] (1759) and The Wealth of
Nations[86] (1776). This last statement about "an invisible hand" has been interpreted in numerous ways.

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much

as he can both to employ his capital in the support of
domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that
its produce may be of the greatest value; every
individual necessarily labours to render the annual
revenue of the society as great as he can. He
generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is
promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic Later building on the site where
to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations
security; and by directing that industry in such a
manner as its produce may be of the greatest value,
he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in
many other cases, led by an invisible hand to
promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was
no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he
frequently promotes that of the society more
effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
I have never known much good done by those who
 affected to trade for the public good. It is an
affectation, indeed, not very common among
merchants, and very few words need be employed in
dissuading them from it.

Those who regard that statement as Smith's central message also quote frequently Smith's dictum:[87]

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their
humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages.

However, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments he had a more sceptical approach to self-interest as driver
of behaviour:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature,
which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him,
though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Smith's statement about the benefits of "an invisible hand" may be meant
to answer Mandeville's contention that "Private Vices ... may be turned
into Public Benefits".[88] It shows Smith's belief that when an individual
pursues his self-interest under conditions of justice, he unintentionally
promotes the good of society. Self-interested competition in the free
market, he argued, would tend to benefit society as a whole by keeping
prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods
and services. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of
their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise
prices".[89] Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of
business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the The first page of The Wealth
highest price "which can be squeezed out of the buyers".[90] Smith also of Nations, 1776 London
warned that a business-dominated political system would allow a edition
conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former
scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith states that the
interest of manufacturers and merchants "in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in
some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or
regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great
precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with
the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention."[91] Thus Smith's chief worry seems to be
when business is given special protections or privileges from government; by contrast, in the absence of
such special political favours, he believed that business activities were generally beneficial to the whole
society:

It is the great multiplication of the production of all the different arts, in consequence of the
division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence
which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity
 of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other
workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of
his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great
quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they
accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses
itself through all the different ranks of society. (The Wealth of Nations, I.i.10)

The neoclassical interest in Smith's statement about "an invisible hand" originates in the possibility of
seeing it as a precursor of neoclassical economics and its concept of general equilibrium – Samuelson's
"Economics" refers six times to Smith's "invisible hand". To emphasise this connection, Samuelson[92]
quotes Smith's "invisible hand" statement substituting "general interest" for "public interest".
Samuelson[93] concludes: "Smith was unable to prove the essence of his invisible-hand doctrine. Indeed,
until the 1940s, no one knew how to prove, even to state properly, the kernel of truth in this proposition
about perfectly competitive market."

Very differently, classical economists see in Smith's first sentences his

programme to promote "The Wealth of Nations". Using the
physiocratical concept of the economy as a circular process, to secure
growth the inputs of Period 2 must exceed the inputs of Period 1.
Therefore, those outputs of Period 1 which are not used or usable as
inputs of Period 2 are regarded as unproductive labour, as they do not
contribute to growth. This is what Smith had heard in France from,
among others, François Quesnay, whose ideas Smith was so impressed
by that he might have dedicated The Wealth of Nations to him had he not
died beforehand.[94][95] To this French insight that unproductive labour
should be reduced to use labour more productively, Smith added his own
proposal, that productive labour should be made even more productive by
deepening the division of labour. Smith argued that deepening the
division of labour under competition leads to greater productivity, which
1922 printing of An Inquiry
leads to lower prices and thus an increasing standard of living—"general into the Nature and Causes
plenty" and "universal opulence"—for all. Extended markets and of the Wealth of Nations
increased production lead to the continuous reorganisation of production
and the invention of new ways of producing, which in turn lead to further
increased production, lower prices, and improved standards of living. Smith's central message is,
therefore, that under dynamic competition, a growth machine secures "The Wealth of Nations". Smith's
argument predicted Britain's evolution as the workshop of the world, underselling and outproducing all
its competitors. The opening sentences of the "Wealth of Nations" summarise this policy:

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the
necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes ... . [T]his produce ... bears
a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it ... .[B]ut this
proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances;

first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally
applied; and,
secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in
useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed [emphasis added].[96]
However, Smith added that the "abundance or scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon
the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter."[97]

Other works
Shortly before his death, Smith had nearly all his manuscripts destroyed.
In his last years, he seemed to have been planning two major treatises,
one on the theory and history of law and one on the sciences and arts.
The posthumously published Essays on Philosophical Subjects, a history
of astronomy down to Smith's own era, plus some thoughts on ancient
physics and metaphysics, probably contain parts of what would have
been the latter treatise. Lectures on Jurisprudence were notes taken from
Smith's early lectures, plus an early draft of The Wealth of Nations,
published as part of the 1976 Glasgow Edition of the works and
correspondence of Smith. Other works, including some published
posthumously, include Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms
(1763) (first published in 1896); and Essays on Philosophical Subjects Smith's burial place in
(1795).[98] Canongate Kirkyard

Legacy

In economics and moral philosophy

The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other
works, Smith expounded how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity.
Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by
Tory writers in the moralising tradition of Hogarth and Swift, as a discussion at the University of
Winchester suggests.[99] In 2005, The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books
of all time.[100]

In light of the arguments put forward by Smith and other economic theorists in Britain, academic belief
in mercantilism began to decline in Britain in the late 18th century. During the Industrial Revolution,
Britain embraced free trade and Smith's laissez-faire economics, and via the British Empire, used its
power to spread a broadly liberal economic model around the world, characterised by open markets, and
relatively barrier-free domestic and international trade.[101]

George Stigler attributes to Smith "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics". It is
that, under competition, owners of resources (for example labour, land, and capital) will use them most
profitably, resulting in an equal rate of return in equilibrium for all uses, adjusted for apparent differences
arising from such factors as training, trust, hardship, and unemployment.[102]

Paul Samuelson finds in Smith's pluralist use of supply and demand as applied to wages, rents, and profit
a valid and valuable anticipation of the general equilibrium modelling of Walras a century later. Smith's
allowance for wage increases in the short and intermediate term from capital accumulation and invention
contrasted with Malthus, Ricardo, and Karl Marx in their propounding a rigid subsistence–wage theory
of labour supply.[103]
Joseph Schumpeter criticised Smith for a lack of technical rigour, yet he argued that this enabled Smith's
writings to appeal to wider audiences: "His very limitation made for success. Had he been more brilliant,
he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite
truth, had he used more difficult and ingenious methods, he would not have been understood. But he had
no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved
above the heads of even the dullest readers. He led them on gently, encouraging them by trivialities and
homely observations, making them feel comfortable all along."[104]

Classical economists presented competing theories of those of Smith, termed the "labour theory of
value". Later Marxian economics descending from classical economics also use Smith's labour theories,
in part. The first volume of Karl Marx's major work, Das Kapital, was published in German in 1867. In
it, Marx focused on the labour theory of value and what he considered to be the exploitation of labour by
capital.[105][106] The labour theory of value held that the value of a thing was determined by the labour
that went into its production. This contrasts with the modern contention of neoclassical economics, that
the value of a thing is determined by what one is willing to give up to obtain the thing.

The body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" or

"marginalism" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term
"economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as
Alfred Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science"
and a substitute for the earlier, broader term "political economy"
used by Smith.[107][108] This corresponded to the influence on the
subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[109]
Neoclassical economics systematised supply and demand as joint
determinants of price and quantity in market equilibrium,
The Adam Smith Theatre in Kirkcaldy
affecting both the allocation of output and the distribution of
income. It dispensed with the labour theory of value of which
Smith was most famously identified with in classical economics, in favour of a marginal utility theory of
value on the demand side and a more general theory of costs on the supply side.[110]

The bicentennial anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations was celebrated in 1976,
resulting in increased interest for The Theory of Moral Sentiments and his other works throughout
academia. After 1976, Smith was more likely to be represented as the author of both The Wealth of
Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and thereby as the founder of a moral philosophy and the
science of economics. His homo economicus or "economic man" was also more often represented as a
moral person. Additionally, economists David Levy and Sandra Peart in "The Secret History of the
Dismal Science" point to his opposition to hierarchy and beliefs in inequality, including racial inequality,
and provide additional support for those who point to Smith's opposition to slavery, colonialism, and
empire. They show the caricatures of Smith drawn by the opponents of views on hierarchy and inequality
in this online article. Emphasised also are Smith's statements of the need for high wages for the poor, and
the efforts to keep wages low. In The "Vanity of the Philosopher: From Equality to Hierarchy in
Postclassical Economics", Peart and Levy also cite Smith's view that a common street porter was not
intellectually inferior to a philosopher,[111] and point to the need for greater appreciation of the public
views in discussions of science and other subjects now considered to be technical. They also cite Smith's
opposition to the often expressed view that science is superior to common sense.[112]

Smith also explained the relationship between growth of private property and civil government:
 Men may live together in society with some tolerable degree of security, though there is no
civil magistrate to protect them from the injustice of those passions. But avarice and
ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and
enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in
their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property
there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and
the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich
excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by
envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the
owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps
of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times
surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease,
and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil
magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive
property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there
is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days' labour, civil
government is not so necessary. Civil government supposes a certain subordination. But as
the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable
property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up
with the growth of that valuable property. (...) Men of inferior wealth combine to defend
those of superior wealth in the possession of their property, in order that men of superior
wealth may combine to defend them in the possession of theirs. All the inferior shepherds
and herdsmen feel that the security of their own herds and flocks depends upon the security
of those of the great shepherd or herdsman; that the maintenance of their lesser authority
depends upon that of his greater authority, and that upon their subordination to him depends
his power of keeping their inferiors in subordination to them. They constitute a sort of little
nobility, who feel themselves interested to defend the property and to support the authority
of their own little sovereign in order that he may be able to defend their property and to
support their authority. Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property,
is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some
property against those who have none at all. (Source: The Wealth of Nations, Book 5,
Chapter 1, Part 2)

In British Imperial debates

Smith's chapter on colonies, in turn, would help shape British imperial debates from the mid-19th century
onward. The Wealth of Nations would become an ambiguous text regarding the imperial question. In his
chapter on colonies, Smith pondered how to solve the crisis developing across the Atlantic among the
empire's 13 American colonies. He offered two different proposals for easing tensions. The first proposal
called for giving the colonies their independence, and by thus parting on a friendly basis, Britain would
be able to develop and maintain a free-trade relationship with them, and possibly even an informal
military alliance. Smith's second proposal called for a theoretical imperial federation that would bring the
colonies and the metropole closer together through an imperial parliamentary system and imperial free
trade.[113]
Smith's most prominent disciple in 19th-century Britain, peace advocate Richard Cobden, preferred the
first proposal. Cobden would lead the Anti-Corn Law League in overturning the Corn Laws in 1846,
shifting Britain to a policy of free trade and empire "on the cheap" for decades to come. This hands-off
approach toward the British Empire would become known as Cobdenism or the Manchester School.[114]
By the turn of the century, however, advocates of Smith's second proposal such as Joseph Shield
Nicholson would become ever more vocal in opposing Cobdenism, calling instead for imperial
federation.[115] As Marc-William Palen notes: "On the one hand, Adam Smith’s late nineteenth and early
twentieth-century Cobdenite adherents used his theories to argue for gradual imperial devolution and
empire ‘on the cheap’. On the other, various proponents of imperial federation throughout the British
World sought to use Smith's theories to overturn the predominant Cobdenite hands-off imperial approach
and instead, with a firm grip, bring the empire closer than ever before."[116] Smith's ideas thus played an
important part in subsequent debates over the British Empire.

Portraits, monuments, and banknotes

Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by
two different banks; his portrait has appeared since 1981 on the £50
notes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in Scotland,[117][118] and in
March 2007 Smith's image also appeared on the new series of £20
notes issued by the Bank of England, making him the first Scotsman
to feature on an English banknote.[119]

A large-scale memorial of Smith

by Alexander Stoddart was
unveiled on 4 July 2008 in
Edinburgh. It is a 10-foot (3.0 m)-
tall bronze sculpture and it stands
above the Royal Mile outside
St Giles' Cathedral in Parliament
Square, near the Mercat cross.[120]
20th-century sculptor Jim Sanborn A statue of Smith in Edinburgh's
(best known for the Kryptos High Street, erected through
private donations organised by
sculpture at the United States
the Adam Smith Institute
Central Intelligence Agency) has
created multiple pieces which
feature Smith's work. At Central Connecticut State University is
Circulating Capital, a tall cylinder which features an extract from The
Statue of Smith built in 1867–
Wealth of Nations on the lower half, and on the upper half, some of the
1870 at the old headquarters
of the University of London, 6 same text, but represented in binary code.[121] At the University of
Burlington Gardens North Carolina at Charlotte, outside the Belk College of Business
Administration, is Adam Smith's Spinning Top.[122][123] Another Smith
sculpture is at Cleveland State University.[124] He also appears as the
narrator in the 2013 play The Low Road, centred on a proponent on laissez-faire economics in the late
18th century, but dealing obliquely with the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the recession which
followed; in the premiere production, he was portrayed by Bill Paterson.

A bust of Smith is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.
Residence
Adam Smith resided at Panmure House from 1778 to 1790. This residence has now been purchased by
the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot Watt University and fundraising has begun to restore it.[125][126]
Part of the Northern end of the original building appears to have been demolished in the 19th century to
make way for an iron foundry.

As a symbol of free-market economics

Smith has been celebrated by advocates of free-market policies as the
founder of free-market economics, a view reflected in the naming of
bodies such as the Adam Smith Institute in London, multiple entities
known as the "Adam Smith Society", including an historical Italian
organization,[127] and the U.S.-based Adam Smith Society,[128][129] and
the Australian Adam Smith Club,[130] and in terms such as the Adam
Smith necktie.[131]

Alan Greenspan argues that, while Smith did not coin the term laissez-
faire, "it was left to Adam Smith to identify the more-general set of
principles that brought conceptual clarity to the seeming chaos of market
transactions". Greenspan continues that The Wealth of Nations was "one
of the great achievements in human intellectual history".[132] P.J.
Adam Smith's Spinning Top,
O'Rourke describes Smith as the "founder of free market sculpture by Jim Sanborn at
economics".[133] Cleveland State University

Other writers have argued that Smith's support for laissez-faire (which in
French means leave alone) has been overstated. Herbert Stein wrote that the people who "wear an Adam
Smith necktie" do it to "make a statement of their devotion to the idea of free markets and limited
government", and that this misrepresents Smith's ideas. Stein writes that Smith "was not pure or
doctrinaire about this idea. He viewed government intervention in the market with great skepticism...yet
he was prepared to accept or propose qualifications to that policy in the specific cases where he judged
that their net effect would be beneficial and would not undermine the basically free character of the
system. He did not wear the Adam Smith necktie." In Stein's reading, The Wealth of Nations could justify
the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, mandatory employer
health benefits, environmentalism, and "discriminatory taxation to deter improper or luxurious
behavior".[134]

Similarly, Vivienne Brown stated in The Economic Journal that in the 20th-century United States,
Reaganomics supporters, the Wall Street Journal, and other similar sources have spread among the
general public a partial and misleading vision of Smith, portraying him as an "extreme dogmatic defender
of laissez-faire capitalism and supply-side economics".[135] In fact, The Wealth of Nations includes the
following statement on the payment of taxes:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as
nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the
revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.[136]
Some commentators have argued that Smith's works show support for a progressive, not flat, income tax
and that he specifically named taxes that he thought should be required by the state, among them luxury-
goods taxes and tax on rent.[137] Yet Smith argued for the "impossibility of taxing the people, in
proportion to their economic revenue, by any capitation" (The Wealth of Nations, [Link].k.1). Smith argued
that taxes should principally go toward protecting "justice" and "certain publick institutions" that were
necessary for the benefit of all of society, but that could not be provided by private enterprise (The Wealth
of Nations, [Link].51).

Additionally, Smith outlined the proper expenses of the government in The Wealth of Nations, Book V,
Ch. I. Included in his requirements of a government is to enforce contracts and provide justice system,
grant patents and copy rights, provide public goods such as infrastructure, provide national defence, and
regulate banking. The role of the government was to provide goods "of such a nature that the profit could
never repay the expense to any individual" such as roads, bridges, canals, and harbours. He also
encouraged invention and new ideas through his patent enforcement and support of infant industry
monopolies. He supported partial public subsidies for elementary education, and he believed that
competition among religious institutions would provide general benefit to the society. In such cases,
however, Smith argued for local rather than centralised control: "Even those publick works which are of
such a nature that they cannot afford any revenue for maintaining themselves ... are always better
maintained by a local or provincial revenue, under the management of a local and provincial
administration, than by the general revenue of the state" (Wealth of Nations, V.i.d.18). Finally, he outlined
how the government should support the dignity of the monarch or chief magistrate, such that they are
equal or above the public in fashion. He even states that monarchs should be provided for in a greater
fashion than magistrates of a republic because "we naturally expect more splendor in the court of a king
than in the mansion-house of a doge".[138] In addition, he allowed that in some specific circumstances,
retaliatory tariffs may be beneficial:

The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory
inconvenience of paying dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods.[139]

However, he added that in general, a retaliatory tariff "seems a bad method of compensating the injury
done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to
almost all the other classes of them" (The Wealth of Nations, [Link].39).

Economic historians such as Jacob Viner regard Smith as a strong advocate of free markets and limited
government (what Smith called "natural liberty"), but not as a dogmatic supporter of laissez-faire.[140]

Economist Daniel Klein believes using the term "free-market economics" or "free-market economist" to
identify the ideas of Smith is too general and slightly misleading. Klein offers six characteristics central
to the identity of Smith's economic thought and argues that a new name is needed to give a more accurate
depiction of the "Smithian" identity.[141][142] Economist David Ricardo set straight some of the
misunderstandings about Smith's thoughts on free market. Most people still fall victim to the thinking
that Smith was a free-market economist without exception, though he was not. Ricardo pointed out that
Smith was in support of helping infant industries. Smith believed that the government should subsidise
newly formed industry, but he did fear that when the infant industry grew into adulthood, it would be
unwilling to surrender the government help.[143] Smith also supported tariffs on imported goods to
counteract an internal tax on the same good. Smith also fell to pressure in supporting some tariffs in
support for national defence.[143]
Some have also claimed, Emma Rothschild among them, that Smith would have supported a minimum
wage,[144] although no direct textual evidence supports the claim. Indeed, Smith wrote:

The price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere,
different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only
according to the different abilities of the workmen, but according to the easiness or hardness
of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is
what are the most usual; and experience seems to show that law can never regulate them
properly, though it has often pretended to do so. (The Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 8)

However, Smith also noted, to the contrary, the existence of an imbalanced, inequality of bargaining
power:[145]

A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a
single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already
acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce
any a year without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his
master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

Criticism
Alfred Marshall criticised Smith's definition of the economy on several points. He argued that man
should be equally important as money, services are as important as goods, and that there must be an
emphasis on human welfare, instead of just wealth. The "invisible hand" only works well when both
production and consumption operates in free markets, with small ("atomistic") producers and consumers
allowing supply and demand to fluctuate and equilibrate. In conditions of monopoly and oligopoly, the
"invisible hand" fails.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says, on the topic of one of Smith's better-known
ideas: "the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there."[146]

Additional critics of Smith's ideas regarding capitalism include Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Noam
Chomsky, and Thomas Piketty.

See also
Organizational capital
List of abolitionist forerunners
List of Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
People on Scottish banknotes

References

Informational notes
 a. In Life of Adam Smith, Rae writes: "In his fourth year, while on a visit to his grandfather's
house at Strathendry on the banks of the Leven, [Smith] was stolen by a passing band of
gypsies, and for a time could not be found. But presently a gentleman arrived who had met
a Romani woman a few miles down the road carrying a child that was crying piteously.
Scouts were immediately dispatched in the direction indicated, and they came upon the
woman in Leslie wood. As soon as she saw them she threw her burden down and escaped,
and the child was brought back to his mother. [Smith] would have made, I fear, a poor
gypsy."[14]
b. During the reign of Louis XIV, the population shrunk by 4 million and agricultural productivity
was reduced by one-third while the taxes had increased. Cusminsky, Rosa, de Cendrero,
1967, Los Fisiócratas, Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, p. 6
c. 1701–1714 War of the Spanish Succession, 1688–1697 War of the Grand Alliance, 1672–
1678 Franco-Dutch War, 1667–1668 War of Devolution, 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War
d. The 6 editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments were published in 1759, 1761, 1767,
1774, 1781, and 1790, respectively.[73]

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Viner, Jacob (1991). Douglas A. Irwin (ed.). Essays on the Intellectual History of Economics
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Further reading
Butler, Eamonn (2007). Adam Smith – A Primer ([Link]
h/adam-smith-a-primer). Institute of Economic Affairs. ISBN 978-0-255-36608-3.
Culture & Political Economy: Adam Smith & Alfred Marshall ([Link]
5457). Tabur. 2012.
Copley, Stephen (1995). Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: New Interdisciplinary Essays.
Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-3943-6.
Glahe, F. (1977). Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations: 1776–1976. University Press of
Colorado. ISBN 0-87081-082-0.
Haakonssen, Knud (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0-521-77924-3.
Hardwick, D. and Marsh, L. (2014). Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies on the
Philosophy of Adam Smith ([Link] Palgrave
Macmillan
Hamowy, Ronald (2008). "Smith, Adam (1723–1790)". Smith, Adam (1732–1790) ([Link]
[Link]/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 470–72. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n287 ([Link]
org/10.4135%2F9781412965811.n287). ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151 (http
s://[Link]/2008009151). OCLC 750831024
([Link]
Hollander, Samuel (1973). Economics of Adam Smith ([Link]
ofadams0000holl). University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6302-0.
McLean, Iain (2006). Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the 21st
Century. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-2352-3.
Milgate, Murray & Stimson, Shannon. (2009). After Adam Smith: A Century of
Transformation in Politics and Political Economy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-
691-14037-7.
Muller, Jerry Z. (1995). Adam Smith in His Time and Ours. Princeton University Press.
ISBN 0-691-00161-8.
Norman, Jesse (2018). Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why It Matters. Allen Lane.
O'Rourke, P.J. (2006). On The Wealth of Nations ([Link]
n00orou). Grove/Atlantic Inc. ISBN 0-87113-949-9.
 Otteson, James (2002). Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-01656-8.
Otteson, James (2013). Adam Smith. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4411-9013-0.
Phillipson, Nicholas (2010). Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, Yale University Press,
ISBN 978-0-300-16927-0, 352 pages; scholarly biography
McLean, Iain (2004). Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the 21st
Century ([Link]
Edinburgh University Press
Pichet, Éric (2004). Adam Smith, je connais ! ([Link]
French biography.
Vianello, F. (1999). "Social accounting in Adam Smith", in: Mongiovi, G. and Petri F. (eds.),
Value, Distribution and capital. Essays in honour of Pierangelo Garegnani, London:
Routledge, ISBN 0-415-14277-6.
Winch, Donald (2007) [2004]. "Smith, Adam". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25767 ([Link]
2Fref%3Aodnb%2F25767). (Subscription or UK public library membership ([Link]
m/help/subscribe#public) required.)
Wolloch, N. (2015). "Symposium on Jack Russell Weinstein's Adam Smith's Pluralism:
Rationality, Education And The Moral Sentiments". Cosmos + Taxis ([Link]
org/back-issues/ct-23/)
"Adam Smith and Empire: A New Talking Empire Podcast," ([Link]
2014/03/12/adam-smith-and-empire-a-new-talking-empire-podcast/) Imperial & Global
Forum, 12 March 2014.

External links
"Adam Smith" ([Link]
am-smith/). Archived from the original ([Link] on 17
May 2009. Retrieved 17 May 2009. at the Adam Smith Institute
Works by Adam Smith ([Link] at Open Library
Works by Adam Smith ([Link] at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Adam Smith ([Link]
A%22Smith%2C%20Adam%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Adam%20Smith%22%20OR%
20creator%3A%22Smith%2C%20Adam%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Adam%20Smith%
22%20OR%20title%3A%22Adam%20Smith%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Smith%2
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8%221723-1790%22%20AND%20Smith%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%2
9) at Internet Archive
Works by Adam Smith ([Link] at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
References to Adam Smith in historic European newspapers ([Link]
[Link]/tel4/newspapers/search?query=%22adam%20smith%22)

Academic offices
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