Adam Smith: bureaucrat?

Nota bene: Last month (see here), I mentioned that I would begin two new series on Adam Smith. I have already completed my first series on “Adam Smith and the ‘Absurd Prescriptions’ of Doctors“; now, as promised, it’s time to start my other series: “Adam Smith: Bureaucrat“. In an ironic twist of fate, Adam Smith, the champion of free trade, was somehow appointed to the post of Commissioner of Customs(!) in November of 1778 — two years after the publication of his free-market manifesto, The Wealth of Nations — a position he held from February 1778 until his death in July of 1790. Smith was thus a pro-mercantilist, protectionist bureaucrat for as many years as he was a professor of moral philosopher at the University of Glasgow, but what was the father of free markets actually doing during this final incongruous phase of his life? To shed light on this lesser-known side of Smith’s life, I have been conducting some hard-core archival research in my spare time: collecting, reading,…