At this time David Hume and James Oswald were corresponding on commercial topics. In 1750 Hume, who was then abroad, sent Oswald his famous essay on the _Balance of Trade_, and asked for criticism. Oswald replied in a long letter which shows that he too held very enlightened views on public finance, and we may be pretty certain that Smith as well as Hume derived at this time much benefit from intercourse with Oswald. In fact, in his preface to Oswald’s correspondence, Oswald’s grandson boasts that he has heard Adam Smith, then the renowned author of the _Wealth of Nations_, “dilate with a generous and enthusiastic pleasure on the qualifications and merits of Mr. Oswald, candidly avowing at the same time how much information he had received on many points from the enlarged views and profound knowledge of that accomplished statesman.” Some allowance should be made for the natural exaggeration of a Scotch kinsman; but Smith certainly rated Oswald high, describing him in the paper above mentioned as one who combined a taste for general principles with the detailed information of a statesman. Stewart adds that “he was one of Mr. Smith’s earliest and most confidential friends.” They must have seen a great deal of one another both in Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh in the five years between his return from Oxford and the appointment we have now to record. CHAPTER II THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER By his Edinburgh lectures Smith had proved that he could be at once learned and popular, and the fact that he was probably the only Scottish savant who had thoroughly acquired the English accent at a time when English had suddenly become highly fashionable north of the Tweed, would do him no harm in loyal Glasgow, where the English connection, with all its solid advantages, was well esteemed. Accordingly in 1750, when a vacancy occurred in the chair of Logic at Glasgow, Adam Smith’s candidature proved very acceptable, and he was unanimously appointed by the Senate. A week later he read a Latin dissertation on the Origin of Ideas, signed the Westminster Confession of Faith before the Presbytery of Glasgow, and took the usual oath of fidelity to the authorities. So far as I am aware, it has not been noticed hitherto that the substance of Smith’s inaugural dissertation, _De Origine Idearum_, has been preserved in a fragment published by his literary executors after his death. _The History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics_, as the piece is called, deserves notice not only as one of the earliest specimens of Smith’s extraordinary power of reasoning, but because it proves his interest in some metaphysical questions which are suppressed or ignored in his larger treatises, and at the same time exhibits the range and accuracy of his classical scholarship.