EDINBURGH ACTIVITIES
During his residence in Glasgow Smith continued to maintain intimate
relations with his old friends in Edinburgh. He often ran through by
coach to visit them, though before the road was improved it took
thirteen hours to make the journey; he spent among them most part of
many of his successive vacations; and he took an active share, along
with them, in promoting some of those projects of literary,
scientific, and social improvement with which Scotland was then rife.
His patron, Henry Home, had in 1752 been raised to the bench as Lord
Kames, and was devoting his new-found leisure to those works of
criticism and speculation which soon gave him European fame. David
Hume, after his defeat at Glasgow, had settled for a time into the
modest post of librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, and was writing
his _History of England_ in his dim apartments in the Canongate. Adam
Ferguson, who threw up his clerical calling in 1754, and wrote Smith
from Groningen to give him "clerical titles" no more, for he was "a
downright layman," came to Edinburgh, and was made Hume's successor in
the Advocates' Library in 1757 and professor in the University in
1759. Robertson did not live in Edinburgh till 1758, but he used to
come to town every week with his neighbour John Home before the latter
left Scotland in 1757, and they held late sittings with Hume and the
other men of letters in the evening. Gilbert Elliot entered
Parliament in 1754, but was always back during the recess with news of
men and things in the capital. The two Dalrymples--Sir David of
Hailes, and Sir John of Cousland--were toiling at their respective
histories, and both were personal friends of Smith's; while another,
of whom Smith was particularly fond--Wilkie, the eccentric author of
the _Epigoniad_--was living a few miles out as minister of the parish
of Ratho. Wilkie always said that Smith had far more originality and
invention than Hume, and that while Hume had only industry and
judgment, Smith had industry and genius. His mind was at least the
more constructive of the two. A remark of Smith's about Wilkie has
also been preserved, and though it is of no importance, it may be
repeated. Quoting Lord Elibank, he said that whether it was in learned
company or unlearned, wherever Wilkie's name was mentioned it was
never dropped soon, for everybody had much to say about him.[75] But
that was probably due to his oddities as much as anything else. Wilkie
used to plough his own glebe with his own hands in the ordinary
ploughman's dress, and it was he who was the occasion of the joke
played on Dr. Roebuck, the chemist, by a Scotch friend, who said to
him as they were passing Ratho glebe that the parish schools of
Scotland had given almost every peasant a knowledge of the classics,
and added, "Here, for example, is a man working in the field who is a
good illustration of that training; let us speak with him." Roebuck
made some observation about agriculture. "Yes, sir," said the
ploughman, "but in Sicily they had a different method," and he quoted
Theocritus, to Roebuck's great astonishment.
Among Smith's chief Edinburgh friends at this period was one of his
former pupils, William Johnstone--son of Sir James Johnstone of
Westerhall, and nephew of Lord Elibank--who was then practising as an
advocate at the Scotch bar, but ultimately went into Parliament,
married the greatest heiress of the time, Miss Pulteney, niece of the
Earl of Bath, and long filled an honoured and influential place in
public life as Sir William Pulteney. He was, as even Wraxall admits, a
man of "masculine sense" and "independent as well as upright"
character, and he devoted special attention to all economic and
financial questions. It was Pulteney who in his speech on the
suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England in 1797--in which
he proposed the establishment of another bank--quoted from some
unknown source the memorable saying which is generally repeated as if
it were his own, that Smith "would persuade the present generation and
govern the next." He quoted the words as something that had been "well
said." Between him and Smith there prevailed a warm and affectionate
friendship for more than forty years, and we shall have occasion again
to mention his name. But I allude to him at present because a letter
still exists which was given him by Smith at this period to introduce
him, during a short stay he made in London, to James Oswald, then
newly appointed to office at the Board of Trade. This is the only
letter that happens to be preserved of all the correspondence carried
on by Smith with Oswald, and while both the occasion of it and its
substance reveal the footing of personal intimacy on which they stood,
its ceremonious opening and ending indicate something of the reverence
and gratitude of the client to the patron:--
SIR--This will be delivered to you by Mr. William Johnstone,
son of Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, a young gentleman
whom I have known intimately these four years, and of whose
discretion, good temper, sincerity, and honour I have had
during all that time frequent proofs. You will find in him
too, if you come to know him better, some qualities which
from real and unaffected modesty he does not at first
discover; a refinement and depth of observation and an
accuracy of judgment, joined to a natural delicacy of
sentiment, as much improved as study and the narrow sphere
of acquaintance this country affords can improve it. He had,
first when I knew him, a good deal of vivacity and humour,
but he has studied them away. He is an advocate; and though
I am sensible of the folly of prophesying with regard to the
future fortune of so young a man, yet I could almost venture
to foretell that if he lives he will be eminent in that
profession. He has, I think, every quality that ought to
forward, and not one that should obstruct his progress,
modesty and sincerity excepted, and these, it is to be
hoped, experience and a better sense of things may in part
cure him of. I do not, I assure you, exaggerate knowingly,
but could pawn my honour upon the truth of every article.
You will find him, I imagine, a young gentleman of solid,
substantial (not flashy) abilities and worth. Private
business obliges him to spend some time in London. He would
beg to be allowed the privilege of waiting on you sometimes,
to receive your advice how he may employ his time there in
the manner that will tend most to his real and lasting
improvement.
I am sensible how much I presume upon your indulgence in
giving you this trouble; but as it is to serve and comply
with a person for whom I have the most entire friendship, I
know you will excuse me though guilty of an indiscretion; at
least if you do not, you will not judge others as you would
desire to be judged yourself; for I am very sure a like
motive would carry you to be guilty of a greater.
I would have waited on you when you was last in Scotland had
the College allowed me three days' vacation; and it gave me
real uneasiness that I should be in the same country with
you, and not have the pleasure of seeing you. Believe it, no
man can more rejoice at your late success,[76] or at
whatever else tends to your honour and prosperity, than
does, Sir, your ever obliged and very humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.
Glasgow, _19th January 1752_, N.S.[77]
Pulteney abandoned the law in which Smith prophesied eminence for him,
but he was happily not cured entirely of his sincerity by his
subsequent experience, for it was greatly from that quality that he
derived the weight he enjoyed in the House of Commons. His
contemporary in Parliament, Sir John Sinclair, says Pulteney's
influence arose from the fact that he was known to be a man who never
gave a vote he did not in his heart believe to be right. Having no
taste for display, he lived when he had £20,000 a year about as simply
as he did when he had only £200, and on that account he is sometimes
accused of avarice, though he was constantly doing acts of signal
liberality.
Smith's chief friend in Edinburgh was David Hume. Though their first
relations were begun apparently in 1739, they could not have met much
personally before Smith's settlement in Glasgow. For when Smith came
to Edinburgh in 1748 Hume was abroad as secretary to General St. Clair
in the Embassy at Vienna and Turin, and though he left this post in
1749, he remained for the next two years at Ninewells, his father's
place in Berwickshire, and only settled in Edinburgh again just as
Smith was removing to Glasgow. He would no doubt visit town
occasionally, however, and before Smith was a year in Glasgow he had
already entered on that correspondence with the elder philosopher
which, beginning with the respectful "dear sir," grew shortly into the
warmer style of "my dearest friend" as their memorable and Roman
friendship ripened. Hume never paid Smith a visit in Glasgow, though
he had often promised to do so, but Smith in his runs to Edinburgh
spent always more and more of his time with Hume, and latterly at any
rate made Hume's house his regular Edinburgh home.
In 1752 Hume had already taken Smith as one of his literary
counsellors, and consulted him about the new edition of his _Essays,
Moral and Political_, and his historical projects, and I may be
permitted here and afterwards to quote parts of Hume's letters which
throw any light on Smith's opinions or movements.
On the 24th of September 1752 he writes--
DEAR SIR--I confess I was once of the same opinion with you,
and thought that the best period to begin an English History
was about Henry the Seventh, but you will please to observe
that the change which then happened in public affairs was
very insensible, and did not display its influence for many
years afterwards.... I am just now diverted for the moment
by correcting my _Essays, Moral and Political_ for a new
edition. If anything occur to you to be inserted or
retrenched, I shall be obliged if you offer the hint. In
case you should not have the last edition by you I shall
send you a copy of it.... I had almost lost your letter by
its being wrong directed. I received it late, which was the
reason you got not sooner a copy of _Joannes Magnus_.[78]
On the 17th of December 1754 Hume gives Smith an account of his
quarrel with the Faculty of Advocates, and his resolution to stay as
librarian after all, for the sake of the use of the books, which he
cannot do without, but to give Blacklock, the blind poet, a bond of
annuity for the salary. Three weeks later he writes again, and as the
letter mentions Smith's views on some historical subjects, it may be
quoted:--
EDINBURGH, _9th January 1755_.
DEAR SIR--I beg you to make my compliments to the Society,
and to take the fault on yourself if I have not executed my
duty, and sent them this time my anniversary paper. Had I
got a week's warning I should have been able to have
supplied them. I should willingly have sent some sheets of
the History of the Commonwealth or Protectorship, but they
are all of them out of my hand at present, and I have not
been able to recall them.[79] I think you are extremely in
the right that the Parliament's bigotry has nothing in
common with Hiero's generosity. They were themselves violent
persecutors at home to the utmost of their power. Besides,
the Huguenots in France were not persecuted; they were
really seditious, turbulent people, whom their king was not
able to reduce to obedience. The French persecutions did not
begin till sixty years after.
Your objection to the Irish massacre is just, but falls not
on the execution but the subject. Had I been to describe the
massacre of Paris I should not have fallen into that fault,
but in the Irish massacre no single eminent man fell, or by
a remarkable death. If the elocution of the whole chapter be
blamable, it is because my conceptions laboured most to
start an idea of my subject, which is there the most
important, but that misfortune is not unusual.--I am,
etc.[80]
In 1752 Smith was chosen a member of the Philosophical Society of
Edinburgh, which, after an interregnum caused by the rebellion, was
revived in that year, with David Hume for Secretary, and which was
eventually merged in the Royal Society in 1784. But we know of no part
he took, if he took any, in its proceedings. Of the Rankenian Society,
again--the famous old club in Ranken's Coffee-house, to which Colin
Maclaurin and other eminent men belonged, and some of whose members
carried on a philosophical controversy with Berkeley, and, if we can
believe Ramsay of Ochtertyre, were pressed by the good bishop to
accompany him in his Utopian mission to Bermuda--Smith was never even
a member, though it survived till 1774. But he took a principal part
in founding a third society in 1754, which far eclipsed either of
these--at least for a time--in _éclat_, and has left a more celebrated
name, the Select Society.
The Select Society was established in imitation of the academies which
were then common in the larger towns of France, and was partly a
debating society for the discussion of topics of the day, and partly a
patriotic society for the promotion of the arts, sciences, and
manufactures of Scotland. The idea was first mooted by Allan Ramsay,
the painter, who had travelled in France as long ago as 1739, with
James Oswald, M.P., and was struck with some of the French
institutions. Smith was one of the first of Ramsay's friends to be
consulted about the suggestion, and threw himself so heartily into it
that when the painter announced his first formal meeting for the
purpose on the 23rd of May 1754, Smith was not only one of the fifteen
persons present, but was entrusted with the duty of explaining the
object of the meeting and the nature of the proposed institution. Dr.
A. Carlyle, who was present, says this was the only occasion he ever
heard Smith make anything in the nature of a speech, and he was but
little impressed with Smith's powers as a public speaker. His voice
was harsh, and his enunciation thick, approaching even to
stammering.[81] Of course many excellent speakers often stutter much
in making a simple business explanation which they are composing as
they go along, and Smith always stuttered and hesitated a deal for the
first quarter of an hour, even in his class lectures, though his
elocution grew free and animated, and often powerful, as he warmed to
his task.
The Society was established and met with the most rapid and remarkable
success. The fifteen original members soon grew to a hundred and
thirty, and men of the highest rank as well as literary name flocked
to join it. Kames and Monboddo, Robertson and Ferguson and Hume,
Carlyle and John Home, Blair and Wilkie and Wallace, the statistician;
Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller, the future heads of the Court of
Session; the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton,
Rosebery, Erroll, Aboyne, Cassilis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale;
Lords Elibank, Garlies, Gray, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam, the
architect; Dr. Cullen, John Coutts, the banker and member for the
city; Charles Townshend, the witty statesman; and a throng of all that
was distinguished in the country, were enrolled as members, and, what
is more, frequented its meetings. It met every Friday evening from six
to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates' Library, but when that
became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in
a room hired from the Mason Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and
its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers--men like
Wedderburn and Robertson--took the chief part, became speedily famous
over all Scotland as intellectual displays to which neither the
General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show
anything to rival. Hume wrote in 1755 to Allan Ramsay, who had by that
time gone to settle in Rome, that the Select Society "has grown to be
a national concern. Young and old, noble and ignoble, witty and dull,
laity and clergy, all the world are ambitious of a place amongst us,
and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates as if we
were to choose a member of Parliament." He goes on to say that "our
young friend Wedderburn has acquired a great character by the
appearance he has made," and that Wilkie, the minister, "has turned up
from obscurity and become a very fashionable man, as he is indeed a
very singular one. Monboddo's oddities divert, Sir David's (Lord
Hailes) zeal entertains, Jack Dalrymple's (Sir John of the _Memoirs_)
rhetoric interests. The long drawling speakers have found out their
want of talents and rise seldomer. In short, the House of Commons is
less the object of general curiosity to London than the Select Society
is to Edinburgh. The 'Robin Hood,' the 'Devil,' and all other speaking
societies are ignoble in comparison."[82]
At the second regular meeting, which was held on the 19th of June
1754, Mr. Adam Smith was Præses, and gave out the subjects for debate
on the following meeting night: (1) Whether a general naturalisation
of foreign Protestantism would be advantageous to Britain; and (2)
whether bounties on the exportation of corn be advantageous to trade
and manufactures as well as to agriculture.[83] Lord Campbell in
mentioning this circumstance makes it appear as if Smith chose the
latter subject of his own motion, in accordance with a rule of the
society whereby the chairman of one meeting selected the subject for
debate at the next meeting; and it would have been a not uninteresting
circumstance if it were true, for it would show the line his ideas
were taking at that early period of his career; but as a matter of
fact the rule in question was not adopted for some time after the
second meeting, and it is distinctly mentioned in the minutes that on
this particular occasion the Præses "declared before he left the chair
the questions that were agreed upon by the majority of the meeting to
be the subject of next night's debate."[84] It is quite possible, of
course, that the subjects may have been of Smith's suggestion, but
that can now only be matter of conjecture. Indeed, whether it be due
to his influence or whether it arose merely from a general current of
interest moving in that direction at the time, the subjects, discussed
by this society were very largely economic; so much so that in a
selection of them published by the _Scots Magazine_ in 1757 every one
partakes of that character. "What are the advantages to the public and
the State from grazing? what from corn lands? and what ought to be
most encouraged in this country? Whether great or small farms are most
advantageous to the country? What are the most proper measures for a
gentleman to promote industry on his own estate? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of gentlemen of estate being farmers?
What is the best and most proper duration of leases of land in
Scotland? What prestations beside the proper tack-duty tenants ought
to be obliged to pay with respect to carriages and other services,
planting and preserving trees, maintaining enclosures and houses,
working freestone, limestone, coal, or minerals, making enclosures,
straightening marches, carrying off superfluous water to other
grounds, and forming drains? and what restrictions they should be put
under with respect to cottars, live stock on the farm, winter herding,
ploughing the ground, selling manure, straw, hay, or corn, thirlage to
mills, smiths or tradesmen employed on business extrinsic to the farm,
subsetting land, granting assignations of leases, and removals at the
expiration of leases? What proportion of the produce of lands should
be paid as rent to the master? In what circumstances the rents of
lands should be paid in money? in what in kind? and in what time they
should be paid? Whether corn should be sold by measure or by weight?
What is the best method of getting public highways made and repaired,
whether by a turnpike law, as in many places in Great Britain, by
county or parish work, by a tax, or by what other method? What is the
best and most equal way of hiring and contracting servants? and what
is the most proper method to abolish the practice of giving of
vails?"[85] The society had what may be termed a special agricultural
branch, to which I shall presently refer, and which met once a month
and discussed chiefly questions of husbandry and land management; and
the above list of subjects looks, from its almost exclusively agrarian
character, as if it had been rather the business of this branch of the
society merely than of the society as a whole. Still the same causes
that made rural economy predominate in the monthly work of the branch
would give it a large place in the weekly discussions of the parent
association. The members were largely connected with the landed
interest, and agricultural improvement was then on the order of the
day.
In this society accordingly, which Smith attended very frequently,
though he does not appear to have spoken in the debates, he had with
respect to agrarian problems precisely what he had in the economic
club of Glasgow with respect to commercial problems, the best
opportunities of hearing them discussed at first hand by those who
were practically most conversant with the subjects in all their
details. Of course the society sometimes discussed questions of
literature or art, or familiar old historical controversies, such as
whether Brutus did well in killing Cæsar? Indeed, no subject was
expressly tabooed except such as might stir up the Deistic or Jacobite
strife--in the words of the rules, "such as regard revealed religion,
or which may give occasion to vent any principles of Jacobitism." But
the great majority of the questions debated were of an economic or
political character,--questions about outdoor relief, entail, banking,
linen export bounties, whisky duties, foundling hospitals, whether the
institution of slavery be advantageous to the free? and whether a
union with Ireland would be advantageous to Great Britain? Sometimes
more than one subject would be got through in a night, sometimes the
debate on a single subject would be adjourned from week to week till
it was thought to be thrashed out; and every member might speak three
times in the course of a debate if he chose, once for fifteen minutes,
and the other twice for ten.
The Select Society was, however, as I have said, more than a debating
club; it aimed besides at doing something practical for the promotion
of the arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture, in the land of
its birth, and accordingly, when it was about ten months in existence,
it established a well-devised and extensive scheme of prizes for
meritorious work in every department of human labour, to be supported
by voluntary subscriptions. In the prospectus the society issued it
says that, after the example of foreign academies, it had resolved to
propose two subjects for competition every year, chosen one from
polite letters and the other from the sciences, and to confer on the
winner some public mark of distinction in respect to his taste and
learning. The reward, however, was not in this case to be of a
pecuniary nature, for the principle of the society was that rewards of
merit were in the finer arts to be honorary, but in the more useful
arts, where the merit was of a less elevated character, they were to
be lucrative. On the same principle, in the arts the highest place was
allowed to be due to genius, and therefore a reward for a discovery or
invention was set at the very top of the tree, but still it was of a
purely honorary character, a pecuniary recognition being thought
apparently unsuitable to the dignity of that kind of service. "The art
of printing," the prospectus goes on to say--with a glance of
satisfaction cast doubtless at the Foulis Press--"the art of printing
in this country needs no encouragement, yet as to pass it by unnoticed
were slighting the merit of those by whose means alone it has attained
that eminence, it was resolved that the best printed and most correct
book which shall be produced within a limited time be distinguished by
an honorary reward." On the other hand, the manufacture of paper was a
thing that required encouragement in Scotland, because the Scotch at
that time imported their paper from abroad, "from countries," says the
prospectus, "which use not half the linen that is here consumed"; and
"to remove this defect, to render people more attentive to their own
interest as well as to the interest of their country, to show them the
consequence of attention to matters which may seem trivial, it was
resolved that for the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth parcels
of linen rags gathered within a limited time a reward be assigned in
proportion to the quantity and goodness of each parcel." In other
cases manufactures were already well established in the country, and
the thing that still needed to be encouraged by prizes was improvement
in the workmanship. For example, "manufactures of cotton and linen
prints are already established in different places of this country; in
order to promote an attention to the elegance of the pattern and to
the goodness of the colouring, as well as to the strength of the
cloth, it was resolved that for the best piece of printed linen or
cotton cloth made within a certain period a premium should be
allotted." The art of drawing, again, "being closely connected with
this art and serviceable to most others, it was resolved that for the
best drawings by boys or girls under sixteen years of age certain
premiums be assigned." Then there was a considerable annual
importation into Scotland of worked ruffles and of bone lace and
edging which the Select Society thought might, under proper
encouragement, be quite as well produced at home; and it was therefore
resolved to give both honorary and lucrative rewards for superior
merit in such work, the honorary for "women of fashion" who might
compete, and the lucrative for those "whose laudable industry
contributes to their own support." Scotch stockings had then a great
reputation for the excellence of their workmanship, but Scotch
worsted, to make them with, was not so good, and consequently a
premium was to be offered for the best woollen yarn. There was a great
demand at the time for English blankets, and no reason why the Scotch
should not make quite as good blankets themselves out of their own
wool, so a premium was proposed for the best imitation of English
blankets. Carpet-making was begun in several places in the country,
and a prize for the best-wrought and best-patterned carpet would
encourage the manufacturers to vie with each other. Whisky-distilling,
too, was established at different places, and Scotch strong ale had
even acquired a great and just reputation both at home and abroad; but
the whisky was "still capable of great improvement in the quality and
taste," and the ale trade "might be carried to a much greater height,"
and these ends might be severally promoted by prizes for the best tun
of whisky and the best hogshead of strong ale.
The practical execution of this scheme was committed to nine members
of the society, who were to be chosen annually, and were to meet with
the society once a month to report progress or receive instructions;
but to keep this new task quite distinct from the old, the society
resolved, like certain mercantile firms when they adopt a new branch
of business, to carry it on under a new firm name, and for this
purpose the Select Society of Edinburgh became "The Edinburgh Society
for encouraging arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture in
Scotland"; and the executive committee of nine were termed the
"ordinary managers of the Edinburgh Society," who were assisted by
other nine "extraordinary managers." The Edinburgh Society was not,
however, a separate institution; it was really only a special
committee of the Select Society. It met once a month at a separate
time from the usual weekly meeting of the parent society, and the
business of this monthly meeting came, from the predominant interest
of the members, who were so largely composed of the nobility and
gentry, to be engrossed almost wholly with agricultural discussions.
To render these discussions more effective and profitable, a
resolution was passed in 1756 to admit a certain number of practical
farmers to the membership.
This extension of the scope of the society's work was not approved by
its founder, Allan Ramsay, who thought it beneath the dignity of such
an institution to take an interest in the making of ruffles or the
brewing of strong ale, and feared besides that it would introduce a
new set of very unintellectual members, to the serious prejudice of
the society's debates. An essay on taste was very well, and when it
came out he would ask Millar, the bookseller, to send it out to him in
Rome, but a prize for the biggest bundle of linen rags! "I could have
wished," he writes Hume, "that some other way had been fallen upon by
which porter might have been made thick and the nation rich without
our understanding being at all the poorer for it. Is not truth more
than meat, and wisdom than raiment?"[86] But however Ramsay might look
down on the project, his coadjutor in the founding of the society,
Adam Smith, entertained a very different idea of its importance. A
stimulus to the development of her industries was the very thing
Scotland most needed at the moment, and he entered heartily into the
new scheme, and took a prominent part in carrying it out. He was not
one of the nine managers to whom the practical execution of the idea
was at first entrusted, but when a few months afterwards the work was
divided among four separate committees or sections of five members
each, all chosen by another committee of five, nominated expressly for
that purpose, Smith is one of this nominating committee, and is by it
appointed likewise a member of one of the four executive committees.
The other four members of the nominating committee were Alexander
Monro _Primus_, the anatomist; Gilbert Elliot, M.P. for Selkirkshire;
the Rev. William Wilkie, author of the _Epigoniad_; and the Rev.
Robert Wallace, the predecessor and at least in part the stimulator of
Malthus in his speculations on the population question. The five
members of this committee were directed by the society to put their
own names on one or other of the four executive committees, and they
placed the name of Smith, together with that of Hume, on the committee
for Belles-Lettres and Criticism. As yet he was evidently best known
as literary critic, though the questions propounded by him in this
society, and the subjects treated by him in the Literary Society of
Glasgow, show that his tastes were already leading him into other
directions.
Sufficient contributions soon flowed in; Hume in his letter to Ramsay
speaks of £100 being already in hand, and of several large
subscriptions besides being promised from various noblemen, whom he
names; and accordingly an advertisement was published in the
newspapers on the 10th of April 1755, offering the following prizes:--
I. Honorary premiums, being gold medals with suitable
devices and inscriptions:--
1. For the best discovery in science.
2. For the best essay on taste.
3. For the best dissertation on vegetation and the
principles of agriculture.
II. Honorary premiums, being silver medals with proper
devices and inscriptions:--
4. For the best printed and most correct book of at least 10
sheets.
5. For the best printed cotton or linen cloth, not under 28
yards.
6. For the best imitation of English blankets, not under
six.
7. For the next best ditto, not under six.
8. For the best hogshead of strong ale.
9. For the best hogshead of porter.
III. Lucrative premiums:--
10. For the most useful invention in arts, £21.
11. For the best carpet as to work, pattern, and colours, of
at least 48 yards,.£5:5s.
12. For the next best ditto, also 48 yards, £4:4s.
13. For the best drawings of fruits, flowers, and foliages
by boys or girls under sixteen years of age, £5:5s.
14. For the second best, £3:3s.
15. For the third best, £2:2s.
16. For the best imitation of Dresden work in a pair of
man's ruffles, £5:5s.
17. For the best bone lace, not under 20 yards, £5:5s.
18. For the greatest quantity of white linen rags, £1:10s.
19. For the second ditto, £1:5s.
20. For the third ditto, £1.
21. For the fourth ditto, 15s.
22. For the fifth ditto, 10s.
The articles were asked to be delivered to Mr. Walter Goodall (David
Hume's assistant in the work of librarian), at the Advocates' Library,
before the first Monday of December.[87] On the 19th of August the
following additional prizes were offered:--
23. To the farmer who plants the greatest number (not under
1000) of timber trees, oak, beech, ash, or elm, in hedgerows
before December 1756, £10.
24. Second ditto (not under 500), £5.
25. To the farmer who shall raise the greatest number (not
under 2000) of young thorn plants before December 1758, £6.
26. Second ditto (not under 1000), £4.
In the following year the society increased the number of its prizes
to 92; in 1757 to 120, in 1758 to 138, and in 1759 to 142; and they
were devoted to the encouragement of every variety of likely
industry--kid gloves, straw hats, felt hats, soap, cheese, cradles to
be made of willow grown in Scotland. One premium was offered to the
person who would "cure the greatest number of smoky chimneys to the
satisfaction of the society."
The prize for the best essay on taste was won by Professor Gerard of
Aberdeen, and the essay was published, and is still well known to
students of metaphysics; and the prize for the best dissertation on
vegetation and agriculture fell to Dr. Francis Home. The best
invention was a piece of linen made like Marseille work but on a loom,
and for this £20 were awarded to Peter Brotherton, weaver in Dirleton,
East Lothian. Foulis won in 1757 the prize for the best printed book
in Roman characters by his _Horace_, and for the best printed book in
Greek characters by his _Iliad_; and in 1759 Professor Gerard again
won a prize by his dissertation on style.
This society, while it lasted, undoubtedly exercised a most beneficial
influence in developing and improving the industrial resources of
Scotland. The carpet manufacture alone rose £1000 in the year after
the establishment of the prizes, and the rise was believed to be due
to the stimulus they imparted. But, useful and active and celebrated
as it was, the Select Society died within ten years of its origin. The
usual explanation is that it owed its death to the effects of a
sarcasm of Charles Townshend's. Townshend was brought to hear one of
the wonderful debates, which were thought to reflect a new glory on
Edinburgh, and was even elected a member of the society, but he
observed when he came out that, while he admitted the eloquence of the
orators, he was unable to understand a word they said, inasmuch as
they spoke in what was to him a foreign tongue. "Why," he asked, "can
you not learn to speak the English language, as you have already
learnt to write it?"[88]
This was to touch Scotchmen of that period who made any pretensions to
education at one of their most sensitive parts. Scotch--the broad
dialect of Burns and Fergusson--was still the common medium of
intercourse in polite society, and might be heard even from the pulpit
or the bench, though English was flowing rapidly into fashion, and the
younger and more ambitious sort of people were trying their best to
lose the native dialect. We know the pains taken by great writers like
Hume and Robertson to clear their English composition of Scotch
idioms, and the greater but less successful pains taken by Wedderburn
to cure himself of his Scotch pronunciation, to which he reverted
after all in his old age. Under these circumstances Townshend's
sarcasm occasioned almost a little movement of lingual reform. Thomas
Sheridan, who was about this time full of a method he had invented of
imparting to foreigners a proper pronunciation of the English language
by means of sounds borrowed from their own, and who had just been
giving lessons to Wedderburn, and probably practising the new method
on him, was brought north in 1761 and delivered a course of sixteen
lectures in St. Paul's Chapel, Carrubber's Close, to about 300
gentlemen--"the most eminent," it is reported, "in the country for
rank and abilities." Immediately thereafter the Select Society
organised a special association for promoting the writing and speaking
of the English language in Scotland, and engaged a teacher of correct
English pronunciation from London. Smith was not one of the directors
of this new association, but Robertson, Ferguson, and Blair were,
together with a number of peers, baronets, lords of Session, and
leaders of the bar. But spite of the imposing auspices under which
this simple project of an English elocution master was launched, it
proved a signal failure, for it touched the national vanity. It seemed
to involve a humiliating confession of inferiority to a rival nation
at the very moment when that nation was raging with abuse of the
Scotch, when Wilkes was publishing the _North Briton_, and Churchill
was writing his lampoons; and when it was advertised in the Edinburgh
newspapers, it provoked such a storm of antipathy and ridicule that
even the honourable society which furthered the scheme began to lose
favour, its subscriptions and membership declined, and presently the
whole organisation fell to pieces. That is the account commonly given
of the fall of the Select Society, and the society certainly reached
its culminating point in 1762. After that subscribers withdrew their
names, or refused to pay their subscriptions, and in 1765 the society
had no funds to offer more than six prizes and ceased to exist, its
own explanation being that it died of the loss of novelty. "The
arrears of subscriptions seem," it says, "to confirm an observation
that has sometimes been made, that in Scotland every disinterested
plan of public utility is slighted as soon as it loses the charm of
novelty."[89]
Another interesting but even more abortive project which Smith took a
leading part in promoting at this same period was the publication of a
new literary magazine, entitled the _Edinburgh Review_, of which the
first number appeared in July 1755, and the second and last in January
1756. This project also originated, like the Select Society, in a
sentiment of Scotch patriotism. It was felt that though Scotland was
at the time stirring with an important literary and scientific
movement, the productions of the Scotch press were too much ignored by
the English literary periodicals, and received inadequate
appreciation even in Scotland itself for want of a good critical
journal on the spot. "If countries may be said to have their ages with
respect to improvement," says the preface to the first number of the
new _Review_, "then North Britain may be considered as in a state of
early youth, guided and supported by the more mature strength of her
kindred country. If in anything her advances have been such as to make
a more forward state, it is in science." After remarking that the two
obstacles to the literary advancement of Scotland had hitherto been
her deficiency in the art of printing and her imperfect command of
good English, and that the first of these obstacles had been removed
entirely, and the second shown by recent writers to be capable of
being surmounted, it proceeds: "The idea therefore was that to show
men at this particular stage of the country's progress the gradual
advance of science would be a means of inciting them to a more eager
pursuit of learning, to distinguish themselves and to do honour to
their country." The editor was Alexander Wedderburn, who afterwards
became Lord High Chancellor of England and Earl of Rosslyn, but had in
1755 only just passed as an advocate at the Scotch bar; and the
contributors were Robertson, who wrote eight review articles on new
historical publications; Blair, who gave one or two indifferent
notices of works in philosophy; Jardine, one of the ministers of
Edinburgh, who discussed Ebenezer Erskine's sermons, a few theological
pamphlets, and Mrs. Cleland's Cookery Book; and Adam Smith, who
contributed to the first number a review of Dr. Johnson's
_Dictionary_, and to the second a remarkable letter to the editor
proposing to widen the scope of the _Review_, and giving a striking
survey of the state of contemporary literature in all the countries of
Europe. Smith's two contributions are out of sight the ablest and most
important articles the _Review_ published.
He gives a warm and most appreciative welcome to Johnson's
_Dictionary_, but thinks it would have been improved if the author had
in the first place more often censured words not of approved use, and
if in the second he had, instead of simply enumerating the several
meanings of a word, arranged them into classes and distinguished
principal from subsidiary meanings. Then to illustrate what he wants,
Smith himself writes two model articles, one on _Wit_ and the other on
_Humour_, both acute and interesting. He counts humour to be always
something accidental and fitful, the disease of a disposition, and he
considers it much inferior to wit, though it may often be more
amusing. "Wit expresses something that is more designed, concerted,
regular, and artificial; humour something that is more wild, loose,
extravagant, and fantastical; something which comes upon a man by fits
which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly
consistent with true politeness. Humour, it has been said, is often
more diverting than wit; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of
humour as a gentleman is above a buffoon; a buffoon, however, will
often divert more than a gentleman."
In his second contribution--a long letter to the editor published in
the appendix to the second number--Smith advocates the enlargement of
the scope of the _Review_ so as to give some account of works of
importance published abroad, even though space had to be provided for
the purpose by neglecting unimportant publications issued from the
Scotch press, and, in fact, he considers this substitution as a
necessity for the continued life of the _Review_. For, says he, "you
will oblige the public much more by giving them an account of such
books as are worthy of their regard than by filling your paper with
all the insignificant literary news of the time, of which not an
article in a hundred is likely to be thought of a fortnight after the
publication of the work that gave occasion to it." He then proceeds to
a review of contemporary continental literature, which he says meant
at that time the literature of France. Italy had ceased to produce
literature, and Germany produced only science. A sentence or two may
be quoted from his comparison between French and English literature,
because they show that he was not, as he is sometimes accused of
being, an unfair depreciator of the great writers of England and a
blind admirer of those of France. He will be owned to have had a very
just opinion of the specific merits of each.
"Imagination, genius, and invention," he says, "seem to be the talents
of the English; taste, judgment, propriety, and order, of the French.
In the old English poets, in Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, there
often appears, amidst some irregularities and extravagancies, a
strength of imagination so vast, so gigantic and supernatural, as
astonishes and confounds the reader into that admiration of their
genius which makes him despise as mean and insignificant all criticism
upon the inequalities of their writings. In the eminent French writers
such sallies of genius are more rarely to be met with, but instead of
them a just arrangement, an exact propriety and decorum, joined to an
equal and studied elegance of sentiment and diction, which, as it
never strikes the heart like those violent and momentary flashes of
imagination, so it never revolts the judgment by anything that is
absurd or unnatural, nor ever wearies the attention by any gross
inequality in the style or want of connection in the method, but
entertains the mind with a regular succession of agreeable,
interesting, and connected objects."
From poetry he passes to philosophy, and finds that the French
encyclopedists had left their native Cartesian system for the English
system of Bacon and Newton, and were proving more effective expositors
of that system than the English themselves. After reviewing the
_Encyclopédie_ at considerable length, he gives an account of the
recent scientific works of Buffon and Reaumur, and, among books in
metaphysics, of Rousseau's famous _Discourse on the Origin and
Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind_, which was then only a few
months out, and in which, Smith says, Rousseau, "by the help of his
style, together with a little philosophical chemistry," has made "the
principles and ideas of the profligate Mandeville seem to have all the
purity and simplicity of the morals of Plato, and to be only the true
spirit of a republican carried a little too far." He gives a summary
of the book, translates a few specimen passages, and concludes by
saying, "I shall only add that the dedication to the Republic of
Geneva, of which M. Rousseau has the honour of being a citizen, is an
agreeable, animated, and I believe, too, a just panegyric."
Sir James Mackintosh, who republished these two numbers of the first
_Edinburgh Review_ in 1818 after the second _Edinburgh Review_ had
made the name famous, considers it noteworthy, as showing the
contributors to have taken up a very decided political position for so
early a period, that the preface to the first number speaks boldly in
praise of George Buchanan's "undaunted spirit of liberty." But Smith's
warm expression of admiration for the Republic of Geneva, to which he
reckons it an honour to belong, is equally notable. He seems to have
been always theoretically a republican, and he certainly had the true
spirit of a republican in his love of all rational liberty. His pupil
and lifelong friend, the Earl of Buchan, says: "He approached to
republicanism in his political principles, and considered a
commonwealth as the platform for the monarchy, hereditary succession
in the chief magistrate being necessary only to prevent the
commonwealth from being shaken by ambition, or absolute dominion
introduced by the consequences of contending factions."[90]
Smith's scheme for the improvement of the _Review_ was never carried
out, for with that number the _Review_ itself came to a sudden and
premature end. The reason for giving it up is explained by Lord
Woodhouselee to have been that the strictures passed by it on some
fanatical publications of the day had excited such a clamour "that a
regard to the public tranquillity and their own determined the
reviewers to discontinue their labours."[91] Doubt has been expressed
of the probability of this explanation, but Lord Woodhouselee, who was
personally acquainted with several of the contributors, is likely to
have known of the circumstances, and his statement is borne out
besides by certain corroborative facts. It is true the theological
articles of the two numbers appear to us to be singularly inoffensive.
They were entrusted to the only contributor who was not a young man,
Dr. Jardine, the wily leader of the Moderate party in the Church, the
Dean of the Thistle mentioned in Lord Dreghorn's verses as governing
the affairs of the city as well as the Church through his power over
his father-in-law--
The old Provost, who danced to the whistle
Of that arch politician, the Dean of the Thistle.
The arch politician contrived to make his theological criticism
colourless even to the point of vapidity, but that did not save him or
his _Review_; it perhaps only exposed them the more to the attacks of
zealots. His notice of the sermons of Ebenezer Erskine, the Secession
leader, provoked a sharp pamphlet from Erskine's son, in which the
reviewers were accused of teaching unsound theological views, of
putting the creature before the Creator by allowing the lawfulness of
a lie in certain situations, of throwing ridicule on the Bible and the
Westminster _Confession of Faith_, and of having David Hume, an
atheist, among their number.
This last thrust was a mere controversial guess, and, strangely
enough, it guessed wrong. A new literary review is started in
Edinburgh by a few of Hume's younger friends, and Hume himself--the
only one of them who had yet made any name in literature, and the most
distinguished man of letters then in Scotland--is neither asked to
contribute to the periodical, nor even admitted to the secret of its
origination. When the first number appeared he went about among his
acquaintances expressing the greatest surprise that so promising a
literary adventure should be started by Edinburgh men of letters
without a whisper of it ever reaching his ears. More than that, his
very name and writings were strangely and studiously ignored in its
pages. His _History of the Stewarts_ was one of the last new books,
having been published in the end of 1754, and was unquestionably much
the most important work that had recently come from any Scotch pen,
yet in a periodical instituted for the very purpose of devoting
attention to the productions of Scotch authors, this work of his
remained absolutely unnoticed.
Why this complete boycott of Hume by his own household? Henry
Mackenzie "thinks he has heard" two reasons given for it: first, that
Hume was considered too good-natured for a critic, and certain to have
insisted on softening remarks his colleagues believed to be called
for; and second, that they determined to keep him out of the secret
entirely, because he could not keep a secret.[92] But this explanation
does not hold together. If Hume was so good-natured, he would be less
difficult rather than more difficult to manage; and as for not being
able to keep a secret, that, as Mr. Burton observes, is a very
singular judgment to pass on one who had been Secretary of Legation
already and was soon to be Secretary of Legation again, and Under
Secretary of State, without having been once under the shadow of such
an accusation. Besides, neither of these reasons will explain the
ignoring of his writings.
A more credible explanation must be looked for, and it can only be
discovered in the intense _odium theologicum_ which the name of Hume
excited at the moment, and which made it imperative, if the new
_Review_ was to get justice, that it should be severed from all
association with his detested name. Scotland happened to be at that
very hour in an exceptional ferment about his theological heresies,
and one of the strangest of proposals had come before the previous
General Assembly of the Kirk, backed by a number of the most respected
country clergy. It was no other than to summon the great sceptic to
their bar, to visit his _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_
with censure, and to pronounce against the author the major ban of
excommunication.
The wise heads who rule the Scotch Church courts of course threw out
this inconvenient proposal by the favourite ecclesiastical device of
passing an abstract resolution expressive of concern at the growing
evils of the day, without committing the Church to any embarrassing
practical action; and Hume himself was, as Wedderburn told them he
likely would be, hardened enough to laugh at the very idea of their
anathema. But the originators of the agitation only returned to the
battle, and prepared for a victory in the next Assembly in May 1756.
Between the two Assemblies Hume wrote his friend Allan Ramsay, the
painter, who was in Rome: "You may tell that reverend gentleman the
Pope that there are men here who rail at him, and yet would be much
greater persecutors had they equal power. The last Assembly sat on me.
They did not propose to burn me, because they cannot, but they
intended to give me over to Satan, which they think they have the
power of doing. My friends, however, prevailed, and my damnation is
postponed for a twelvemonth, but next Assembly will surely be upon
me."[93] And so in truth it was. An overture came up calling for
action regarding "one person calling himself David Hume, Esq., who
hath arrived at such a degree of boldness as publicly to avow himself
the author of books containing the most rude and open attacks upon the
glorious Gospel of Christ," and a motion was made for the appointment
of a committee "to inquire into the writings of this author, to call
him before them, and prepare the matter for the next General
Assembly." This motion was again defeated, and the heresy-hunters
passed on to turn their attention to Lord Kames, and to summon the
printers and publishers of his _Essays_ before the Edinburgh
Presbytery to give up the author's name (the book having been
published anonymously), "that he and they may be censured according to
the law of the Gospel and the practice of this and all other
well-governed churches."
It is open to us to believe that Hume's friends contemplated no more
than a temporary exclusion of him from their counsels until this storm
should pass by; but at any rate, as they launched their frail bark in
the very thick of the storm, it would have meant instant swamping at
that juncture to have taken the Jonah who caused all the commotion and
made him one of their crew. For the same reason, when they found that,
for all their precautions, the clamour overtook them notwithstanding,
they simply put back into port and never risked so unreasoning and
raging an element again.
It may indeed be thought that they declined Hume's co-operation,
because they expressly hoisted the flag of religion in their preface,
and professed one of their objects to be to resist the current attacks
of infidelity. But there would have been no inconsistency in engaging
the co-operation of an unbeliever on secular subjects, so long as they
retained the rudder in their own hands, and men who were already
Hume's intimate personal friends were not likely to be troubled with
such unnecessary scruples about their consistency. The true reason
both of Hume's exclusion from their secret and of their own
abandonment of their undertaking is undoubtedly the reason given by
Lord Woodhouselee, that they wanted to live and work in peace. They
did not like, to use a phrase of Hamilton of Bangour, to have "zeal
clanking her iron bands" about their ears. Hume, on the other hand,
rather took pleasure in the din he provoked, and had he been a
contributor the rest would have had difficulty--and may have felt
so--in restraining him from gratifying that taste when any favourable
opportunities offered.
While these things were going on in Edinburgh a book had made its
appearance from the London press, which is often stated to have been
written for the express purpose of converting Adam Smith to a belief
in the miraculous evidences of Christianity. That book is the
_Criterion of Miracles Examined_, by Smith's Oxford friend Bishop
Douglas, then a country rector in Shropshire. It is written in the
form of a letter to an anonymous correspondent, who had, in spite of
his "good sense, candour, and learning," and on grounds "many of them
peculiar to himself and not borrowed from books," "reasoned himself
into an unfavourable opinion of the evidences of Christianity"; and
this anonymous correspondent is said in Chalmers's _Biographical
Dictionary_ to have been "since known to be Adam Smith." From
Chalmers's _Dictionary_ the same statement has been repeated in the
same words in subsequent biographical dictionaries and elsewhere, but
neither Chalmers nor his successors reveal who it was to whom this was
known, or how he came to know it; and on the other hand, Macdonald,
the son-in-law and biographer of Douglas, makes no mention of Smith's
name in connection with this work at all, and explicitly states that
the book was written for the satisfaction of more than one of the
author's friends, who had been influenced by the objections of Hume
and others to the reality of the Gospel miracles.[94] This leaves the
point somewhat undetermined.
Smith was certainly a Theist, his writings leave no doubt of that, but
he most probably discarded the Christian miracles; and if Douglas's
book is addressed to his particular position, discarded them on the
ground that there is no possible criterion for distinguishing true
miracles from false, and enabling you to accept those of Christianity
if you reject those of profane history. The Earl of Buchan,
apostrophising Smith, asks, "Oh, venerable and worthy man, why was you
not a Christian?" and tries to let his old professor down as gently as
possible by suggesting that the reason lay in the warmth of his heart,
which always made him express strongly the opinions of his friends,
and carried him in this instance into sympathy with those of David
Hume. That is obviously a lame conclusion, because Smith's friendship
for Hume never made him a Tory, nor even on the point of religion were
his opinions identical with those of Hume; but Lord Buchan's words may
be quoted as an observation by an acute man of a feature in Smith's
character not without biographical interest. "Had he (Smith) been a
friend of the worthy ingenious Horrox," says his lordship, "he would
have believed that the moon sometimes disappeared in a clear sky
without the interposition of a cloud, or of another truly honest and
respectable man, that a professor of mathematics at Upsala had a tail
of six inches long to his rump."[95]
In 1756 the literary circle in Edinburgh was much excited by the
performance of John Home's tragedy of _Douglas_. Smith was not present
at that performance; but he is stated by Henry Mackenzie, in his _Life
of John Home_, to have been present at some of the previous rehearsals
of the play, and at any rate he was deeply interested in it; and Hume,
as soon as he hears of the continued success of the play in London,
hastens to communicate the welcome news to his friend in Glasgow, with
whom he was in correspondence about his own historical plans. Smith
seems to have been advising him, instead of following up his _History
of the Stewarts_ by the history of succeeding periods, to go back and
write the history of the period before the Stewarts.
After mentioning John Home, Hume proceeds: "I can now give you the
satisfaction of hearing that the play, though not near so well acted
in Covent Garden as in this place, is likely to be very successful.
Its great intrinsic merit breaks through all obstacles. When it shall
be printed (which shall be soon) I am persuaded it will be esteemed
the best, and by French critics the only tragedy of our language!...
"Did you ever hear of such madness and folly as our clergy have lately
fallen into? For my part, I expect that the next Assembly will very
solemnly pronounce the sentence of excommunication against me, but I
do not apprehend it to be a matter of any consequence; what do you
think?
"I am somewhat idle at present and somewhat indifferent as to my next
undertaking. Shall I go backwards or forwards in my History? I think
you used to tell me that you approved more of my going backwards. The
other would be the more popular subject, but I am afraid I shall not
find materials sufficient to ascertain the truth, at least without
settling in London, which I own I have some reluctance to. I am
settled here very much to my mind, and would not wish at my years to
change the place of my abode.
"I have just now received a copy of _Douglas_ from London. It will
instantly be put in the press. I hope to be able to send you a copy in
the same parcel with the dedication."[96]
Hume was now very anxious to have his friend nearer him, and thought
in 1758 an opportunity could be contrived of translating Smith to a
chair in the University of Edinburgh. There was at that time some
probability of Professor Abercromby resigning the chair of Public Law
(then styled the chair of the Law of Nature and Nations), and as
Smith, though not a lawyer, was yet a distinguished professor of
jurisprudence, his friends in Edinburgh immediately suggested his
candidature, especially as they believed such a change would not be
unacceptable to himself. The chair of the Law of Nature and Nations
was one of the best endowed in the College, having a revenue of £150 a
year independently of fees, but it had been founded as a job, and
continued ever since to be treated as a sinecure. Not a single lecture
had ever been delivered by any of its incumbents, in spite of repeated
remonstrances on the part of the Faculty of Advocates, and Hume
believed that if the Town Council, as administrators of the College,
could be got to press for the delivery of the statutory lectures, the
present professor would prefer the alternative of resignation. In that
event the vacant office might easily, in Hume's opinion, be obtained
by Smith, inasmuch as the patronage was in the hands of the Crown, and
Crown patronage in Scotland at the time was virtually exercised
through Lord Justice-Clerk Milton (a nephew of Andrew Fletcher of
Saltoun, the patriot), who had been, ever since the death of Lord
President Forbes, the chief confidential adviser of the Duke of
Argyle, the Minister for Scotland, and was personally acquainted with
Smith through his daughter Mrs. Wedderburn of Gosford, the friend of
Robertson and John Home.
Others of Smith's Edinburgh friends zealously joined Hume in his
representations, especially the faithful Johnstone (afterwards Sir W.
Pulteney), who actually wrote Smith a letter on the subject along with
Hume's. Hume's letter is as follows:--
DEAR SMITH--I sit down to write to you along with Johnstone,
and as we have been talking over the matter, it is probable
we shall employ the same arguments. As he is the younger
lawyer, I leave him to open the case, and suppose that you
have read his letter first. We are certain that the
settlement of you here and of Ferguson at Glasgow would be
perfectly easy by Lord Milton's Interest. The Prospect of
prevailing with Abercrombie is also very good. For the same
statesman by his influence over the Town Council could
oblige him either to attend, which he never would do, or
dispose of the office for the money which he gave for it.
The only real difficulty is then with you. Pray then
consider that this is perhaps the only opportunity we shall
ever have of getting you to town. I dare swear that you
think the difference of Place is worth paying something for,
and yet it will really cost you nothing. You made above a
hundred pound a year by your class when in this Place,
though you had not the character of Professor. We cannot
suppose that it will be less than a hundred and thirty after
you are settled. John Stevenson[97]--and it is John
Stevenson--makes near a hundred and fifty, as we were
informed upon Enquiry. Here is a hundred pounds a year for
eight years' Purchase, which is a cheap purchase, even
considered in the way of a Bargain. We flatter ourselves
that you rate our company at something, and the Prospect of
settling Ferguson will be an additional inducement. For
though we think of making him take up the Project if you
refuse it, yet it is uncertain whether he will consent; and
it is attended in his case with many very obvious
objections. I beseech you therefore to weigh all these
motives over again. The alteration of these circumstances
merit that you should put the matter again in deliberation.
I had a letter from Miss Hepburn, where she regrets very
much that you are settled at Glasgow, and that we had the
chance of seeing you so seldom.--I am, dear Smith, yours
sincerely,
DAVID HUME.
_8th June 1758._
_P.S._--Lord Milton can with his finger stop the foul mouths
of all the Roarers against heresy.[98]
The postscript shows what we have already indicated, that Smith had
not escaped the general hue and cry against heresy which was now for
some years abroad in the country.
The Miss Hepburn who regrets so much the remoteness of Smith's
residence is doubtless Miss Hepburn of Monkrig, near Haddington, one
of those gifted literary ladies who were then not infrequently to be
found in the country houses of Scotland. It was to Miss Hepburn and
her sisters that John Home is said to have been indebted for the
first idea of Douglas, and Robertson submitted to her the manuscript
of his _History of Scotland_ piece by piece as he wrote it. When it
was finished the historian sent her a presentation copy with a letter,
in which he said: "Queen Mary has grown up to her present form under
your eye; you have seen her in many different shapes, and you have now
a right to her. Were I a _galante_ writer now, what a fine contrast
might I make between you and Queen Mary? What a pretty string of
antitheses between your virtues and her vices. I am glad, however, she
did not resemble you. If she had, Rizzio would have only played first
fiddle at her consort (_sic_), with a pension of a thousand merks and
two benefits in a winter; Darnley would have been a colonel in the
Guards; Bothwell would, on account of his valour, have been Warden of
the Middle Marches, but would have been forbid to appear at court
because of his profligacy. But if all that had been done, what would
have become of my History?"[99]
Smith seems to have declined, for whatever reason, to take up the
suggestion of Hume about this chair of Law, for we find Hume presently
trying hard to secure the place for Ferguson. The difficulty may have
been about the price, for though Hume speaks of £800, it seems
Abercromby wanted more than £1000, and Ferguson too had no mind to
begin life with such a debt on his shoulders. But the world is
probably no loser by the difficulty, whatever it was, which kept Smith
five years longer among the merchants and commercial problems of
Glasgow.
Smith was one of the founders, or at least the original members, of
the Edinburgh Poker Club in 1762. Every one has heard of that famous
club, but most persons probably think of it as if it were merely a
social or convivial society; and Mr. Burton lends some countenance to
that mistake by declaring that he has never been able to discover any
other object it existed for except the drinking of claret. But the
Poker Club was really a committee for political agitation, like the
Anti-Corn-Law League or the Home Rule Union; only, after the more
genial manners of those times, the first thing the committee thought
requisite for the proper performance of their work was to lay in a
stock of sound Burgundy that could be drawn from the wood at
eighteenpence or two shillings a quart, to engage a room in a tavern
for the exclusive use of the members, and establish a weekly or
bi-weekly dinner at a moderate figure, to keep the _poker_ of
agitation in active exercise. The club got its name from the practical
purpose it was instituted to serve; it was to be an instrument for
_stirring_ opinion, especially in high quarters, on a public question
which was exciting the people of Scotland greatly at the moment, the
question of the establishment of a national Scotch militia. Some of
the members thought that when that question was settled, the club
should go on and take up others. George Dempster of Dunnichen, for
example, an old and respected parliamentary hand of that time, wrote
Dr. Carlyle in 1762 that when they got their militia, they ought to
agitate for parliamentary reform, "so as to let the industrious farmer
and manufacturer share at last in a privilege now engrossed by the
great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener baillie."[100] But
they never got the length of considering other reforms, for the
militia question was not settled in that generation. It outlived the
Poker Club, and it outlived the Younger Poker Club which was enrolled
to take up the cause in 1786, and it was not finally settled till
1793.
The Scotch had been roused to the defenceless condition of their
country by the alarming appearance of Thurot in Scotch waters in 1759,
and had instantly with one voice raised a cry for the establishment of
a national militia. The whole country seemed to have set its mind on
this measure with a singular unanimity, and a bill for its enactment
was accordingly introduced into the House of Commons in 1760 by two of
the principal Scotch members, both former ministers of the
Crown--James Oswald and Gilbert Elliot; but it was rejected by a large
majority, because within only fifteen years of the Rebellion the
English members were unwilling to entrust the Scotch people with arms.
The rejection of the bill provoked a deep feeling of national
indignation, the slur it cast on the loyalty of Scotland being
resented even more than the indifference it showed to her perils. It
was under the influence of this wave of national sentiment that the
Poker Club was founded in 1762, to procure for the Scotch at once
equality of rights with the English and adequate defences for their
country.
The membership of the club included many of the foremost men in the
land--great noblemen, advocates, men of letters, together with a
number of spirited county gentlemen on both sides of politics, who
cried that they had a militia of their own before the Union, and must
have a militia of their own again. Dr. Carlyle says most of the
members of the Select Society belonged to it, the exceptions
consisting of a few who disapproved of the militia scheme, and of
others, like the judges, who scrupled, on account of their official
position, to take any part in a political movement. Carlyle gives a
list of the members in 1774, containing among other names those of the
Duke of Buccleugh, Lords Haddington, Glasgow, Glencairn, Elibank, and
Mountstuart; Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate; Baron Mure, Hume, Adam
Smith, Robertson, Black, Adam Ferguson, John Home, Dr. Blair, Sir
James Steuart the economist, Dempster, Islay Campbell, afterwards Lord
President; and John Clerk of Eldin. The first secretary of the club
was William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney), and, as has been
frequently told, David Hume was jocularly appointed to a sinecure
office created for him, the office of assassin, and lest Hume's
good-nature should unfit him for the duties, Andrew Crosbie, advocate
(the original of Scott's "Pleydell"), was made his assistant. The club
met at first in Tom Nicholson's tavern, the Diversorium, at the Cross,
and subsequently removed to more fashionable quarters at the famous
Fortune's in the Stamp Office Close, where the Lord High Commissioner
to the General Assembly held his levees, and the members dined every
Friday at two and sat till six. However the club may have pulled wires
in private, their public activity seems to have been very little; so
far at least as literary advocacy of their cause went, nothing
proceeded from it except a pamphlet by Dr. Carlyle, and a
much-overlauded squib by Adam Ferguson, entitled "A History of the
Proceedings in the Case of Margaret, commonly called Sister Peg."
Smith was, as I have said, one of the original members of the club,
and from Carlyle's list would appear to have continued a member till
1774; but he was not a member of the Younger Poker Club, established
in 1786. In the interval he had expressed in the _Wealth of Nations_ a
strong preference for a standing army over a national militia,[101]
after instituting a very careful examination of the whole subject.
Whether his views had changed since 1762, or whether he had joined in
the agitation for a militia merely as a measure of justice to Scotland
or as an expedient of temporary necessity, without committing himself
to any abstract admiration for the institution in general, I have no
means of deciding; but we can hardly think he ever shared that kind of
belief in the principle of a militia which animated men like Ferguson
and Carlyle, and which, according to them, animated the other members
of the club also at its birth. Ferguson says the club was founded
"upon the principle of zeal for a militia and a conviction that there
could be no lasting security for the freedom and independence of these
islands but in the valour and patriotism of an armed people";[102]
and when, during his travels in Switzerland in 1775, he saw for the
first time in his life a real militia--the object of his
dreams--actually moving before him in the flesh, and going through
their drill, his heart came to his mouth, and he wrote his friend
Carlyle: "As they were the only body of men I ever saw under arms on
the true principle for which arms should be carried, I felt much
secret emotion, and could have shed tears."[103] He was deeply
disappointed a year later with Smith's apostasy on this question, or
at least opposition, for Ferguson makes no accusation of apostasy.
After reading the _Wealth of Nations_, he wrote Smith on the 18th of
April 1776: "You have provoked, too, so far the Church, the
universities, and the merchants, against all of whom I am willing to
take your part; but you have likewise provoked the militia, and there
I must be against you. The gentlemen and peasants of this country do
not need the authority of philosophers to make them supine and
negligent of every resource they might have in themselves in the case
of certain extremities, of which the pressure, God knows, may be at no
great distance. But of this more at Philippi."[104]
But many others besides Smith had in this interval either found their
zeal for a militia grown cool or their opinion of its value modified,
and when Lord Mountstuart introduced his new Scotch Militia Bill in
1776, it received little support from Scotch members, and its
rejection excited nothing like the feeling roused by the rejection of
its predecessor in 1760, although it was attended this time with the
galling aggravation that what was refused to the Scotch was in the
same hour granted to the Irish, then the less disliked and distrusted
nation of the two. Opinions had grown divided. Old Fletcher of
Saltoun's idea of a citizen army with universal compulsory service
was still much discussed, but many now objected to the compulsion, and
others, among whom was Lord Kames, to the universality of the
compulsion, rallying to the idea of Fencibles--_i.e._ regiments to be
raised compulsorily by the landed proprietors, each furnishing a
number of men proportioned to their valued rent.[105] Smith said a
militia formed in this way, like the old Highland militia, was the
best of all militias, but he held that the day was past for militias
of men with one hand on the sword and the other on the plough, and
that nothing could now answer for what he calls "the noblest of all
arts," the art of war, but the division of labour, which answered best
for the arts of peace, and a standing army of soldiers by exclusive
occupation.
Divided counsels and diminished zeal supply, no doubt, the main reason
for the decay of the Poker Club, but other causes combined. Dr.
Carlyle, who was an active member of the club, says it began to
decline when it transferred itself to more elegant quarters at
Fortune's, because its dinners became too expensive for the members;
and Lord Campbell attributes its dissolution definitely to the new
taxes imposed on French wines to pay the cost of the American War. His
statement is very explicit: "To punish the Government they agreed to
dissolve the 'Poker,' and to form another society which should exist
without consumption of any excisable commodity."[106] But he gives no
authority for the statement, and they are at least not likely to have
been such fools as to think of punishing the Government by what was
after all only an excellent way of punishing themselves. The wine duty
was no doubt a real enough grievance; it was raised five or six times
during the club's existence, and many a man who enjoyed his quart of
Burgundy when the duty was less than half-a-crown a gallon, was
obliged to do without it when the duty rose to seven shillings. It
may be worth adding, however, that the Poker Club was revived as the
Younger Poker Club in the very year, 1786, when the duty on Burgundy
was reduced again by the new Commercial Treaty with France.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] Southey's Life of A. Bell, i. 23.
[76] Oswald had just been appointed commissioner for trade and
plantations.
[77] _Correspondence of James Oswald_, p. 124.
[78] Burton's _Life of Hume_, i. 375.
[79] Mr. Burton thinks the Society mentioned in this paragraph to be
"evidently the Philosophical Society" of Edinburgh, but it seems much
more likely to have been the Literary Society of Glasgow, of which
Hume was also a member. Of the Philosophical Society he was himself
Secretary, and would therefore have been in the position of giving
warning rather than receiving it; nor would he have spoken of sending
that Society a paper which he would be on the spot to read himself.
Whether Smith was Secretary of the Glasgow Literary Society I do not
know, but even if he were not it would be nothing strange though the
communications of the Society with Hume were carried on through Smith,
his chief friend among the members, and his regular correspondent.
[80] Burton's _Life of Hume_, i. 417.
[81] Carlyle's _Autobiography_, p. 275.
[82] Burton's Scot Abroad, ii. 340.
[83] Minutes of Select Society, Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
[84] Ibid.
[85] _Scots Magazine_, xix. 163.
[86] Burton's _Scot Abroad_, ii. 343.
[87] _Scots Magazine_ for year 1755, p. 126.
[88] Lord Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_, vi. 32.
[89] _Scots Magazine_, xxvi. 229.
[90] The _Bee_ for June 1791.
[91] Tytler's _Life of Lord Kames_, i. 233.
[92] _Life of John Home_, p. 24.
[93] Burton's _Scot Abroad_, ii. 343.
[94] Douglas's _Select Works_, p. 23.
[95] The _Bee_ for 1791.
[96] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 16.
[97] Professor of Logic.
[98] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 45.
[99] Fraser's _The Lennox_, p. xliv.
[100] _Carlyle Correspondence_, Edinburgh University Library.
[101] _Wealth of Nations_, Book V. chap. i.
[102] "Memoirs of Black," _Transactions,_ R.S.E., v. 113.
[103] _Carlyle Correspondence,_ Edinburgh University.
[104] Small, _Sketch of A. Ferguson,_ p. 23.
[105] Kames, _Sketches of Man_, Book II. chap. ix.
[106] Campbell's _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_, vi. 28.