June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Economics has become a big deal in book publishing of late. Forget the manuals on dieting and dating that usually clutter non-fiction lists. Right now, works such as ``Freakonomics'' are scoring well in the charts.

So you might think the time is ripe for a fresh look at the founder of the dismal science, Adam Smith. Right on cue comes James Buchan's ``Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty,'' a finely written and thankfully short biography of the great Scottish economic theorist.

There's one snag: Buchan's thesis is that Smith was really a moralist, not an economist. Finance ministers and central bankers who pay homage to Smith's free-market principles conveniently forget that he was a stern philosopher who probably wouldn't have approved of everything now done in his name. It's an intriguing argument, and one Buchan almost pulls off.

Buchan is a British novelist and historian. He doesn't waste too much time on Smith's life, and rightly so. The doings of economists are on the dry side of things, and Smith was a dullish fish even among his own kind. Try as he might, Buchan can't breathe much human warmth into his subject.

Smith lived from 1723 to 1790. He rarely traveled, was regularly unwell and had a gloomy disposition already in evidence in his university days. ``At Oxford, we have the first signs of the depression and hypochondria that is the ruling principle of Smith's character,'' Buchan writes.

Price Mechanism

The Scotsman never married, nor has Buchan dug up any serious liaisons. Smith did once assert that the Irish prostitutes of London were the world's most beautiful women, which suggests to Buchan that the price mechanism might have governed that aspect of his life.

No matter. Smith the man needn't detain us for long. Smith the thinker is what matters. And so it is that Buchan sets about a task that is noble though, at first glance, slightly perverse.

Most people these days regard Smith as the founder of free- market economics. He's the hero of the get-the-government-off- our-backs crowd. He's the pin-up boy of the flat-taxers and the business-knows-best crew.

None of this would have resonated in 18th-century Edinburgh and Glasgow, however. Smith was essentially a moral philosopher, and he viewed economics as a branch of that inquiry, as Buchan reminds us. Smith's vision of the ``invisible hand'' of the market grew out of a wider vision of a moral and just society.

Hit in 1759

Almost two decades before he published ``The Wealth of Nations,'' the book for which he is rightly remembered, Smith brought out ``The Theory of Moral Sentiments,'' to wide acclaim. That volume, which appeared in 1759, went through six editions in his lifetime and was translated into French and German.

``It was not eclipsed by `The Wealth of Nations' till the rise of political economy amid the battles and factory smoke of the Victorian age,'' Buchan writes.

To concentrate on Smith's largely forgotten first book may seem odd. It's like writing a biography of Paul McCartney that concentrates on his work as a solo artist and ignores his years as a Beatle. Buchan does have a valid point to make, though.

Most people these days accept that a free market is the best way to organize an economy. Yet many increasingly worry about whether it's a moral system. The cost to society is becoming increasingly clear at a time when some $1 trillion in dirty money is washing through Western banks.

A Just Society

So it's good to be reminded that Smith first started to question government meddling in the economy because he was interested in morality and freedom. He wasn't interested in creating a system that would make a few people fabulous wealthy, let alone a world marked by excessive, conspicuous consumption.

His purpose was to build a just society. When each human is allowed to earn his own living in his own way, Smith argued, he ultimately benefits the society around him. That's worth bearing in mind next time you hear an antiglobalist tell you that the free market is fundamentally immoral.

Our appreciation of that market began with a Scotsman imagining a more moral society. Although Smith will still be remembered primarily as an economist, Buchan is right to try to restore the philosophical Smith to the prominence he deserves.

``Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty'' is published by Profile (198 pages, 14.99 pounds).

(Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Matthew Lynn in London at matthewlynn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 11, 2006 22:58 EDT