In the very valuable Real-World Economics Review, Thomas R. Wells analyses Adam Smith's views and goals by carefully considering not just Wealth of Nations (1776) but also Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).  Recovering Adam Smith's ethical economics.  Instead of advocating for laissez faire, a term Smith never used, Smith's target for reform was crony capitalism, which he argued was an unethical oppression of labor as well as a drag on creation of real wealth. Smith was not just concerned with the creation of wealth but also its equitable distribution.

Smith’s commitment to “equity” for the working class was behind the vehemence of his opposition to mercantilist (“business economics”) arguments for policies that would protect or promote the profits of producers and intermediaries. Smith saw such pro-business arguments—which arguably persist as the core of neoliberalism (Harvey 2007)—whether for direct subsidies or competition-restricting regulations, as an intellectually bankrupt and often morally corrupt rhetorical veil for what were actually “taxes” upon the poor (what we now call “rents”).3  Such taxes are unjust and outrageous because they violate fair play both in the deceptive rhetoric by which they are advanced and by harming the interests of one group in society (generally, the poor and voiceless) to further the interests of another (unsurprisingly, the rich and politically connected). Smith explicitly moralised the point, "To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects (WN IV.viii.30)".