CHAPTER XXIX

VISIT TO LONDON

Meeting with Pitt at Dundas’s, 405.  Smith’s remark about Pitt, 405.  Consulted by Pitt, 406.  Opinion on Sunday schools, 407.  Wilberforce and Smith, 407.  The British Fisheries Society, 408.  Smith’s prognostication confirmed, 409.  Chosen Lord Rector of Glasgow University, 410.  Letter to Principal Davidson, 411.  Installation, 412.  Sir John Leslie, 412.  Letter of Smith to Sir Joseph Banks, 413.  Death of Miss Douglas, 414.  Letter to Gibbon, 414.

CHAPTER XXX

VISIT OF SAMUEL ROGERS

Smith at breakfast, 416.  Strawberries, 417.  Old town of Edinburgh, 417.  Loch Lomond, 417.  The refusal of corn to France, 417. “That Bogle,” 418.  Junius, 429.  Dinner at Smith’s, 420.  At the Royal Society meeting, 421.  Smith on Bentham’s Defence of Usury, 422.

CHAPTER XXXI

REVISION OF THE “THEORY”

Letter from Dugald Stewart, 426.  Additional matter in new edition of Theory, 427.  Deletion of the allusion to Rochefoucauld, 427.  Suppressed passage on the Atonement, 428.  Archbishop Magee, 428.  Passage on the Calas case, 429.

CHAPTER XXXII

LAST DAYS

Declining health, 431.  Adam Ferguson’s reconciliation and attentions, 433.  Destruction of Smith’s MSS., 434.  Last Sunday supper, 434.  His words of farewell, 435.  Death and burial, 435.  Little notice in the papers, 436.  His will and executors, 436.  His large private charities, 437.  His portraits, 438.  His books, 439.  Extant relics, 440.

CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS AT KIRKCALDY

1723-1737

Adam Smith was born at Kirkcaldy, in the county of Fife, Scotland, on the 5th of June 1723.  He was the son of Adam Smith, Writer to the Signet, Judge Advocate for Scotland and Comptroller of the Customs in the Kirkcaldy district, by Margaret, daughter of John Douglas of Strathendry, a considerable landed proprietor in the same county.

Of his father little is known.  He was a native of Aberdeen, and his people must have been in a position to make interest in influential quarters, for we find him immediately after his admission to the Society of Writers to the Signet in 1707, appointed to the newly-established office of Judge Advocate for Scotland, and in the following year to the post of Private Secretary to the Scotch Minister, the Earl of Loudon.  When he lost this post in consequence of Lord Loudon’s retirement from office in 1713, he was provided for with the Comptrollership of Customs at Kirkcaldy, which he continued to hold, along with the Judge Advocateship, till his premature death in 1723.  The Earl of Loudon having been a zealous Whig and Presbyterian,