PROFESSOR AT GLASGOW
1751-1764. _Aet._ 27-40
The Edinburgh lectures soon bore fruit. On the death of Mr. Loudon,
Professor of Logic in Glasgow College, in 1750, Smith was appointed to
the vacant chair, and so began that period of thirteen years of active
academic work which he always looked back upon, he tells us, "as by
far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most
honourable period" of his life. The appointment lay with the
Senatus--or, more strictly, with a section of the Senatus known as the
Faculty Professors--some of whom, of course, had been his own teachers
ten years before, and knew him well; and the minutes state that the
choice was unanimous. He was elected on the 9th of January 1751, and
was admitted to the office on the 16th, after reading a dissertation
_De origine idearum_, signing the Westminster Confession of Faith
before the Presbytery of Glasgow, and taking the usual oath _De
fideli_ to the University authorities; but he did not begin work till
the opening of the next session in October. His engagements in
Edinburgh did not permit of his undertaking his duties in Glasgow
earlier, and his classes were accordingly conducted, with the sanction
of the Senatus, by Dr. Hercules Lindsay, the Professor of
Jurisprudence, as his substitute, from the beginning of January till
the end of June. During this interval Smith went through to Glasgow
repeatedly to attend meetings of the Senatus, but he does not appear
to have given any lectures to the students. If he was relieved of his
duties in the summer, however, he worked double tides during the
winter, for besides the work of his own class, he undertook to carry
on at the same time the work of Professor Craigie of the Moral
Philosophy chair, who was laid aside by ill health, and indeed died a
few weeks after the commencement of the session. This double burden
was no doubt alleviated by the circumstance that he was able in both
the class-rooms to make very considerable use of the courses of
lectures he had already delivered in Edinburgh. By the traditional
distribution of academic subjects in the Scotch universities, the
province of the chair of Logic included rhetoric and belles-lettres,
and the province of the chair of Moral Philosophy included
jurisprudence and politics, and as Smith had lectured in Edinburgh
both on rhetoric and belles-lettres and on jurisprudence and politics,
he naturally took those branches for the subjects of his lectures this
first session at Glasgow. Professor John Millar, the author of the
_Historical View of the English Government_ and other works of great
merit, was a member of Smith's logic class that year, having been
induced, by the high reputation the new professor brought with him
from Edinburgh, to take out the class a second time, although he had
already completed his university curriculum; and Millar states that
most of the session was occupied with "the delivery of a system of
rhetoric and belles-lettres." In respect to the other class,
jurisprudence and politics were specially suggested to him as the
subjects for the year when he was asked to take Professor Craigie's
place. The proposal came through Professor Cullen, who was probably
Craigie's medical attendant, and Cullen suggested those particular
subjects as being the most likely to suit Smith's convenience and save
him labour, inasmuch as he had lectured on them already. Smith replied
that these were the subjects which it would be most agreeable to him
to take up.
EDINBURGH, _3rd Sept. 1751_.
DEAR SIR--I received yours this moment. I am very glad that
Mr. Craigie has at last resolved to go to Lisbon. I make no
doubt but he will soon receive all the benefit he expects or
can wish from the warmer climate. I shall, with great
pleasure, do what I can to relieve him of the burden of his
class. You mention natural jurisprudence and politics as the
parts of his lectures which it would be most agreeable for
me to take upon me to teach. I shall very willingly
undertake both. I shall be glad to know when he sets out for
Lisbon, because if it is not before the first of October I
would endeavour to see him before he goes, that I might
receive his advice about the plan I ought to follow. I would
pay great deference to it in everything, and would follow it
implicitly in this, as I shall consider myself as standing
in his place and representing him. If he goes before that
time I wish he would leave some directions for me, either
with you or with Mr. Leechman, were it only by word of
mouth.--I am, dear doctor, most faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.[27]
Smith would begin work at Glasgow on the 10th of October, and before
the middle of November he and Cullen were already deeply immersed in
quite a number of little schemes for the equipment of the College.
There was first of all the affair of the vacancy in the Moral
Philosophy chair, which was anticipated to occur immediately through
the death of Mr. Craigie--referred to in the following letter as "the
event we are afraid of." This vacancy Cullen and Smith were desirous
of seeing filled up by the translation of Smith from the Logic to the
Moral Philosophy chair, and the Principal (Dr. Neil Campbell) seems to
have concurred in that proposal, and to have mentioned Smith's name
with approbation to the Duke of Argyle, who, though without any power
over the appointment to any except the Crown chairs, took much
interest in, and was believed to exercise much influence over, the
appointment to all. This was the Duke Archibald--better known by his
earlier title of the Earl of Islay--who was often called the King of
Scotland, because he practically ruled the affairs of Scotland in the
first half of last century, very much as Dundas did in the second.
Smith seems to have gone through to Edinburgh to push his views with
the Duke, and to have waited on him and been introduced to him at his
levee.
Then there was the affair of Hume's candidature for the Logic chair,
contingent on Smith's appointment to the other. There was the affair
of the Principal's possible retirement, with, no doubt, some plan in
reserve for the reversion, probably in favour of Professor Leechman,
mentioned in the previous letter, who did in the event succeed to it.
Then there was Cullen's "own affair," which Smith was promoting in
Edinburgh through Lord Kames (then Mr. Home), and which probably
concerned a method of purifying salt Cullen had then invented, and
wanted to secure a premium for. At any rate, Lord Kames did speak to
the Duke of Argyle on this subject in Cullen's behalf a few months
later.
While immersed in this multiplicity of affairs Smith wrote Cullen the
following letter:--[28]
EDIN., _Tuesday, November 1751_.
DEAR SIR--I did not write to you on Saturday as I promised,
because I was every moment expecting Mr. Home to town. He is
not, however, yet come.
I should prefer David Hume to any man for the College, but I
am afraid the public would not be of my opinion, and the
interest of the society will oblige us to have some regard
to the opinion of the public. If the event, however, we are
afraid of should happen we can see how the public receives
it. From the particular knowledge I have of Mr. Elliot's
sentiments, I am pretty certain Mr. Lindsay must have
proposed it to him, not he to Mr. Lindsay. I am ever obliged
to you for your concern for my interest in that affair.
When I saw you at Edinburgh you talked to me of the
Principal's proposing to retire. I gave little attention to
it at that time, but upon further consideration should be
glad to listen to any proposal of that kind. The reasons of
my changing my opinion I shall tell you at meeting. I need
not recommend secrecy to you upon this head. Be so good as
to thank the Principal in my name for his kindness in
mentioning me to the Duke. I waited on him at his levee at
Edinburgh, when I was introduced to him by Mr. Lind, but it
seems he had forgot.
I can tell you nothing particular about your own affair more
than what I wrote you last till I see Mr. Home, whom I
expect every moment.--I am, most dear sir, ever yours,
A. SMITH.
The event they were afraid of happened on the 27th of November, and
Smith was, without any opposition, appointed Craigie's successor on
the 29th of April 1752. It would appear from this letter as if Cullen
had heard from his colleague, Professor Lindsay, of a possible rival
to Smith for that chair in the person of Mr. Elliot--no doubt Mr.
Gilbert Elliot, a man of brilliant parts and accomplishments, who
afterwards attained high political eminence as Sir Gilbert Elliot, but
who was at this time a young advocate at the Edinburgh bar, with no
liking for law and a great liking for letters and philosophy. Smith,
however, who was a personal friend of Elliot's, knew that the latter
had no such designs, and eventually his own candidature was unopposed.
But in anticipation of this result, the keenest contest was carried on
all winter over the election to the Logic chair, which he was to
leave. David Hume came forward as a candidate, and there is an
erroneous, though curiously well-supported tradition that Edmund Burke
was a candidate also. One of Burke's biographers, Bisset, states that
Burke actually applied for the post, but applied too late.[29] Another
of his biographers, Prior, says that Burke being in Scotland at the
time, took some steps for the place, but finding his chances hopeless,
withdrew;[30] while Professor Jardine, a subsequent occupier of the
chair himself, asserts that Burke was thought of by some of the
electors, but never really came forward.[31] But Smith, who was not
only the previous occupant of the office, but, as Professor of Moral
Philosophy, was one of the electors of his successor, stated
explicitly to Dugald Stewart (as Stewart wrote to Prior[32]) "that the
story was extremely current, but he knew of no evidence on which it
rested, and he suspected it took its rise entirely from an opinion
which he had himself expressed at Glasgow upon the publication of
Burke's book on the _Sublime and Beautiful_, that the author of that
book would be a great acquisition to the College if he would accept of
a chair." Had anything been known in Glasgow of Burke's candidature
for a chair there five years before, it would unquestionably be
recollected on the occasion of the publication of so notable a work,
but Burke's very name was so unfamiliar to the circle interested in
the election that when Hume first met him in London in 1759, he
mentions him in a letter to Smith as "a Mr. Burke, an Irish
gentleman who has written a very pretty book on the _Sublime and
Beautiful_."[33]
The interest of the contest is sufficiently great from the candidature
of one philosopher of the first rank, and to Smith himself--already
that philosopher's very close friend--it must have been engrossing. It
will be observed that in his letter to Cullen he expresses himself
with great caution on the subject. He is quite alive to the fact that
the appointment of a notorious sceptic like Hume might be so unpopular
with the Scottish public as to injure the interests of the University.
But when Hume came forward Cullen threw himself heart and soul into
his cause, as we know from Hume's own acknowledgments; and if Cullen
and Smith are found acting in concert at the initiation of the
candidature, it is not likely that Smith lagged behind Cullen in the
prosecution of the canvass, though nothing remains to give us any
decisive information on the point. Their exertions failed, however,
in consequence, Hume himself always believed, of the interference of
the Duke of Argyle, and the chair was given to a young licentiate of
the Church named Clow, who was at the time entirely unknown, and
indeed never afterwards established any manner of public reputation.
Smith's preference for the Moral Philosophy chair came mainly no doubt
from preference for the subjects he would be called upon to teach in
it, but the emoluments also seem to have been somewhat better, for
Smith was expressly required, as a condition of acceptance of the
office, to content himself until the 10th of October of that year (the
opening day of the new session) "with the salary and emoluments of his
present profession of Logic," even though he might be actually
admitted to the other professorship before that date. It must not be
supposed, however, that the emoluments of his new office were by any
means very lordly. They accrued partly from a moderate endowment and
partly from the fees paid by the students who attended the lectures--a
principle of academic payment which Smith always considered the best,
because it made the lecturer's income largely dependent on his
diligence and success in his work. The endowment was probably no more
than that of the Mathematical chair, and the endowment of the
Mathematical chair was £72 a year.[34] The fees probably never
exceeded £100, or even came up to that figure, for Dr. Thomas Reid,
Smith's successor in the Moral Philosophy chair, writes an Aberdeen
friend, after two years' experience of Glasgow, that he had more
students than Smith ever had, and had already touched £70 of fees, but
expected, when all the students arrived, to make £100 that
session.[35] The income from fees in the Scotch chairs in last century
seems to have been subject to considerable variations from session to
session. A bad harvest would sometimes tell seriously on the
attendance, and a great crisis like that of 1772, when the effects of
a succession of bad harvests were aggravated by ruinous mercantile
speculations, deprived Adam Ferguson in the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy
chair of half his usual income from fees. It may also be mentioned as
a curious circumstance that in those days a professor used to lose
regularly many pounds a year by light money. When Lord Brougham, as a
young student of chemistry in Edinburgh, paid his fee to Black, the
great chemist weighed the guineas carefully on a weighing machine he
had on the table before him, and observed in explanation, "I am
obliged to weigh when strange students come, there being a very large
number who bring light guineas, so that I should be defrauded of many
pounds every year if I did not act in self-defence against this class
of students."[36]
Smith kept an occasional boarder in his house, and would of course
make a trifle by that, but his regular income from his class work
would not exceed £170 a year. £170 a year, however, was a very
respectable income at a period when, as was the case in 1750, only
twenty-nine ministers in all broad Scotland had as much as £100 a
year, and the highest stipend in the Church was only £138.[37]
Besides his salary Smith had a house in the College--one of those new
manses in the Professors' Court which Glasgow people at the time
considered very grand; and though the circumstance is trifling, it is
a little curious that he changed his house three times in the course
of his thirteen years' professorship. It was the custom when a house
fell vacant for the professors to get their choice of it in the order
of their academical seniority. There seems to have been no compulsion
about the step, so that it is not beneath noticing that Smith should
in so short a term have elected to make the three removes which
proverbial wisdom deprecates. When his friend Cullen was translated
to Edinburgh in 1756, Smith, who was next in seniority, having been
made professor in Glasgow a few months after the eminent physician,
removed to Cullen's house; then he quitted this house in 1757 for the
house of Dr. Dick, Professor of Natural Philosophy, who died in that
year; and he left Dick's house in turn for Dr. Leechman's, on the
promotion of that divine to the Principalship in 1762. These houses
are now demolished with the rest of the old College of Glasgow, so
that we cannot mark the gradation of comfort that may have determined
these successive changes; and besides they may have been determined by
no positive preference of the economist himself, but by the desires of
his mother and his aunt, Miss Jane Douglas, who both lived with him in
Glasgow, and whose smallest wishes it was the highest ambition of his
affectionate nature to gratify.
In Smith's day there were only some 300 students at Glasgow College in
all, and the Moral Philosophy chair alone had never more than 80 or 90
in the public class and 20 in the private. The public class did not
mean a free class, as it does on the Continent; it really was the
dearer of the two, the fee in the private class being only a guinea,
while the fee of the public class was a guinea and a half. The public
class was the ordinary class taken for graduation and other purposes,
and obligatory by academic authority; the private was a special class,
undertaken, with the permission of the Senatus, for those who wished
to push the subject further; and to harmonise this account of them
with what has been previously said of the income Smith drew from fees,
it is necessary to explain that many of the students who attended
these classes paid no fees, according to a custom which still prevails
in Scotch universities, and by which one was considered a _civis_ of a
class he had attended for two years, and might thereafter attend it
whenever he chose without charge. Many in this way attended the Moral
Philosophy class four or five years, and among them, as Dr. Reid
informs us, quite a number of preachers and advanced students of
divinity and law, before whom, the worthy doctor confesses, he used to
stand in awe to speak without the most careful preparation.
The College session was then longer than it is now, extending from the
10th of October to the 10th of June, and the classes began at once
earlier in the morning and continued later at night. Smith commenced
his labours before daybreak by his public class from 7.30 to 8.30
A.M.; he then held at 11 A.M. an hour's examination on the lecture he
delivered in the morning, though to this examination only a third of
the students of the morning class were in the habit of coming; and he
met with his private class twice a week on a different subject at 12.
Besides these engagements Smith seems to have occasionally read for an
hour like a tutor with special pupils; at least one is led to infer so
much from the remarks of a former pupil, who, under the _nom de plume_
of Ascanius, writes his reminiscences of his old master to the editor
of the _Bee_ in June 1791. This writer says that he went to Glasgow
College after he had gone through the classes at St. Andrews,
Edinburgh, and even Oxford, in order that he might, "after the manner
of the ancients, walk in the porticoes of Glasgow with Smith and with
Millar, and be imbued with the principles of jurisprudence and law and
philosophy"; and then he adds: "I passed most of my time at Glasgow
with those two first-rate men, and Smith read private lectures to me
on jurisprudence, and accompanied them with his commentaries in
conversation, exercises which I hope will give a colour and a
substance to my sentiments and to my reason that will be eternal."
There is no difficulty in identifying this enthusiastic disciple with
the eccentric and bustling Earl of Buchan, the elder brother of Lord
Chancellor Erskine, and of the witty and greatly beloved Harry Erskine
of the Scotch bar, and the subject of the Duchess of Gordon's
well-known _mot_: "The wit of your lordship's family has come by the
mother, and been all settled on the younger branches." We know that
this Earl of Buchan was a contributor to the _Bee_ under various
fictitious signatures, because he has himself republished some of his
contributions, and we know that he attended Smith's class at Glasgow,
because he says so in a letter to Pinkerton, the historian, mentioning
having seen in Smith's library at that time a book of which Pinkerton
could not find a single copy remaining anywhere--the memoirs of
Lockhart of Lee, Cromwell's ambassador to France, which had been
suppressed (as the Earl had been told by his maternal uncle, Sir James
Steuart, the economist) at the instance of Lockhart, the famous
advocate, afterwards Lord Covington, because the family had turned
Jacobite, and disliked the association with the Commonwealth.[38] The
Earl gives the year of his attendance at Glasgow as 1760, but he must
have continued there more than one session, for he attended Millar's
lectures as well as Smith's, and Millar was not there till the session
1761-62; and it is on the whole most likely that this is the very
young nobleman whom Dr. Alexander Carlyle met in company with Smith at
a large supper party in April 1763, and concerning whom he mentions
that he himself whispered after a little to Smith that he wondered how
he could set this young man so high who appeared to be so foolish, and
Smith answered, "We know that perfectly, but he is the only lord in
our College."
It will be observed that Lord Buchan says Smith _read_ private
lectures to him. Smith's public lectures he was not accustomed to read
in any of his classes, but he seems to have found it more convenient
in teaching a single pupil to read them, and interpose oral comments
and illustrations as he went along. Others of Smith's old students
besides Lord Buchan express their obligations to the conversations
they were privileged to have with him. Dugald Stewart, Brougham
informs us, used to decline to see his students, because he found them
too disputatious, and he disliked disputing with them about the
correctness of the doctrines he taught. But Smith, by all accounts,
was extremely accessible, and was even in the habit of seeking out the
abler men among them, inviting them to his house, discussing with them
the subjects of his lectures or any other subject, and entering
sympathetically into their views and plans of life. John Millar,
having occasion to mention Smith's name in his _Historical View of the
English Government_, takes the opportunity to say: "I am happy to
acknowledge the obligations I feel myself under to this illustrious
philosopher by having at an early period of life had the benefit of
his lectures on the history of civil society, and enjoying his
unreserved conversation on the same subject."[39]
Millar, it may be added, was one of Smith's favourite pupils, and
after obtaining the chair of Jurisprudence in his old College, one of
his chief associates, and Smith held so high an opinion of Millar's
unique powers as a stimulating teacher that he sent his cousin, David
Douglas, to Glasgow College for no other purpose but to have the
advantage of the lectures and conversation of Millar. Jeffrey used to
say that the most bracing exercises a student in Glasgow underwent in
those days were the supper disputations at Professor Millar's house,
and that, able and learned as his works are, "they revealed nothing of
that magical vivacity which made his conversation and his lectures
still more full of delight than of instruction." Though he always
refused to accept Smith's doctrine of free trade, Millar was the most
effective and influential apostle of Liberalism in Scotland in that
age, and Jeffrey's father could never forgive himself for having put
his son to Glasgow, where, though he was strictly forbidden to enter
Millar's class-room, "the mere vicinity of Millar's influence" had
sent him back a Liberal.[40]
Now it is this interesting and famous lecturer from whom we obtain the
fullest account of Smith's qualities as a lecturer and of the
substance of his lectures.
"In the professorship of logic," he says, "to which Mr. Smith was
appointed on his first introduction into this University, he soon saw
the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed
by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to
studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the logic and
metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, after exhibiting a general
view of the powers of the mind, and explaining as much of the ancient
logic as was requisite to gratify curiosity with respect to an
artificial method of reasoning which had once occupied the universal
attention of the learned, he dedicated all the rest of his time to the
delivering of a system of rhetoric and belles-lettres."
In moral philosophy "his course of lectures," says Millar, "was
divided into four parts. The first contained natural theology, in
which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and
those principles of the human mind upon which religion is founded. The
second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly
of the doctrines which he afterwards published in his _Theory of Moral
Sentiments_. In the third part he treated at more length of that
branch of morality which relates to _justice_, and which, being
susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable
of a full and particular explanation.
"Upon this subject he followed the plan that seems to be suggested by
Montesquieu, endeavouring to trace the gradual progress of
jurisprudence, both public and private, from the rudest to the most
refined ages, and to point out the effects of those arts which
contribute to subsistence and to the accumulation of property, in
producing correspondent improvements or alterations in law and
government. This important branch of his labours he also intended to
give to the public; but this intention, which is mentioned in the
conclusion of the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, he did not live to
fulfil.
"In the last of his lectures he examined those political regulations
which are founded, not upon the principle of _justice_ but that of
_expediency_, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the
power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view he considered
the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to
ecclesiastical and military establishments. What he delivered on those
subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published
under the title of _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations_."[41]
Under the third part were no doubt included those lectures on the
history of civil society to which Millar expresses such deep
obligation, and of which another pupil of Smith's, Professor
Richardson of the Humanity chair in Glasgow--a minor poet of
considerable acceptance in his day--also speaks with lively gratitude,
particularly of those "on the nature of those political institutions
that succeeded the downfall of the Roman Empire, and which included an
historical account of the rise and progress of the most conspicuous
among the modern European governments."[42]
Richardson tells us, too, that Smith gave courses of lectures on
taste, on the history of philosophy, and on belles-lettres, apparently
continuing to utilise his old lectures on this last subject
occasionally even after his translation from the chair to which they
properly appertained, and that he was very fond of digressing into
literary criticism from his lectures on any subject. "Those who
received instruction from Dr. Smith," says Richardson, "will recollect
with much satisfaction many of those incidental and digressive
illustrations and discussions, not only in morality but in criticism,
which were delivered by him with animated and extemporaneous eloquence
as they were suggested in the course of question and answer. They
occurred likewise, with much display of learning and knowledge, in his
occasional explanations of those philosophical works, which were also
a very useful and important subject of examination in the class of
moral philosophy."[43]
His characteristics as a lecturer are thus described by Millar:--
"There was no situation in which the abilities of Mr. Smith
appeared to greater advantage than as a professor. In
delivering his lectures he trusted almost entirely to
extemporary elocution. His manner, though not graceful, was
plain and unaffected, and as he seemed to be always
interested in the subject, he never failed to interest his
hearers. Each discourse consisted commonly of several
distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to
prove and illustrate. These propositions when announced in
general terms had, from their extent, not unfrequently
something of the air of a paradox. In his attempts to
explain them, he often appeared at first not to be
sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some
hesitation. As he advanced, however, his manner became warm
and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. On points
susceptible of controversy you could easily discern that he
secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that
he was led upon this account to support them with greater
energy and vehemence. By the fulness and variety of his
illustrations the subject gradually swelled in his hands
and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious repetition
of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of
his audience, and to afford them pleasure as well as
instruction in following the same subject through all the
diversity of shades and aspects in which it was presented,
and afterwards in tracing it backwards to that original
proposition or general truth from which this beautiful train
of speculation had proceeded."[44]
One little peculiarity in his manner of lecturing was mentioned to the
late Archdeacon Sinclair by Archibald Alison the elder, apparently as
Alison heard it from Smith's own lips. He used to acknowledge that in
lecturing he was more dependent than most professors on the sympathy
of his hearers, and he would sometimes select one of his students, who
had more mobile and expressive features than the rest, as an
unsuspecting gauge of the extent to which he carried with him the
intelligence and interest of the class. "During one whole session," he
said, "a certain student with a plain but expressive countenance was
of great use to me in judging of my success. He sat conspicuously in
front of a pillar: I had him constantly under my eye. If he leant
forward to listen all was right, and I knew that I had the ear of my
class; but if he leant back in an attitude of listlessness I felt at
once that all was wrong, and that I must change either the subject or
the style of my address."[45]
The great majority of his students were young men preparing for the
Presbyterian ministry, a large contingent of them--quite a third of
the whole--being Irish dissenters who were unfairly excluded from the
university of their own country, but appear to have been no very
worthy accession to the University of Glasgow. We know of no word of
complaint against them from Smith, but they were a sore trial both to
Hutcheson and to Reid. Reid says he always felt in lecturing to those
"stupid Irish teagues" as St. Anthony must have felt when he preached
to the fishes,[46] and Hutcheson writes a friend in the north of
Ireland that his Irish students were far above taking any interest in
their work, and that although he had "five or six young gentlemen from
Edinburgh, men of fortune and fine genius, studying law, these
Irishmen thought them poor bookworms."[47] Smith had probably even
more of this stamp of law students than Hutcheson. Henry Erskine
attended his class on jurisprudence as well as his elder brother.
Boswell was there in 1759, and was made very proud by the certificate
he received from his professor at the close of the session, stating
that he, Mr. James Boswell, was "happily possessed of a facility of
manners."[48] After the publication of the _Theory of Moral
Sentiments_, students came even from a greater distance. Lord
Shelburne, who was an enthusiastic admirer of that work, sent his
younger brother, the Honourable Thomas Fitzmaurice, for a year or two
to study under Smith, before sending him to Oxford in 1761 to read law
with Sir William Blackstone. Mr. Fitzmaurice, who married the Countess
of Orkney, and is the progenitor of the present Orkney family, rose to
a considerable political position, and would have risen higher but for
falling into ill health in the prime of life and remaining a complete
invalid till his death in 1793, but he never forgot the years he spent
as a student in Smith's class and a boarder in Smith's house. Dr.
Currie, the well-known author of the _Life of Burns_, was his medical
attendant in his latter years, and Dr. Currie says his conversation
always turned back to his early life, and particularly to the pleasant
period he had spent under Smith's roof in Glasgow. Currie has not,
however, recorded any reminiscences of those conversations.[49] Two
Russian students came in 1762, and Smith had twice to give them an
advance of £20 apiece from the College funds, because their
remittances had got stopped by the war. Tronchin, the eminent
physician of Geneva, the friend of Voltaire, the enemy of Rousseau,
sent his son to Glasgow in 1761 purposely "to study under Mr. Smith,"
as we learn from a letter of introduction to Baron Mure which the
young man received before starting from Colonel Edmonston of Newton,
who was at the time resident in Geneva. It was of Tronchin Voltaire
said, "He is a great physician, he knows the mind," and he must have
formed a high idea of the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ to send his son
so far to attend the lectures of its author. It was this young man
who, on his way back from Glasgow, played a certain undesigned part in
originating the famous quarrel between Rousseau and Hume, of which we
shall have more to hear anon. He was living with Professor Rouet of
Glasgow, at Miss Elliot's lodging-house in London, when Hume brought
Rousseau there in January 1866, and the moment Rousseau saw the son of
his old enemy established in the house to which he was conducted, he
flew to the conclusion that young Tronchin was there as a spy, and
that the good and benevolent Hume was weaving some infernal web about
him.
Smith's popularity as a lecturer grew year by year. It was felt that
another and perhaps greater Hutcheson had risen in the College. Reid,
when he came to Glasgow to succeed him in 1764, wrote his friend Dr.
Skene in Aberdeen that there was a great spirit of inquiry abroad
among the young people in Glasgow--the best testimony that could be
rendered of the effect of Smith's teaching. It had taught the young
people to think. His opinions became the subjects of general
discussion, the branches he lectured on became fashionable in the
town, the sons of the wealthier citizens used to go to College to take
his class though they had no intention of completing a university
course, stucco busts of him appeared in the booksellers' windows, and
the very peculiarities of his voice and pronunciation received the
homage of imitation. One point alone caused a little--in certain
quarters not a little--shaking of heads, we are told by John Ramsay of
Ochtertyre. The distinguished professor was a friend of "Hume the
atheist"; he was himself ominously reticent on religious subjects; he
did not conduct a Sunday class on Christian evidences like Hutcheson;
he would often too be seen openly smiling during divine service in his
place in the College chapel (as in his absent way he might no doubt be
prone to do); and it is even stated by Ramsay that he petitioned the
Senatus on his first appointment in Glasgow to be relieved of the duty
of opening his class with prayer, and the petition was rejected; that
his opening prayers were always thought to "savour strongly of natural
religion"; that his lectures on natural theology were too flattering
to human pride, and induced "presumptuous striplings to draw an
unwarranted conclusion, viz. that the great truths of theology,
together with the duties which man owes to God and his neighbours, may
be discovered by the light of nature without any special
revelation,"[50] as if it were a fault to show religious truth to be
natural, for fear young men should believe it too easily. No record of
the alleged petition about the opening prayers and its refusal remains
in the College minutes, and the story is probably nothing but a morsel
of idle gossip unworthy of attention, except as an indication of the
atmosphere of jealous and censorious theological vigilance in which
Smith and his brother professors were then obliged to do their work.
In his lectures on jurisprudence and politics he had taught the
doctrine of free trade from the first, and not the least remarkable
result of his thirteen years' work in Glasgow was that before he left
he had practically converted that city to his views. Dugald Stewart
was explicitly informed by Mr. James Ritchie, one of the most eminent
Clyde merchants of that time, that Smith had, during his
professorship in Glasgow, made many of the leading men of the place
convinced proselytes of free trade principles.[51] Sir James Steuart
of Coltness, the well-known economist, used, after his return from his
long political exile in 1763, to take a great practical interest in
trying to enlighten his Glasgow neighbours on the economical problems
that were rising about them, and having embraced the dying cause in
economics as well as in politics, he sought hard to enlist them in
favour of protection, but he frankly confesses that he grew sick of
repeating arguments for protection to these "Glasgow theorists," as he
calls them, because he found that Smith had already succeeded in
persuading them completely in favour of a free importation of
corn.[52] Sir James Steuart was a most persuasive talker; Smith
himself said he understood Sir James's system better from his talk
than from his books,[3] and those Glasgow merchants must have obtained
from Smith's expositions a very clear and complete hold indeed of the
doctrines of commercial freedom, when Steuart failed to shake it, and
was fain to leave such theorists to their theories. Long before the
publication of the _Wealth of Nations_, therefore, the new light was
shining clearly from Smith's chair in Glasgow College, and winning its
first converts in the practical world. One can accordingly well
understand the emotion with which J.B. Say sat in this chair when he
visited Glasgow in 1815, and after a short prayer said with great
fervour, "Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace."[53]
Dugald Stewart further states, on the authority of gentlemen who were
students in the moral philosophy class at Glasgow in 1752 or 1753,
that Smith delivered so early as that lectures containing the
fundamental principles of the _Wealth of Nations_; and in 1755--the
year Cantillon's _Essai_ first saw the light, and the year before
Quesnay published his first economic writing--Smith was not only
expounding his system of natural liberty to his students, but publicly
asserting his claim to the authorship of that system in a Glasgow
Economic Society--perhaps the first economic club established
anywhere. The paper in which Smith vindicates this claim came somehow
into the possession of Dugald Stewart, and so escaped the fire to
which Smith committed all his other papers before his death, but it is
believed to have been destroyed by Stewart's son, very possibly after
his father's directions. For Stewart thought it would be improper to
publish the complete manuscript, because it would revive personal
differences which had better remain in oblivion, and consequently our
knowledge of its contents is confined to the few sentences which he
has thought right to quote as a valuable evidence of the progress of
Smith's political ideas at that very early period. It will be observed
that, as far as we can collect from so small a fragment of his
discourse, he presents the doctrine of natural liberty in a more
extreme form than it came to wear after twenty years more of thought
in the _Wealth of Nations_. Stewart says that many of the most
important opinions in the _Wealth of Nations_ are detailed in this
document, but he cites only the following:--
"Man is generally considered by statesmen and projectors as
the materials of a sort of political mechanics. Projectors
disturb nature in the course of her operations on human
affairs, and it requires no more than to leave her alone and
give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends that she may
establish her own designs.... Little else is required to
carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the
lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable
administration of justice; all the rest being brought about
by the natural course of things. All governments which
thwart this natural course, which force things into another
channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of
society at a particular point, are unnatural, and, to
support themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and
tyrannical.... A great part of the opinions enumerated in
this paper is treated of at length in some lectures which I
have still by me, and which were written in the hand of a
clerk who left my service six years ago. They have all of
them been the constant subjects of my lectures since I first
taught Mr. Craigie's class the first winter I spent in
Glasgow down to this day without any considerable
variations. They had all of them been the subjects of
lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter before I left
it, and I can adduce innumerable witnesses both from that
place and from this who will ascertain them sufficiently to
be mine."[54]
The distinction drawn in the last sentence between _that_ place,
Edinburgh, and _this_ place, shows that the paper was read to a
society in Glasgow. Smith was a member of two societies there, of
which I shall presently have something more to say, the Literary
Society and a society which we may call the Economic, because it met
for the discussion of economic subjects, though we do not know its
precise name, if it had any. Now this paper of Smith's was not read to
the Literary Society--at least, it is not included in the published
list of papers read by it--and we may therefore conclude that it was
read to the Economic Society.
Nothing is now known of the precise circumstances in which the paper
originated, except what Stewart tells us, that Smith "was anxious to
establish his exclusive right" to "certain leading principles both
political and literary," "in order to prevent the possibility of some
rival claims which he thought he had reason to apprehend, and to which
his situation as a professor, added to his unreserved communications
in private companies, rendered him peculiarly liable"; and that he
expressed himself "with a good deal of that honest and indignant
warmth which is perhaps unavoidable by a man who is conscious of the
purity of his intentions when he suspects that advantages have been
taken of the frankness of his temper." It would appear that some one,
who had got hold of Smith's ideas through attending his class or
frequenting his company, either had published them, or was believed to
be going to publish them as his own.
The writer of the obituary notice of Smith in the _Monthly Review_ for
1790 alleges that in this Glasgow period Smith lived in such constant
apprehension of being robbed of his ideas that, if he saw any of his
students take notes of his lectures, he would instantly stop him and
say, "I hate scribblers." But this is directly contradicted by the
account of Professor John Millar, who, as we have seen, was a student
in Smith's classes himself, and who expressly states both that the
permission to take notes was freely given by Smith to his students,
and that the privilege was the occasion of frequent abuse. "From the
permission given to students of taking notes," says Millar, "many
observations and opinions contained in these lectures (the lectures on
rhetoric and belles-lettres) have either been detailed in separate
dissertations or engrossed in general collections which have since
been given to the public." In those days manuscript copies of a
popular professor's lectures, transcribed from his students'
notebooks, were often kept for sale in the booksellers' shops. Blair's
lectures on rhetoric, for example, were for years in general
circulation in this intermediate state, and it was the publication of
his criticism on Addison, taken from one of the unauthorised
transcripts, in Kippis's _Biographia Britannica_, that at length
instigated Blair to give his lectures to the press himself. A
professor was thus always liable to have his unpublished thought
appropriated by another author without any acknowledgment at all, or
published in such an imperfect form that he would hardly care to
acknowledge it himself. If Smith, therefore, exhibited a jealousy over
his rights to his own thought, as has been suggested, Millar's
observation shows him to have had at any rate frequent cause; but
neither at that time of his life nor any other was he animated by an
undue or unreasonable jealousy of this sort such as he has sometimes
been accused of; and if in 1755 he took occasion to resent with
"honest and indignant warmth" a violation of his rights, there must
have been some special provocation.
Mr. James Bonar suggests that this manifesto of 1755 was directed
against Adam Ferguson, but that is not probable. Ferguson's name, it
is true, will readily occur in such a connection, because Dr. Carlyle
tells us that when he published his _History of Civil Society_ in 1767
Smith accused him of having borrowed some of his ideas without owning
them, and that Ferguson replied that he had borrowed nothing from
Smith, but much from some French source unnamed where Smith had been
before him. But, however this may have been in 1767, it is unlikely
that Ferguson was the occasion of offence in 1755. Up till that year
he was generally living abroad with the regiment of which he was
chaplain, and it is not probable that he had begun his _History_
before his return to Scotland, or that he had time between his return
and the composition of Smith's manifesto to do or project anything to
occasion such a remonstrance. Then he is found on the friendliest
footing with Smith in the years immediately following the manifesto,
and Stewart's allusion to the circumstances implies a graver breach
than could be healed so summarily. Besides, had Ferguson been the
cause of offence, Stewart would have probably avoided the subject
altogether in a paper to the Royal Society, of which Ferguson was
still an active member.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Thomson's _Life of Cullen_, i. 605.
[28] Thomson's _Life of Cullen_, i. 606.
[29] Bisset's _Burke_, i. 32.
[30] Prior's _Burke_, p. 38.
[31] _Outlines of the Philosophy of Education_, p. 23.
[32] Prior's _Life of Burke_, Bohn's ed. p. 38.
[33] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 55.
[34] _Caldwell Papers_, i. 170.
[35] Hamilton's _Reid_, p. 40.
[36] _Brougham's Life and Times_, i. 78.
[37] Chamberlayne's _Angliæ Notitia_ for 1750.
[38] Smith's copy of this book seems to have gone out of existence
like the others, for his cousin and heir, David Douglas, wrote Lord
Buchan in January 1792 that he had searched for it in Smith's library
without any success, and that though a catalogue of the library had
since then been made out, Lockhart's Memoirs was not contained in it.
Douglas's letter is in the Edinburgh University Library.
[39] Book II. chap. x.
[40] Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, p. 12.
[41] Stewart's _Works_, x. 12.
[42] Richardson's _Life of Arthur_. See _Arthur's Discourses_, p. 510.
[43] Richardson's _Life of Arthur_. See _Arthur's Discourses_, p. 508.
[44] Stewart's _Works_, x. 12.
[45] Sinclair's _Old Times and Distant Places_, p. 9.
[46] Hamilton's _Reid_, p. 43.
[47] M'Cosh, _Scottish Philosophy_, p. 66.
[48] Boswell's _Correspondence with Erskine_, p. 26.
[49] Currie's _Memoirs of James Currie, M.D._, ii. 317.
[50] Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, i. 462, 463.
[51] _Steuart's Works_, vi. 379.
[52] _Ibid._ vi. 378.
[53] Dr. Cleland's account of Glasgow in _New Statistical Account of
Scotland_, vi. 139.
[54] Stewart's _Works_, ed. Hamilton; x. 68.