Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations: Books IV-V (Penguin Classics)

ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkcaldy, on the east coast of Scotland, in 1723. He was educated at his local school, then Glasgow University (173740), where he studied under Francis Hutcheson, and Balliol College, Oxford (174046). Two years after his return to Scotland, Smith moved to Edinburgh, where he delivered lectures on Rhetoric which did much to establish his early reputation. In 1751 he was appointed Professor of Logic at Glasgow, but was translated to Hutchesons old chair of moral philosophy in 1752. He held this appointment until 1764, during which tenure he published, in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In 1764 Smith resigned his professorship to become tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch. This office took him to France, where he travelled extensively and met many of the leading thinkers of the day, among them Voltaire, Quesnay, Turgot and Helvetius. Smith continued to write The Wealth of Nations in France and furthered his research after his return to Britain in 1766. The book was published in 1776, the same year as the American Declaration of Independence. In 1778 Smith was appointed as Commissioner of Customs based in Edinburgh and was a resident of the city until his death in 1790. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1787, succeeding his friend Edmund Burke. Smiths life was relatively uneventful, and his disposition absent-minded and retiring, yet he wrote with vigour and did not lack courage; a fact attested to by his defence of the character of the alleged atheist David Hume after the latters death.

ANDREW S. SKINNER graduated from Glasgow University in 1958. After short periods in Cornell (19589), Queens University Belfast (195962) and Queens College (now University) Dundee (19624), he returned to Glasgow University in 1964, where he now holds the post of Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus. Professor Skinner has written numerous articles on eighteenth-century subjects and edited Sir James Steuarts Principles of Political Economy (1966). He has also contributed to editions of Smiths Wealth of Nations (1976) and to the Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1980). He has edited (with R. H. Campbell) The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (1982) and (with P. Jones) Adam Smith Reviewed (1992). Professor Skinner is also the author of A System of Social Science, Papers Relating to Adam Smith (1979; 2nd edition 1996). He has re-edited Sir James Steuarts Principles of Political Economy (with Professors N. Kobayashi and H. Mizuta, 1998).

ADAM SMITH

Edited with an introduction and notes by

ANDREW SKINNER

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published 1776
Published in Penguin Books 1999

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Introduction copyright Andrew Skinner, 1999
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EISBN: 9781101492840