The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Kirkaldy, in Scotland, 1723. Died, in Edinburgh, 1790. Aged 67.] This great master in the science of political economy was the son of an Officer of Customs, and studied first in Glasgow, afterwards at Oxford. He had feeble health, and was of studious habits. In 1748, a lecturer, in Edinburgh, upon Rhetoric and the Belles-Lettres; and in 1751, appointed Professor, first of Logic, and then of Moral Philosophy, in the University of Glasgow. At this period of his life he published his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments,” a work in which he regards Sympathy as the foundation of all morals. In 1763, resigning his Professorship, he became tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch, with whom he travelled on the continent for several years. He subsequently retired to his native village, where he passed ten years of his life in close obscurity, study, and fruitful meditation. In 1776, he issued from his cell to pour light for ever into the busy world. In that year was published his memorable “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” This monument of industry, observation, sagacity, learning, and acuteness, continues the one great hand-book of political economists. The leading points which Adam Smith laboured to urge in his “Inquiry” are--That labour is the only source of the wealth of nations; that wealth does not consist in the abundance of gold and silver, but in the abundance of the necessities, conveniences, and enjoyments of life; that it is sound policy to leave individuals to pursue their own interest in their own way, and that every regulation intended to force industry into particular channels, is impolitic and pernicious. The justice of these axioms has, after years of argument, denial, and resistance, received general acknowledgment in England; and Adam Smith is the author of one revolution in the world’s progress, and a benefactor of his kind. His reasoning is not always sound; but the base of his fabric is unassailable, and the illustration which constitutes its ornament, is amongst the happiest ever employed to give life and light to a solid structure. Adam Smith is the great practical philosopher of an age and a people, craving for his philosophy more than for any other, yet wanting, most of all, the philosophy which shows the soul of a man as the most precious of all his estates, and teaches him the husbandry of it. He died, having won a competence, and fulfilling a government appointment. [This plaster cast was formerly in the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence.]