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Adam Smith

`In 1759 Adam Smith, then a thirty-six year old Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, published his Theory of Moral Sentiments. This work attracted the attention of the guardians of the immensely wealthy Duke of Buccleuch towards retaining its author as a tutor to the youthful Duke whilst on a protracted, and hopefully educational, "Grand Tour" of continental Europe.

Whilst acting as tutor from 1763 Smith found some of the time spent in the French provinces hard to fill and seems to have begun his masterpiece An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as a way of taking up otherwise idle hours in the summer of 1764. Overall however he derived much personal philosophical benefit from these months of journeying on the continent. In Paris he met amongst others, the "Physiocrat" economic theorist (and court Physician) Quesnay and the French Ministers, Turgot and Necker.

French economic policy in these times was conducted in accordance with the "Mercantilism" that had held sway in the economic thinking of Europe for some three centuries. Mercantilism expected that governmental control would be exercised over industry and trade in accordance with the theory that national strength (i.e. the Royal states treasury) is increased by a preponderance of exports over imports.

By nature, then, as now, France was fitted to be a great agricultural country, a great producer and exporter of corn and wine; but her legislators for several generations had endeavoured to counteract the apparently natural bias of French economic life towards agriculture, and had tried to make her an exporter of manufactured goods.

Like most legislators in those times, they had been prodigiously impressed by the ambitious position which the maritime powers, as they were then called (the comparatively little powers of England and Holland), were able to take in the politics of Europe. They saw that this influence came from wealth, that this wealth was...