Life of Adam Smith. John Rae
who were to play important and even distinguished parts afterwards on the great stage of the world. James Oswald—the Right Hon. James Oswald, Treasurer of the Navy—who is sometimes said to have been one of Smith's schoolfellows, could not have been so, as he was eight years Smith's senior, but his younger brother John, subsequently Bishop of Raphoe, doubtless was; and so was Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, who built the London Adelphi, Portland Place, and—probably his finest work—Edinburgh University. Though James Oswald was not at school with Smith, he was one of his intimate home friends from the first. The Dunnikier family lived in the town, and stood on such a footing of intimacy with the Smiths that, as we have seen, it was "Mr. James of Dunnikier"—the father of the James Oswald now in question—who undertook on behalf of Mrs. Smith the arrangements for her husband's funeral; and the friendship of James Oswald, as will presently appear, was, after the affection of his mother, the best thing Smith carried into life with him from Kirkcaldy. The Adam family also lived in the town, though the father was a leading Scotch architect—King's Mason for Scotland, in fact—and was proprietor of a fair estate not far away; and the four brothers Adam were the familiars of Smith's early years. They continued to be among his familiars to the last. Another of his school companions who played a creditable part in his time was John Drysdale, the minister's son, who became one of the ministers of Edinburgh, doctor of divinity, chaplain to the king, leader of an ecclesiastical party—of the Moderates in succession to Robertson—twice Moderator of the General Assembly, though in his case, as in so many others, the path of professional success has led but to oblivion. Still he deserves mention here, because, as his son-in-law, Professor Dalzel tells us, he and Smith were much together again in their later Edinburgh days, and there was none of all Smith's numerous friends whom he liked better or spoke of with greater tenderness than Drysdale.[5] Drysdale's wife was a sister of the brothers Adam, and Robert Adam stayed with Drysdale on his visits to Edinburgh.
A small town like Kirkcaldy—it had then only 1500 inhabitants—is a not unfavourable observatory for beginning one's knowledge of the world. It has more sorts and conditions of men to exhibit than a rural district can furnish, and it exhibits each more completely in all their ways, pursuits, troubles, characters, than can possibly be done in a city. Smith, who, spite of his absence of mind, was always an excellent observer, would grow up in the knowledge of all about everybody in that little place, from the "Lady Dunnikier," the great lady of the town, to its poor colliers and salters who were still bondsmen. Kirkcaldy, too, had its shippers trading with the Baltic, its customs officers, with many a good smuggling story, and it had a nailery or two, which Smith is said to have been fond of visiting as a boy, and to have acquired in them his first rough idea of the value of division of labour.[6] However that may be, Smith does draw some of his illustrations of the division of labour from that particular business, which would necessarily be very familiar to his mind, and it may have been in Kirkcaldy that he found the nailers paid their wages in nails, and using these nails afterwards as a currency in making their purchases from the shopkeepers.[7]
At school Smith was marked for his studious disposition, his love of reading, and his power of memory; and by the age of fourteen he had advanced sufficiently in classics and mathematics to be sent to Glasgow College, with a view to obtaining a Snell exhibition to Oxford.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Original letter in possession of Professor Cunningham, Belfast.
A Count of Money debursed about Mr. Smith's Funerall
To eight bottles of ale £0 12 0
To butter and eggs to the seed cake 1 4 0
To four bottles of ale 0 6 0
To three pounds fresh butter for bread 0 14 0
To one pound small candles 0 4 6
To two pounds bisquet 1 4 0
To sixteen bottles of ale 1 4 0
To money sent to Edinr. for bisquet,
stockings, and necessars 25 4 0
To three expresses to Edinburgh 2 14 0
To a pair of murning shous to Hugh 1 10 0
To horse hyre with the wine from Kinghorn 0 15 0
To the poor 3 6 0
To six bottles and eight pints of ale
to the beadels, etc. 1 10 4
To pipes and tobacco 0 4 0
To four pints of ale to the workmen 0 12 8
To the postage of three letters 0 6 0
To making the grave 3 0 0
To caring the mourning letters thro'
the town and country 1 10 0
To the mort cloth 3 12 0
To Robert Martin for his services 1 4 0
To Deacon Lessels for the coffin and ironwork 28 4 0
To Deacon Sloan for lifting the stone 1 11 0
--------
Summa is £80 16 6
On the back is the docquet, "Account of funeral charges, Mr. Adam Smith, 1723," and the formal receipt as follows: "Kirkaldie, Apl. 24, 1723. Received from Mr. James of Dunekier eighty pund sexteen shilling six penes Scots in full of the within account depussd by me.
Margrate Douglass."
"Mr. James of Dunekier" is Mr. James Oswald of Dunnikier, the father of Smith's friend, the statesman of the same name, and he had apparently as a friend of the family undertaken the duty of looking after the funeral arrangements.
[3] In possession of Professor Cunningham.
[4] Grant's Burgh Schools of Scotland, p. 414.
[5] Drysdale's Sermons, Preface by Dalzel.
[6] Campbell, Journey from Edinburgh through North Britain, 1802, ii. p. 49.
[7] Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. iv.
CHAPTER II
STUDENT AT GLASGOW COLLEGE
A.D. 1737–1740. Aet. 14–17
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Smith entered Glasgow College in 1737, no doubt in October, when the session began, and he remained there till the spring of 1740. The arts curriculum at that time extended over five sessions, so that Smith did not complete the course required for a degree. In the three sessions he attended he would go through the classes of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and Moral Philosophy, and have thus listened to the lectures of the three eminent teachers who were then drawing students to this little western College from the most distant quarters, and keeping its courts alive with a remarkable intellectual activity. Dr. A. Carlyle, who came to Glasgow College