Transcriber’s Note
This version is based upon texts kindly provided by the Internet Archive and the Hathi Trust. The main resource can be found here.
Footnotes
Most footnotes in the text are indicated by an asterisk. Here they arenumbered within each work and placed at the end of paragraph in whichthey occur. One footnote in the first essay is numbered; it is heregiven as 1*.
Corrections
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Other matters
Greek text is marked by orange underlining, on mouse-over revealing a transliteration.
Page numbers have been rendered in-text in red.
Other original printing conventions have been followed, except for leftquotation marks at the start of every line of quoted text.
Some links have been inserted to provide for cross-references within the text. Infelicities and mistakes here are the transcriber’s fault.
Author of the ‘Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth ofNations.’
ADAM SMITH, the author of these Essays and of the ‘Inquiry into theNature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,’ was born at Kirkaldy,June 5, 1723, a few months after the death of his father. He was asickly child, and indulged by his mother, who was the object of hisfilial gratitude for sixty years. When about three years old, and atthe house of Douglass of Strathenry, his mother’s brother, he wascarried off by tinkers or gipsies, but soon recovered from them. Atthe burgh school of his native town he made rapid progress, and soonattracted notice by his passion for books, and by the extraordinarypowers of his memory. His weakness of body prevented him joining inathletic sports, but his generous and friendly temperament made him afavourite with his schoolmates; and he was noted then, as throughafter life, for absence in company and a habit of speaking to himselfwhen alone. From the grammar school of Kirkaldy, he was sent, in 1737,to the University of Glasgow, whence, in 1740, he went to BaliolCollege, Oxford, enjoying an exhibition on the Snell foundation. Whenat Glasgow College, his favourite studies were mathematics and naturalphilosophy, but that did not long divert his mind from pursuits morecongenial to him, more particularly the political history of mankind,which gave scope to the power of his comprehensive genius, andgratified his ruling passion of contributing to the happiness and theimprovement of society. To his early taste for Greek generally, may bedue the clearness and fulness with which he states his politicalreasonings. At Oxford he employed him