When Scottish Sages of the Scottish Enlightenment Christened "Liberal"

Recommendable! 

Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) was right about the term (classical) liberalism was coined in Scotland! 

So was Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), who once said the enemies of liberalism would appropriate the term for themselves like the socialists did.

"... But the “liberal” christening was really kicked off by William Robertson in 1769, and in 1776, Adam Smith went all-in, in The Wealth of Nations. The political meaning was, essentially, a policy posture, premised on a stable, functional system of governmental authority. The policy posture is one of leaving people be, of “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way,” within the bounds of commutative justice. ...

in the words of J. A. Schumpeter, “as a supreme but unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate the label.” .."

From the abstract:

"The data from text digitization show that “liberal” acquired a sustained political signification for the first time around 1769: the liberal policy principles of Adam Smith and his associates. The bodies of evidence include:

(1) the non-occurrence in English prior to 1769 (with a few exceptions);

(2) the blossoming from 1769 of “liberal plan,” “liberal system,” “liberal principles,” “liberal policy,” etc.;

(3) the occurrence beginning in the 1770s of political uses of “liberal” in Parliament;

(4) the occurrence of the same in the Edinburgh Review, 1802 – 1824. The political adjective liberal came alive around 1769 and was sustained straight up to when the political nouns liberalism and liberal start up in the 1820s. The data from French, German, Italian, and Spanish confirm that Britain was the first to get to a political sense of “liberal.” Key authors are sampled."

When Scottish Sages Christened "Liberal" – Daniel Klein

“Liberal” as a Political Adjective (in English), 1769 – 1824