ABSTRACT
In August of 1740, two months after matriculating at Oxford University, 17-year-old Adam Smith wrote to his guardian and cousin William Smith to thank him for a stipend of 16 pounds. That money was the first installment of Smith’s annual scholarship of 40 pounds, which he received from Glasgow University. The money came from a fund set aside so that promising Glasgow students could study at Oxford. After paying his living expenses (30 pounds) and his tutor (5 pounds), there could not have been much left for anything else. But the chief complaint of the future author of the “Wealth of Nations” was not how much Oxford charged, but how little he got in return: “. . . it will be his own fault if anyone should endanger his health at Oxford by excessive Study, our only business here being to go to prayers twice a day, and to lecture twice a week.”1
