Now we know that Adam Smith possessed in manuscript in the hand of a clerk employed by him certain lectures which he read at Edinburgh in the winter of 1750–1, and we know that in these lectures he preached the doctrine of the beneficial effects of freedom, and, according to Dugald Stewart, “many of the most important opinions in the Wealth of Nations.” There existed when Stewart wrote, “a short manuscript drawn up by Mr. Smith in the year 1755 and presented by him to a society of which he was then a member.” Stewart says of this paper:—
“Many of the most important opinions in the Wealth of Nations are there detailed; but I shall quote only the following sentences: ‘Man is generally considered by statesmen and projectors as the materials of a sort of political mechanics. Projectors disturb nature in the course of her operations in human affairs; and it requires no more than to let her alone, and give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends that she may establish her own designs.’ And in another passage: ‘Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.—A great part of the opinions,’ he observes, ‘enumerated in this paper is treated of at length in some lectures which I have still by me, and which were written in the hand of a clerk who left my service six years ago. They have all of them been the constant subjects of my lectures since I first taught Mr. Craigie’s class, the first winter I spent in Glasgow, down to this day, without any considerable variation. They had all of them been the subjects of lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter before I left it, and I can adduce innumerable witnesses both from that place and from this, who will ascertain them sufficiently to be mine.’ ”68
It seems then that, when confronted with the two professorial chairs in 1751, Smith had by him some lectures on progress, very likely explaining “the slow progress of opulence,” and that, as anyone in such circumstances would have liked to do, he put them into his moral philosophy course.
As it happened, there was no difficulty in doing this. It seems nearly certain that Craigie himself suggested that it should be done. The request that Smith would take Craigie’s work came through Cullen, and in answering Cullen’s letter, which has not been preserved, Smith says, “You mention natural jurisprudence and politics as the parts of his lectures which it would be most agreeable for me to teach. I shall very willingly undertake both.”69 Craigie doubtless knew what Smith had been lecturing upon in Edinburgh in the previous winter and called it “politics.”
Moreover the traditions of the Chair of Moral Philosophy, as known to Adam Smith, required a certain amount of economics. A dozen years earlier he had himself been a student when Francis Hutcheson was professor. So far as we can judge from Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy, which, as Dr. W. R. Scott has shown,70 was already in existence when Smith was a student, though not published till 1755, Hutcheson lectured first on Ethics, next upon what might very well be called Natural Jurisprudence, and thirdly upon Civil Polity. Through the two latter parts a considerable quantity of economic doctrine is scattered.
In considering “The Necessity of a Social Life,” Hutcheson points out that a man in solitude, however strong and instructed in the arts, “could scarce procure to himself the bare necessaries of life even in the best soils or climates.”
“Nay ’tis well known that the produce of the labours of any given number, twenty for instance, in providing the necessaries or conveniences of life, shall be much greater by assigning to one a certain sort of work of one kind in which he will soon acquire skill and dexterity, and to another assigning work of a different kind, than if each one of the twenty were obliged to employ himself by turns in all the different sorts of labour requisite for his subsistence without sufficient dexterity in any. In the former method each procures a great quantity of goods of one kind, and can exchange a part of it for such goods obtained by the labours of others as he shall stand in need of. One grows expert in tillage, another in pasture and breeding cattle, a third in masonry, a fourth in the chase, a fifth in ironworks, a sixth in the arts of the loom, and so on throughout the rest. Thus all are supplied by means of barter with the works of complete artists. In the other method scarce anyone could be dexterous and skilful in any one sort of labour.
“Again, some works of the highest use to multitudes can be effectually executed by the joint labours of many, which the separate labours of the same number could never have executed. The joint force of many can repel dangers arising from savage beasts or bands of robbers which might have been fatal to many individuals were they separately to encounter them. The joint labours
