AMONG GLASGOW FOLK
Smith was not only teacher in Glasgow, he was also learner, and the
conditions of time and place were most favourable, in many important
ways, for his instruction. Had he remained at Oxford, he would
probably never have been an economist; had he not spent so many of his
best years in Glasgow, he would never have been such an eminent one.
It was amid the thickening problems of the rising trade of the Clyde,
and the daily discussions they occasioned among the enterprising and
intelligent merchants of the town, that he grew into a great
economist.
It need scarce be said that the Glasgow of the middle of last century
was a very different city from the Glasgow of to-day. It was in size
and appearance a mere provincial town of 23,000 inhabitants. Broom
still grew on the Broomielaw; a few cobles were the only craft on the
river; and the rude wharf was the resort of idlers, watching the
fishermen on the opposite side cast for salmon, and draw up netfuls on
the green bank. The Clyde was not deepened till 1768. Before that the
whole tonnage dues at Glasgow were only eight pounds a year, and for
weeks together not a single vessel with a mast would be seen on the
water. St. Enoch Square was a private garden; Argyle Street an
ill-kept country road; and the town herd still went his rounds every
morning with his horn, calling the cattle from the Trongate and the
Saltmarket to their pasture on the common meadows in the now
densely-populated district of the Cowcaddens.
Glasgow in these its younger days struck every traveller chiefly for
its beauty. Mrs. Montagu thought it the most beautiful city in Great
Britain, and Defoe, a few years before, said it was "the cleanest and
beautifullest and best built city in Britain, London excepted." As
Mrs. Bellamy approached it on the occasion I have mentioned in order
to open the new theatre in 1764, she says "the magnificence of the
buildings and the beauty of the river ...elated her heart"; and Smith
himself, we know, once suffered for praising its charms. It was at a
London table, and Johnson was present, who, liking neither Smith nor
his Scotch city, cut him short by asking, "Pray, sir, have you seen
Brentford?" Boswell, who took a pride in Glasgow himself, calling it
"a beautiful city," afterwards expostulated with the doctor for this
rough interruption: "Now, sir," said he, "was not that rude?" The full
rudeness is only apparent when we remember that Brentford was in that
day a byword for dreariness and dirt--Thomson in the _Castle of
Indolence_ calls it "a town of mud." When Johnson visited Glasgow,
however, he joined the troop of its admirers himself, and Boswell took
the opportunity to put him then in mind of his question to Smith, and
whisper to him, "Don't you feel some remorse?"
But Glasgow had already begun its transition from the small provincial
to the great commercial capital, and was therefore at a stage of
development of special value to the philosophical observer. Though
still only a quiet but picturesque old place, nestling about the
Cathedral and the College and two fine but sleepy streets, in which
carriers built their haystacks out before their door, it was carrying
on a trade which was even then cosmopolitan. The ships of Glasgow were
in all the waters of the world, and its merchants had won the lead in
at least one important branch of commerce, the West India tobacco
trade, and were founding fresh industries every year with the
greatest possible enterprise. The prosperity of Glasgow is a fruit of
the Union which first opened the colonial markets to Scotch
merchandise, and enabled the merchants of the Clyde to profit by the
advantages of their natural situation for trading with the American
plantations. Before the middle of the century the Clyde had become the
chief European emporium for American tobacco, which foreign countries
were not then allowed to import directly, and three-fourths of the
tobacco was immediately on arrival transhipped by the Glasgow
merchants for the seaports of the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the
North Sea.
As they widened their connections abroad, they naturally developed
their industries at home. They founded the Smithfield ironworks, and
imported iron from Russia and Sweden to make hoes and spades for the
negroes of Maryland. They founded the Glasgow tannery in 1742, which
Pennant thought an amazing sight, and where they employed 300 men
making saddles and shoes for the plantations. They opened the
Pollokshaws linen print-field in 1742, copper and tin works in 1747,
the Delffield pottery in 1748. They began to manufacture carpets and
crape in 1759, silk in 1759, and leather gloves in 1763. They opened
the first Glasgow bank--the Ship--in 1750, and the second--the
Arms--in 1752. They first began to improve the navigation of the Clyde
by the Act of 1759; they built a dry dock at their harbour of Port
Glasgow in 1762; while in 1768 they deepened the Clyde up to the city,
and began (for this also was mainly their work) the canal to the Forth
for their trade with the Baltic. It was obvious, therefore, that this
was a period of unique commercial enterprise and expansion. We can
easily believe Gibson, the historian of Glasgow, when he states that
after 1750 "not a beggar was to be seen in the streets," and "the very
children were busy"; and we can as easily understand Smith when,
contrasting Glasgow and Edinburgh among other places, he says the
residence of a few spirited merchants is a much better thing for the
common people of a place than the residence of a court.
Now it was those spirited merchants who had then so much to do with
the making of Glasgow that had also something to do with the making of
Adam Smith. Plain business men of to-day sometimes smile at the
"Virginian Dons" and "tobacco lords" of last century as they picture
them gathering to the Glasgow Plainstanes at the hour of Change in the
glory of scarlet cloaks, cocked hats, and gold-headed canes, and the
plain citizens of that time all making way for their honours as they
passed. But there was much enlightenment and sagacity concealed under
that finery. Mrs. Montagu, who visited Glasgow in 1767, wrote Sir A.
Mitchell, the Ambassador, that she was more delighted with it than
with any other commercial town she had seen, because gain did not
usurp people's whole attention, but "the sciences, the arts, and the
love of agriculture had their share."[65] Their fortunes were small
compared with the present standard. Sir John Dalrymple, speaking of
three of the foremost merchants of Glasgow (one of them, John
Glassford, the richest man in the city), computes that they had a
quarter of a million between the three, and Dr. Reid, explaining the
anxiety caused in Glasgow by the American troubles in 1765, says
Glasgow owners possessed property in the American plantations
amounting to £400,000. But these figures meant large handling and
large dealings in those times, and perhaps more energy, mind, and
character than the bigger figures of the present day; and we are told
that commercial men in Glasgow still look back to John Glassford and
Andrew Cochrane as perhaps the greatest merchants the Clyde has seen.
Andrew Cochrane was Smith's particular friend among them, and Dr.
Carlyle tells that "Dr. Smith acknowledged his obligations to this
gentleman's information when he was collecting materials for his
_Wealth of Nations_; and the junior merchants who have flourished
since his time and extended their commerce far beyond what was then
dreamt of, confess with respectful remembrance that it was Andrew
Cochrane who first opened and enlarged their views."[66] Dr. Carlyle
informs us, moreover, that Cochrane founded a weekly club in the
"forties"--political economy club--of which "the express design was to
inquire into the nature and principles of trade in all its branches,
and to communicate knowledge and ideas on that subject to each other,"
and that Smith became a member of this club after coming to reside in
Glasgow. This was probably the first political economy club in the
world, for Carlyle was in Glasgow in 1743, and it is of that period he
speaks when he says, "I was not acquainted with Provost Cochrane at
this time, but I observed that the members of this society had the
highest admiration of his knowledge and talents."
Cochrane was indeed one of the remarkable men of that time. Smollett
describes him in _Humphrey Clinker_ as "one of the first sages of the
Scottish kingdom," and "a patriot of a truly Roman spirit." He was
Provost of Glasgow during the Rebellion, and while the Government and
the Horse Guards slumbered and dawdled, and let Prince Charlie march
from the Highlands to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh up into the heart
of England, Cochrane had already raised two regiments in Glasgow to
resist the invader, which, however, this same dawdling Government,
from mistaken suspicions of Scottish loyalty, refused to permit him to
arm. The Prince, on his return from England, actually occupied
Glasgow, and taxed it severely, but Cochrane's sagacious management
piloted the city through the crisis, so that it neither yielded to the
popular Prince's arts nor provoked him to hostilities; and, looking
back at these difficulties when he laid down the Provostship a few
years later, he said, "I thank my God that my magistracy has ended
without reproach." His correspondence, published by the Maitland Club,
contains some terse descriptions of the "prodigious slavery" he
underwent, "going through the great folks" in London day after day for
two months trying to recover from the Government some compensation for
the Prince's exactions. And it may be added that it was his banking
firm--Cochrane, Murdoch and Co., generally known, however, as the
Glasgow Arms Bank, because they printed the Glasgow arms on their
notes--that fell on the happy expedient of paying in sixpences when
the Bank of Scotland made the infamous attempt to "break" it in 1759
by first collecting its notes for some time, and then suddenly
presenting the whole number collected for immediate payment. The agent
of the Bank of Scotland presented £2893 of notes on the 14th of
December, and after thirty-four successive days' attendance he wrote
his employers that he had only received £1232, because "the partners
vied with each other in gaining time by miscounting and other low
arts, and when the partners became wearied or ashamed of the task,
their porter, a menial servant, would act the part of teller."[67]
Of the Political Economy Club, founded by this able man, we know
nothing except what Dr. Carlyle tells us, and the only other member of
it besides Smith and Cochrane whose name Carlyle mentions is Dr.
Wight, Professor of Ecclesiastical and Civil History. But it met once
a week all the thirteen years Smith resided in Glasgow, and must have
discussed many commercial problems during that time. We know, indeed,
some of the principal practical questions which were then agitating
the minds of Glasgow merchants, and may be sure those, at least, would
be among the questions discussed at the club. Some of them concerned
the removal of trade restrictions, but the restrictions which those
Glasgow merchants were anxious to remove were restrictions on the
import of raw materials for their manufactures, such as iron and linen
yarn, and manufacturers, of course, are not necessarily free-traders
because they want free import of raw materials. That was advocated as
strongly from the old mercantilist standpoint as it is now from the
free-trade one; it was merely sanctioning a little addition to our
imports in order to produce a much greater addition to our exports.
In 1750 we find Provost Cochrane in correspondence with Smith's
friend, James Oswald, M.P., concerting parliamentary action for the
entire removal of the import duty on American iron. The Glasgow
ironworks--the nailery, as it was called--with which Mr. Cochrane was
connected used at that time 400 tons of iron in the year, and the iron
had to be all imported at a high price from Russia and Sweden, because
the native ores of Scotland were not then discovered, and American
iron, by an iniquitous piece of preferential legislation in favour of
the English manufacturer, was allowed to come duty free into English
but not into Scotch seaports. Cochrane wants Oswald to get the law
amended so as to "allow bar iron from our colonies to be imported to
Scotland duty free." "It would," he says, "save our country very great
sums, and no way hurt the landed interest. It would lower the price of
iron, and consequently of all our manufactures, which would increase
the consumpt and sale; it would serve for ballast to our ships from
North America, and when tobacco is scarce, fill up part of the
tonnage; would increase our exports, and no way interfere with our
neighbours in the South."[68] That language might be held
indifferently by the mercantilist and the free-trader.
In advocating the abolition of the duty on foreign linen yarns, which
they succeeded in obtaining in 1756, the Glasgow merchants seem
certainly to have had no thought of free trade, or probably anything
else but their own obvious interest as manufacturers, for they never
dreamt of abolishing either the export bounty on home-made linen cloth
or of repealing the law of 1748, which gave their own Glasgow linen
factory a considerable lift, and which forbade the import of foreign
linen, and fined husbands for letting their wives wear it. Still the
discussion of these subjects would open up various points of view, and
it may be remembered that this duty on foreign linen yarns is one
which Smith himself, free-trader though he was, was against
abolishing, not out of any favour for the flax-growers, but for the
protection of the poor women scattered in the cottages of the kingdom
who made their livelihood by spinning yarn.
On the question of paper money we find Mr. Cochrane and Mr.
Glassford--both of whom were bankers as well as merchants--in
communication with Baron Mure and Sir James Steuart, the economist,
soon after Smith left Glasgow. Sir James would almost certainly be a
member of the club, because he resided in the neighbourhood, but as he
was only pardoned a few months before Smith resigned his chair, it is
improbable that the two economists ever met together at the club
meetings. But the questions the two leading merchants were then
discussing with Sir James would, no doubt, have been occasionally
subjects of conversation at the club during the time of Smith's
attendance. What, we find them asking, are the effects of paper money
on prices? on the currency? on the exchanges with other countries?
What was the effect of small notes? what of notes not payable on
demand? They differed on various points. For example, Glassford would
let the banks issue notes for any sums they liked, and had no
objection to the small ten-shilling and five-shilling notes which were
then common. Cochrane would abolish all notes for less than a
pound,[69] and Smith--at least in 1776--would abolish all notes less
than five pounds.[70] But all alike had a firm grasp of the true
nature and operation of money.
Another society of which Smith was a member, and indeed a founder,
was the Literary Society of Glasgow. It was a general debating society
composed mainly of professors in the University--Cullen, Black, Wilson
the astronomer; Robert Simson, Leechman the divinity professor and
principal; Millar, and indeed nearly the whole Senatus; with a few
merchants or country gentlemen of literary tastes such as William
Craufurd, the friend of Hamilton of Bangour; William Mure of Caldwell,
M.P. for Renfrewshire; Sir John Dalrymple, the historian, who was a
proprietor in the West country; John Callander of Craigforth, the
antiquary; Thomas Miller, Town Clerk of Glasgow, and afterwards Lord
Justice-Clerk of Scotland; Robert Foulis, the printer; James Watt, who
said he derived much benefit from it; Robert Bogle of Shettleston, the
promoter of the theatre already mentioned; David Hume, and the Earl of
Buchan, elected while residing as a student in 1762.
The Literary Society was founded in 1752, and met every Thursday
evening from November to May at half-past six. Its minutes are
probably still in existence somewhere, but a few extracts from them
have been published by the Maitland Club,[71] and from them we learn
that Smith was one of the first contributors to its proceedings. Early
in its first session--on the 23rd of January 1753--Professor Adam
Smith is stated to have read an account of some of Mr. David Hume's
Essays on Commerce. These essays had then just appeared; and they had
probably been seen by Smith before their publication, for in September
1752 Hume writes Smith asking him for any corrections he had to
suggest on the old edition of the Political Essays with which the
Commercial Essays were incorporated. We have seen Hume submitting one
of these Commercial Essays in 1750 to Oswald and Mure, and when we
find him in 1752 asking for suggestions from Smith on the essays
already printed, we may safely infer that he had also asked and
received suggestions on the new essays which had never been published.
The Maitland Club volume gives us no information about the papers read
in this society after the first six months, except those read by
Foulis, but no doubt Smith read other papers in the remaining ten
years of his connection with the society. Its debates were often very
keen; the metaphysical and theological combats between Professor
Millar--a most brilliant debater--and Dr. Reid, the father of the
common-sense philosophy, were famous in their day; and on one occasion
tradition informs us that Smith engaged in a strenuous discussion on
some subject for a whole evening against the entire assembly, and,
having lost his point by an overwhelming majority, was overheard
muttering to himself, "Convicted but not convinced."[72]
After their high controversies in the Literary Society and their
keener but less noble contentions in the Senate Hall, the Glasgow
professors used to unbend their bows again in the simple
convivialities of "Mr. Robin Simson's Club." Mr. Robin Simson was the
venerable Professor of Mathematics, equally celebrated and beloved,
known through all the world for his rediscovery of the porisms of
Euclid, but in Glasgow College--whose bounds he rarely quitted--the
delight of all hearts for the warmth, breadth, and uprightness of his
character, for the charming simplicity of his manner, and the richness
of his weighty and sparkling conversation. It was his impressions of
Simson that first gave Smith the idea that mathematicians possessed a
specific amiability and happiness of disposition which placed them
above the jealousies and vanities and intrigues of the lower world.
For fifty years Simson's life was spent almost entirely within the two
quadrangles of Glasgow College; between the rooms he worked and slept
in, the tavern at the gate, where he ate his meals, and the College
gardens, where he took his daily walk of a fixed number of hundred
paces, of which, according to some well-known anecdotes, he always
kept count as he went, even under the difficulties of interruption.
Mr. Robin, who was unmarried, never went into general society, but
after his geometrical labours were over finished the day with a rubber
of whist in the tavern at the College gate. Here one or another of the
professors used to join him, and the little circle eventually ripened
into a regular club, which met for supper at this tavern every Friday
evening, and went out to Anderston for dinner on Saturday. It was then
known as the Anderston Club, as well as by its former designation from
the name of its founder. Anderston was at that time quite a country
village. It was very soon afterwards made busy enough with the cotton
factory of James Monteith, but at this time Tames Monteith's father
was using the spot as a market garden. It contained, however, a cosy
little "change-house," capable of providing the simple dinner then in
vogue. The dinner consisted of only one course. Mr. M'George says the
first dinner of two courses ever given in Glasgow was given in 1786;
and Principal M'Cormick of St. Andrews, writing Dr. Carlyle about that
date, praises the dinner-parties of St. Andrews to the skies, but says
nobody gave two courses except Mrs. Prebendary Berkeley, and Mrs.
Prebendary Berkeley was the daughter-in-law of a bishop. The course at
the Anderston dinner, moreover, consisted every week of the same dish;
it was invariably chicken-broth, which Smollett classes with haggis,
singed sheepshead, fish and sauce, and minced collops, as one of the
five national dishes of Scotland. He describes it as "a very simple
preparation enriched with eggs in such a manner as to give the air of
a spoiled fricassee"; but adds that "notwithstanding its appearance,
it is very delicate and nourishing." The chicken-broth was accompanied
with a tankard of sound claret, and then the cloth was removed for
whist and a bowl of punch. At whist Smith was not considered an
eligible partner, for, says Ramsay of Ochtertyre, if an idea struck
him in the middle of the game he "either renounced or neglected to
call,"[73] and he must have in this way given much provocation to the
amiability of Simson, who, though as absent-minded as Smith ever was
at common seasons, was always keenly on the alert at cards, and could
never quite forgive a slip of his partner in the game. After cards the
rest of the evening was spent in cheerful talk or song, in which again
Simson was ever the leading spirit. He used to sing Greek odes set to
modern airs, which the members never tired of hearing again, for he
had a fine voice and threw his soul into the rendering. Professor
Robison of Edinburgh, who was one of his students, twice heard him--no
doubt at this club, for Simson never went anywhere else--sing a Latin
hymn to the Divine Geometer, apparently of his own making, and the
tears stood in the worthy old gentleman's eyes with the emotion he put
into the singing of it. His conversation is said to have been
remarkably animated and various, for he knew most other subjects
nearly as well as he did mathematics. He was always full of hard
problems suggested by his studies of them, and he threw into the
discussion much whimsical humour and many well-told anecdotes. The
only subject debarred was religion. Professor Traill says any attempt
to introduce that peace-breaking subject in the club was checked with
gravity and decision. Simson was invariably chairman, and so much of
the life of the club came from his presence that when he died in 1768
the club died too.
Three at least of the younger men who shared the simple pleasures of
this homely Anderston board--Adam Smith, Joseph Black, and James
Watt--were to exert as important effects on the progress of mankind as
any men of their generation. Watt specially mentions Smith as one of
the principal figures of the club, and says their conversation,
"besides the usual subjects with young men, turned principally on
literary topics, religion, morality, belles-lettres, etc., and to this
conversation my mind owed its first bias towards such subjects in
which they were all my superiors, I never having attended a college,
and being then but a mechanic."[74] According to this account religion
was not proscribed, but Professor Traill's assertion is so explicit
that probably Watt's recollection errs. It is, however, another sign
of the liberal spirit that then animated these Glasgow professors to
find them welcoming on a footing of perfect equality one who, as he
says, was then only a mechanic, but whose mental worth they had the
sense to recognise. Dr. Carlyle, who was invited by Simson to join the
club in 1743, says the two chief spirits in it then were Hercules
Lindsay, the Professor of Law, and James Moor, the Professor of Greek,
both of whom were still members in Smith's time. Lindsay, who, it will
be remembered, acted as Smith's substitute in the logic class, was a
man of force and independence, who had suffered much abuse from the
Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh for giving up the old practice of
delivering his lectures in Latin, and refusing to return to it. Moor
was the general editor of the famous editions of the classics printed
by his brother-in-law, Robert Foulis, a man, says Dugald Stewart, of
"a gaiety and levity foreign to this climate," much addicted to
punning, and noted for his gift of ready repartee. He was always
smartly dressed and powdered, and one day as he was passing on the
Plainstanes he overheard two young military officers observe one to
the other, "He smells strongly of powder." "Don't be alarmed, my young
soldier," said Moor, turning round on the speaker, "it is not
gunpowder." A great promoter of the merriment of the club was Dr.
Thomas Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy, the grandfather of Sir William,
the metaphysician, who is thus described in some verses by Dr. John
Moore, the author of _Zelucco_--
He who leads up the van is stout Thomas the tall,
Who can make us all laugh, though he laughs at us all;
But _entre nous_, Tom, you and I, if you please,
Must take care not to laugh ourselves out of our fees.
Then we remember what Jeffrey says of "the magical vivacity" of the
conversation of Professor John Millar.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Add. MSS., 6856.
[66] Carlyle's _Autobiography_, p. 73.
[67] Fleming's _Scottish Banking_, p. 53.
[68] Oswald's _Correspondence_, p. 229.
[69] _Caldwell Papers_, ii. 3.
[70] _Wealth of Nations_, Book II. chap. ii.
[71] _Notices and Documents illustrative of the Literary History of
Glasgow_, p. 132.
[72] Strang's _Clubs of Glasgow_, 2nd ed. p. 314.
[73] Ramsay's _Scotland and Scotsmen in Eighteenth Century_, i. 468.
[74] Smiles's _Lives of Boulton and Watt_, p. 112.