The Life of Adam Smith

622 Pages·2010·5.61 MB·English

by  Ian Simpson Ross

THE LIFE OF ADAM SMITH
Adam Smith, 1787. Medallion ‘in the antique manner’ by James Tassie (Scottish National
Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh).
The Life of
Adam Smith
IAN SIMPSON ROSS
Second Edition
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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In memory of
Carolyn and Ernest Mossner
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Acknowledgements
My fi rst acknowledgement is to my teacher at the University of Texas, Ernest
Campbell Mossner, who asked me in 1964 to help with the preparation of an
edition of the correspondence of Adam Smith commissioned by the Adam Smith
Committee of the University of Glasgow. Ill health including eye problems forced
him to give up this project in the early 1970s, and at his suggestion the Glasgow
Committee asked me to complete the correspondence edition and write a biog-
raphy of Smith. Professor Mossner took a lively interest in this work until his
death in 1986, and helped me immensely by passing on his Smith notes and refer-
ences. His wife Carolyn was also most supportive and encouraging about the
Smith project, and I have dedicated my book to these never to be forgotten
friends.
In writing this book I have called upon an enormous amount of help from
colleagues, among whom I number many former students who worked with me
to understand Smith’s personality and thought, and friends from many walks of
life. I wish to record with much affection and gratitude the readiness of the late
Charles Finlayson of Edinburgh University Library, and the late Ian Rae of the
National Library of Scotland, in answering queries and fulfi lling requests
for material. I have been similarly advantaged by their successors in their respec-
tive institutions, and by their counterparts in Aberdeen University Library;
American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia; Andersonian Library,
Strathclyde University; Archives Départementales de l’Hérault, Montpellier;
Archives Départementales, Toulouse; Balliol College Library and the Bodleian,
Oxford; Bibliothèque Nationale and Musée Carnavalet, Paris; Bibliothèque de
l’Université de Genève; Boswell Offi ce and Yale University Library; British
Library; Dr Williams’s Library, London; Edinburgh University Library; Glasgow
University Library; House of Lords Record Offi ce, Westminster; Huntington
Library, Pasadena; Kent County Archives; Kirkcaldy District Council Adminis-
trative Offi ce and Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery; Public Record Offi ce
(PRO), Kew; Scottish Record Offi ce (SRO), Edinburgh; Statni Oblastni Archiv,
Klatovy, Czech Republic; and the University of British Columbia Library. I wish
to thank warmly the librarians and keepers in these institutions for permission
to consult and quote from material in their control. Quotations from SRO hold-
ings appear with the approval of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. Also,
I wish to express my grateful appreciation to Col. A. E. Cameron, Aldourie Castle,
Inverness, and Mr Keith Adam, Blair Adam, Kinross, for their willingness to let
me quote from MSS they own.
Among many acts of kindness I wish to record the following. Beryl Skinner
and Beth Buchanan gave invaluable help in producing texts and print-outs of
drafts of chapters. May Brown of Burntisland sought out facts for me about the
Kirkcaldy of Smith’s time, and Customs offi cers in the ‘lang toun’ told me tales
viii Acknowledgements
of Fife smugglers. Andrew Skinner walked with me through old Glasgow, from
the cathedral to the Trongate and beyond, to view sites connected with Smith’s
student and professorial years. For almost thirty years he has provided a steady
stream of advice about Smith’s ideas generally, and his contributions in partic-
ular to the history of economic thought. Vincent Quinn helped me with Balliol
College archives. Nicole Vallée was my guide in Paris exploring the haunts of the
philosophes, where Smith encountered Quesnay and Turgot. Bernard Gagnebin
advised me about sources dealing with Smith’s contacts in Geneva. Peter Thal
and Norbert Waszek provided key information about Smith’s early impact on
German thinkers.
In 1993, on a research visit to Germany, Hermann Real and Ulrich Horstmann
invited me to present accounts of Smith’s rhetoric and critical theory to their
students at the Universities of Münster and Giessen. Hans G. Monissen and
Rüdiger Ahrens invited me to lecture about Smith’s ideas concerning language
and economics at the University of Würzburg. Also, they organized a seminar on
Adam Smith at Bildungszentrum Kloster Banz, at which I discussed my biograph-
ical approach to Smith with economics and English students and professors. This
seminar was supported by a grant from the Hanns Martin Schleyer-Stiftung.
Over the years, Hiroshi Mizuta has responded promptly to many queries about
Smith’s Library, and he introduced me to courteous and obliging colleagues
knowledgeable about Smith materials and scholarship in Japan: Yoshiaki Sudo,
Toshihiro Tanaka, Hitoshi Hashimoto, and Hisashi Shinohara. During visits to
Japan in 1985 and 1990, I had stimulating opportunities to discuss Smith’s
thought with Japanese faculty and students, also to examine Smith editions and
documents much valued in their country.
John Dwyer awakened me to the social history connected with Smith’s writ-
ings, and Michael Barfoot passed on his insights into Smith’s medical history.
Richard Sher generously made known to me important information about the
Edinburgh literati, and Roger Emerson was never stumped when I called for
some help about the Scottish Enlightenment.
I acknowledge gratefully that so much that is factually new in this book is due
to the indefatigable researches of David Raynor on Hume and his circle. He has
upheld, I believe, the highest ideals of scholarship in communicating his results
to me and offering a commentary on them. I am equally indebted to D. D. Raphael
for his abiding interest in the writing of this biography. During the lengthy period
of its composition, he has commented sympathetically and with judicious criti-
cism on all problems and attempts at solutions that I have submitted to him.
I am also very grateful for the research awards and grants I have received from
the Canada Council, the University of British Columbia, and the Killam Founda-
tion in 1977–8, 1979, 1981, 1987–8, and 1989–92, which made possible work on
specifi c aspects of Smith research and some of the writing of the book. In the
summers of 1983–6 I was fortunate in securing BC Government Work Study
grants for student assistants: Ted Alden, Alpha Demchuk, Elizabeth Hannon,
and David Ransom, whose cheerful and effi cient help I greatly appreciate.
In 1992 John Marriott obtained another Work Study grant to help me with
Acknowledgements ix
bibliographical references. I should also mention that in 1978, when acting as my
research assistant, Alison Schwalm followed up some leads I had at the PRO, Kew,
and recovered important Customs documents connected with Smith. Further,
I take pleasure in recollecting that in January–February 1978 T. D. Campbell
came to Vancouver on a British Academy award to work with me on aspects of
Smith’s moral philosophy illuminated by a biographical approach. As well,
I wish to acknowledge the help and encouragement I received from the remarkable
team of scholars who produced the six volumes of Smith’s works published
by the Clarendon Press between 1976 and 1983: J. C. Bryce, R. H. Campbell,
A. L. Macfi e, R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, A. S. Skinner, P. G. Stein, W. B. Todd, and
W. P. D. Wightman.
Members of my family have provided solid support throughout this enter-
prise: my brother Angus; the young people—Isla, Bettina, Andrew, David, and
Marion; and above all my dear wife, Ingrid, who has done so much to help me
put my work in a form ready for publication. Somehow amid all pressures she has
kept her equanimity, restored her husband’s, and sustained happy companion-
ship. Much of the book was written and rewritten at Bardscroft on Gambier
Island, British Columbia, in the presence of our cat Fergus. In need of stimula-
tion in daylight hours, I could always look out from my study window towards
the rolling sea and the blue-green mountains of the north-west Pacifi c coastline:
a far cry from Kirkcaldy and the Firth of Forth, but a setting I found conducive
to evoking that Fife lad of genius who grew up two centuries ago by those distant
waves and shore.
I.S.R.
Gambier Island, British Columbia
31 December 1994