It seems then that, when confronted with the two professorial chairs in 1751, Smith had by him some lectures on progress, very likely explaining “the slow progress of opulence,” and that, as anyone in such circumstances would have liked to do, he put them into his moral philosophy course.
As it happened, there was no difficulty in doing this. It seems nearly certain that Craigie himself suggested that it should be done. The request that Smith would take Craigie’s work came through Cullen, and in answering Cullen’s letter, which has not been preserved, Smith says, “You mention natural jurisprudence and politics as the parts of his lectures which it would be most agreeable for me to teach. I shall very willingly undertake both.” Craigie doubtless knew what Smith had been lecturing upon in Edinburgh in the previous winter and called it “politics.”
Moreover the traditions of the Chair of Moral Philosophy, as known to Adam Smith, required a certain amount of economics. A dozen years earlier he had himself been a student when Francis Hutcheson was professor. So far as we can judge from Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy , which, as Dr. W. R. Scott has shown, was already in existence when Smith was a student, though not published till 1755, Hutcheson lectured first on Ethics, next upon what might very well be called Natural Jurisprudence, and thirdly upon Civil Polity. Through the two latter parts a considerable quantity of economic doctrine is scattered.