ABSTRACT
The origins of the Edinburgh lectures are wrapped in the obscurity so common to many aspects of Adam Smith's life. To practise the law, especially as an advocate in Edinburgh, was risky even though for a few it brought comparatively high rewards, social status and political power if linked to a major figure. The lectures were so successful that they were taken over by Robert Watson when Smith moved to Glasgow. Smith maintained his personal and intellectual links with Edinburgh even when resident in Glasgow, particularly through his membership of societies which proliferated in the eighteenth century. The one in which Smith played a more important part personally than in any other was the Select Society, founded in 1754 on the initiative of Allan Ramsay, the younger, shortly before he left Scotland, and supported by Smith and David Hume.
