250th Anniversary of the Publication of 'The Wealth of Nations'

‘It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions in a well governed society that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people’ (Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter I).

This March, 250 years ago, a project seventeen years in the making finally came to fruition. Its result was a treatise that more than any other has come to symbolise the spirit of the free-market. 

120764 – The penultimate lifetime edition of Adam Smith’s 'Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' (1786)

At its heart, Adam Smith’s (1723-1790) Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations seeks to understand something fairly simple — why it is that some countries are more prosperous than others?

In so doing, it brought to an end a period of economic thought dominated since the Renaissance by mercantilism, and ushered in the modern study of political economy that gave rise in turn to the great works of David Ricardo and J.S. Mill.

113528 – The first edition of James Steuart’s 'An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy', an important precursor to Smith’s 'Wealth of Nations', and the last of the great mercantilist treatises

Smith, however, was not operating in a vacuum. He was rather a product of a uniquely profitable period in Scotland’s intellectual history — an Enlightenment, characterised by scholarly collaboration and scientific advancement.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the manuscript catalogue Smith made of his library at Panmure House in Edinburgh, which is suffused with the names of the leading thinkers of his day from David Hume to the French economist Franҫois de Quesnay.

122476 – The first and only edition of this report on 'The Precipitation and Fall of Mess. Douglas, Heron, and Company', an important case-study in Smith's Wealth of Nations.

This catalogue offers us a unique pathway into Smith’s mind. We can read the works that we know influenced Smith — like the report on Ayr Bank which formed the case-study at the heart of the second chapter of Wealth of Nations — and exceptionally, we can even study the texts that Smith himself studied!

119583 – Adam Smith’s copy of 'The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus', with his bookplate to the front pastedown. It could be found ‘Lying on the Top’ of the ‘Books in the Locked Press’ in Smith’s home.

The majority of Smith’s library was donated to institutional collections following his death. Consequently very few of his books remain in private hands, and fewer still have been offered on the open market. 

Our copy is one of those known unknown books whose whereabouts had been lost for a generation. It’s a privilege not only to bring this text back to the light, but to be able to shed new information that can inspire further study of the works which influenced Smith’s thoughts and writings.

Page 265 showing the marginal annotation ‘Apolug’, possibly in Smith’s own hand.

One tantalising clue on page 265 remains unsolved — it involves a story of Smith’s ancestor Sir George Douglas (d.1552) and a speech he made promoting the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Prince Edward of England in which he ‘“told them of the apologue of the ass”‘. The question remains, could the unique, one-word marginal annotation ‘Apolug’ be in the hand of the great economist himself?