1741 the name of Adam Smith ceases to appear as Comptroller in Kirkcaldy, and appears for the first time as Inspector-General of the Outports, exactly in accordance with the intimation quoted by Dr. M’Cosh.  It is curious that Smith, who was to do so much to sweep away the whole system of the Customs, should have been so closely connected with that branch of administration.  His father, his only known relation on his father’s side, and himself, were all officials in the Scotch Customs.

On the mother’s side his kindred were much connected with the army.  His uncle, Robert Douglas of Strathendry, and three of his uncle’s sons were military officers, and so was his cousin, Captain Skene, the laird of the neighbouring estate of Pitlour.  Colonel Patrick Ross, a distinguished officer of the times, was also a relation, but on which side I do not know.  His mother herself was from first to last the heart of Smith’s life.  He being an only child, and she an only parent, they had been all in all to one another during his infancy and boyhood, and after he was full of years and honours her presence was the same shelter to him as it was when a boy.  His friends often spoke of the beautiful affection and worship with which he cherished her.  One who knew him well for the last thirty years of his life, and was very probably at one time a boarder in his house, the clever and bustling Earl of Buchan, elder brother of Lord Chancellor Erskine, says the principal avenue to Smith’s heart always was by his mother.  He was a delicate child, and afflicted even in childhood with those fits of absence and that habit of speaking to himself which he carried all through life.  Of his infancy only one incident has come down to us.  In his fourth year, while on a visit to his grandfather’s house at Strathendry on the banks of the Leven, the child was stolen by a passing band of gipsies, and for a time could not be found.  But presently a gentleman arrived who had met a gipsy woman a few miles down the road carrying a child that was crying piteously.  Scouts were immediately despatched in the direction indicated, and they came upon the woman in Leslie wood.  As soon as she saw them she threw her burden down and escaped, and the child was brought back to his mother.  He would have made, I fear, a poor gipsy.  As he grew up in boyhood his health became stronger, and he was in due time sent to the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy.

The Burgh School of Kirkcaldy was one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period, and its principal master, Mr. David Millar, had the name of being one of the best schoolmasters of his day.  When Smith first went to school we cannot say, but it seems probable that he began Latin in 1733, for Eutropius is the class-book of a beginner in Latin, and the Eutropius which Smith used as a class-book still exists, and contains his signature with the date of that year.[3] As he left school in 1737, he thus had at least four years’ training