TOULOUSE
Smith joined his pupil in London in the end of January 1764, and they
set out together for France in the beginning of February. They
remained abroad two years and a half--ten days in Paris, eighteen
months in Toulouse, two months travelling in the South of France, two
months in Geneva, and ten months in Paris again. Smith kept no journal
and wrote as few letters as possible, but we are able from various
sources to fill in some of the outlines of their course of travel.
At Dover they were joined by Sir James Macdonald of Sleat, a young
baronet who had been at Eton College with the Duke of Buccleugh, and
who had been living in France almost right on since the
re-establishment of peace. Sir James was heir of the old Lords of the
Isles, and son of the lady who, with her factor Kingsburgh, harboured
Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald in Skye; and he was himself then
filling the world of letters in Paris and London alike with
astonishment at the extent of his knowledge and the variety of his
intellectual gifts. Walpole, indeed, said that when he grew older he
would choose to know less, but to Grimm he seemed the same marvel of
parts as he seemed to Hume. He accompanied Smith and the Duke to
Paris, where they arrived (as we know from Smith's letter to the
Rector of Glasgow University) on the 13th of February.
In Paris they did not remain long--not more than ten days at most,
for it took at that period six days to go from Paris to Toulouse, and
they were in Toulouse on the 4th of March. Smith does not appear
during this short stay in Paris to have made the personal acquaintance
of any of the eminent men of letters whom he afterwards knew so well,
for he never mentions any of them in his subsequent letters to Hume
from Toulouse, though he occasionally mentions Englishmen whose
acquaintance he first made at that time. He probably could not as yet
speak French, for even to the last he could only speak it very
imperfectly. Most of their time in Paris seems, therefore, to have
been spent with Hume and Sir James Macdonald and Lord Beauchamp, who
was Hume's pupil and Sir James's chief friend. Paris, moreover, was
merely a halting-place for the present; their immediate destination
was Toulouse, at that time a favourite resort of the English. It was
the second city of the kingdom, and wore still much of the style of an
ancient capital. It was the seat of an archbishopric, of a university,
of a parliament, of modern academies of science and art which made
some ado with their annual _Jeux Floraux_, and the nobility of the
province still had their town houses there, and lived in them all
winter. The society was more varied and refined than anywhere else in
France out of Paris.
Among the English residents was a cousin of David Hume, who had
entered the Gallican Church, and was then Vicar-General of the diocese
of Toulouse, the Abbé Seignelay Colbert. Smith brought a letter from
Hume to the Abbé, and the Abbé writes Hume in reply on the 4th of
March, thanking him for having introduced Smith, who, he says,
appeared to be all that was said of him in the letter. "He has only
just arrived," the Abbé proceeds, "and I have only seen him for an
instant. I am very sorry that they have not found the Archbishop here.
He went some six weeks ago to Montpellier, whence he will soon go to
Paris. He told me he had a great desire to make your acquaintance. I
fear that my long black cassock will frighten the Duke of Buccleugh,
but apart from that I should omit nothing to make his stay in this
town as agreeable and useful as possible."[140] He writes again on the
22nd of April, after having a month's experience of his new friends:
"Mr. Smith is a sublime man. His heart and his mind are equally
admirable. Messrs. Malcolm and Mr. Urquhart of Cromartie are now here.
The Duke, his pupil, is a very amiable spirit, and does his exercises
well, and is making progress in French. If any English or Scotch
people ask your advice where to go for their studies, you could
recommend Toulouse. There is a very good academy and much society, and
some very distinguished people to be seen here." In a subsequent
letter he says, "There are many English people here, and the district
suits them well."[141]
This Abbé Colbert, who was Smith's chief guide and friend in the South
of France, was the eldest son of Mr. Cuthbert of Castlehill in
Inverness-shire, and was therefore head of the old Highland family to
which Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV., was so anxious to
trace his descent. That minister had himself gone the length of
petitioning the Scotch Privy Council for a birth-brieve, or
certificate, to attest his descent from the Castlehill family, and the
petition was refused through the influence of the Duke of Lauderdale.
But his successor, the Marquis de Seignelay, found the Scotch
Parliament more accommodating in 1686 than the Scotch Privy Council
had been, and obtained the birth-brieve in an Act of that year, which
was passed, as it states, in order that "this illustrious and noble
family of Colbert may be restored to us their friends and to their
native country," and which declared that the family came from the
south of Scotland, took their name from St. Cuthbert (pronounced, says
the Act, by the Scotch Culbert, though "soaftened" by the French into
Colbert), and received their arms for their valour in the battle of
Harlaw.
The link between the Scotch Cuthberts and the French Colberts, thus
attested by Act of Parliament, may or may not be fabulous, but it was
a link of gold to many members of the family of Castlehill, who
emigrated to France, and were advanced into high positions through the
interest of their French connections. One of these was the present
Abbé, who had come over in 1750 a boy of fourteen, was now at
twenty-eight Vicar-General of Toulouse, and was in 1781 made Bishop of
Rodez. As Bishop he distinguished himself by the work he did for the
improvement of agriculture and industry in his diocese, and, as member
of the States General in 1789, he became the hero of the hour in Paris
and was carried shoulder-high through the streets for proposing the
union of the clergy with the Third Estate. When the Civil Constitution
of the clergy was declared he refused to submit, and returning to this
country, spent the remainder of his days here as Secretary to Louis
XVIII.
It would appear from the Abbé's first letter that Smith had either
brought with him from Paris an introduction to the Archbishop of
Toulouse, or that Hume had asked his cousin to give him one. This
Archbishop--who was so desirous to make Hume's acquaintance--was the
celebrated Loménie de Brienne, afterwards Cardinal and Minister of
France, who was thought at this time, Walpole says, to be the ablest
man in the Gallican Church, and was pronounced by Hume to be the only
man in France capable of restoring the greatness of the kingdom. When
he obtained the opportunity he signally falsified Hume's
prognostication, and did much to precipitate the Revolution by his
incapacity. Smith must no doubt have met him occasionally during his
protracted sojourn at Toulouse, though we have no evidence that he
did, and the Archbishop was rather notorious for his absence from his
see. If he did meet his Grace he would have found him as advanced an
economist as himself, for having been a college friend of Turgot and
Morellet at the Sorbonne, he became a strong advocate of their new
economic principles, and succeeded in getting the principle of free
trade in corn adopted by the States of Languedoc. Whether they were
personally acquainted or not, the Archbishop does not appear to have
cherished any profound regard for Smith, for when he was Minister of
France he refused his friend Morellet the trifling sum of a hundred
francs, which the Abbé asked to pay for the printing of his
translation of the _Wealth of Nations_.
During Smith's first six months at Toulouse he does not seem to have
seen the Archbishop, or to have seen much of anybody, as the following
letter shows. Indeed he found the place extremely dull, the life he
led in Glasgow having been, he says, dissipation itself in comparison.
They had not received the letters of recommendation they had expected
from the Duc de Choiseul, and for society they were as yet practically
confined to the Abbé Colbert and the English residents. For a
diversion Smith contemplates an excursion to Bordeaux, and suggests a
visit for a month from Sir James Macdonald, for the sake not only of
his agreeable society, but of the service "his influence and example"
would render the Duke. Personally he had, to mitigate his solitude,
taken a measure no less important than effectual--he had begun to
write a book--the _Wealth of Nations_--"to pass away the time. You may
believe I have very little to do."
They had arrived in Toulouse on the 3rd or 4th of March, but it is the
5th of July before Smith thinks of writing Hume; at least the
following letter reads as if it were the first since they parted:--
MY DEAREST FRIEND--The Duke of Buccleugh proposes soon to
set out for Bordeaux, where he intends to stay a fortnight
or more. I should be much obliged to you if you could send
us recommendations to the Duke of Richelieu, the Marquis de
Lorges, and the Intendant of the Province. Mr. Townshend
assured me that the Duc de Choiseul was to recommend us to
all the people of fashion here and everywhere else in
France. We have heard nothing, however, of these
recommendations, and have had our way to make as well as we
could by the help of the Abbé, who is a stranger here almost
as much as we. The Progress indeed we have made is not very
great. The Duke is acquainted with no Frenchman whatever. I
cannot cultivate the acquaintance of the few with whom I am
acquainted, as I cannot bring them to our house, and am not
always at liberty to go to theirs. The life which I led at
Glasgow was a pleasurable dissipated life in comparison of
that which I lead here at Present. I have begun to write a
book in order to pass away the time. You may believe I have
very little to do. If Sir James would come and spend a month
with us in his travels, it would not only be a great
satisfaction to me, but he might by his influence and
example be of great service to the Duke. Mention these
matters, however, to nobody but to him. Remember me in the
most respectful manner to Lord Beauchamp and to Dr.
Trail,[142] and believe me, my dear friend, ever yours,
ADAM SMITH.
TOULOUSE, _5th July 1764_.[143]
The trip to Bordeaux was taken probably in August, and in the company
of Abbé Colbert. At Bordeaux they fell in with Colonel Barré, the
furious orator, whose invective made even Charles Townshend quail, but
who was now over on a visit to his French kinsfolk, and making the
hearts of these simple people glad with his natural kindnesses. He
seems to have been much with Smith and his party during their stay in
Bordeaux, and to have accompanied them back to Toulouse. For he writes
Hume on the 4th of September from the latter town, and says: "I thank
you for your last letter from Paris, which I received just as Smith
and his _élève_ and L'Abbé Colbert were sitting down to dine with me
at Bordeaux. The latter is a very honest fellow and deserves to be a
bishop; make him one if you can.... Why will you triumph and talk of
_platte couture_? You have friends on both sides. Smith agrees with me
in thinking that you are turned soft by the _délices_ of the French
Court, and that you don't write in that nervous manner you was
remarkable for in the more northern climates. Besides, what is still
worse, you take your politics from your Elliots, Rigbys, and
Selwyns."[144]
Smith was already acquainted with Barré before he left Scotland, where
the colonel, for services rendered to Lord Shelburne, held the
lucrative post of Governor of Stirling Castle; and now he could not go
sight-seeing in a French town under two better guides than Barré and
Colbert--a Frenchman who had become an English politician, and an
Englishman who had become a French ecclesiastic. He seems to have been
struck with the contrast between the condition of the working class in
Bordeaux and their condition in Toulouse, as he had already been
struck with the same contrast between Glasgow and Edinburgh. In
Bordeaux they were in general industrious, sober, and thriving; in
Toulouse and the rest of the parliament towns they were idle and poor;
and the reason was that Bordeaux was a commercial town, the _entrepôt_
of the wine trade of a rich wine district, while Toulouse and the rest
were merely residential towns, employing little capital more than was
necessary to supply their own consumption. The common people were
always better off in a town like Bordeaux, where they lived on
capital, than in a town like Toulouse, where they lived on
revenue.[145] But while he speaks as if he thought the people of
Bordeaux more sober as well as more industrious than the people of
Toulouse, he looked upon the inhabitants of the southern provinces of
France generally as among the soberest people in Europe, and ascribes
their sobriety to the cheapness of their liquor. "People are seldom
guilty of excess," he says, "in what is their daily fare." He tells
that when a French regiment came from some of the northern provinces
of France, where wine was somewhat dear, to be quartered in the
southern, where wine was very cheap, the soldiers were at first
debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few
months' residence the greater part of them became as sober as the rest
of the inhabitants. And he thinks the same effect might occur in this
country from a reduction of the wine, malt, and ale duties.[146]
Besides seeing the places, they visited some of the notabilities, to
whom the Earl of Hertford had sent them the letters of introduction
for which Smith had asked through Hume. The governor of the province
was away from home at the time, however; but Smith hoped to see him on
a second visit to Bordeaux he was presently to pay to meet his pupil's
younger brother on his way round from Paris to Toulouse. But they
found the Duke of Richelieu at home, and the gallant old
field-marshal, the hero of a hundred fights and a thousand scandals,
seems to have received them with great civility and even distinction.
Smith used to have much to say ever afterwards of this famous and
ill-famed man.
The excursion to Bordeaux in August was so agreeable that they made
another--probably in September--up to the fashionable watering-place
Bagnères de Bigorre, and in October, when Smith wrote the following
letter to Hume, they were on the eve of the second visit to Bordeaux
of which I have spoken, and even contemplating after that a visit to
Montpellier, when the States of Languedoc--the local assembly of the
province--met there in the end of November.
TOULOUSE, _21st October 1764_.
MY DEAR HUME--I take this opportunity of Mr. Cook's going to
Paris to return to you, and thro' you to the Ambassador, my
very sincere and hearty thanks for the very honourable
manner in which he was so good as to mention me to the Duke
of Richelieu in the letter of recommendation which you sent
us. There was, indeed, one small mistake in it. He called me
Robinson instead of Smith. I took upon me to correct this
mistake myself before the Duke delivered the letter. We were
all treated by the Maréchal with the utmost Politeness and
attention, particularly the Duke, whom he distinguished in a
very proper manner. The Intendant was not at Bordeaux, but
we shall soon have an opportunity of delivering his letter,
as we propose to return to that place in order to meet my
Lord's Brother.
Mr. Cook[147] goes to Caen to wait upon Mr. Scot, and to
attend him from that place to Toulouse. He will pass by
Paris, and I must beg the favour of you that as soon as you
understand he is in town you will be so good as to call upon
him and carry him to the Ambassador's, as well as to any
other place where he would chuse to go. I must beg the same
favour of Sir James. Mr. Cook will let you know when he
comes to town. I have great reason to entertain the most
favourable opinion of Mr. Scot, and I flatter myself his
company will be both useful and agreeable to his Brother.
Our expedition to Bordeaux and another we have made since to
Bagnères has made a great change upon the Duke. He begins
now to familiarise himself to French company, and I flatter
myself I shall spend the rest of the time we are to live
together not only in Peace and contentment, but in gayetty
and amusement.
When Mr. Scot joins us we propose to go to see the meeting
of the States of Languedoc at Montpelier. Could you promise
us recommendations to the Comte d'Eu, to the Archbishop of
Narbonne, and to the Intendant? These expeditions, I find,
are of the greatest service to my Lord.--I ever am, my dear
friend, most, faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.[148]
A few days after the date of that letter Smith writes Hume again,
introducing one of the English residents in Toulouse, Mr. Urquhart of
Cromartie, as Abbé Colbert describes him in one of his letters, a
descendant therefore probably of Sir Thomas. The letter is of no
importance, but it shows at least Smith's hearty liking for a good
fellow.
MY DEAR FRIEND--This letter will be delivered to you by Mr.
Urquhart, the only man I ever knew who had a better temper
than yourself. You will find him most perfectly amiable. I
recommend him in the most earnest manner to your advice and
protection. He is not a man of letters, and is just a plain,
sensible, agreeable man of no pretensions of any kind, but
whom you will love every day better and better.--My dear
friend, most faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.
TOULOUSE, _4th November 1764_.[149]
Smith and his two pupils made their proposed expedition to Montpellier
during the sittings of the States, for we find them visited there by
Horne Tooke,[150] then still parson of Brentford, who had been on a
tour in Italy, and stayed some time in Montpellier on his way back.
Tooke, it may be said here, was no admirer of Smith; he thought the
_Theory of Moral Sentiments_ nonsense, and the _Wealth of Nations_
written for a wicked purpose,[151] and this is the only occasion on
which they are known to have met.
The little provincial assembly which Smith had come to Montpellier to
see was at that period, it ought to be mentioned, attracting much
attention from all the thinkers and reformers of France, and was
thought by many of the first of them to furnish the solution of the
political question of that age. The States of Languedoc were almost
the only remains of free institutions then left in France. In all the
thirty-two provinces of the country except six the States had been
suppressed altogether, and in five of these six they were too small to
be important or vigorous; but Languedoc was a great province,
containing twenty-three bishoprics and more territory than the kingdom
of Belgium, and the States governed its affairs so well that its
prosperity was the envy of the rest of France. They dug canals, opened
harbours, drained marshes, made roads, which Arthur Young singles out
for praise, and made them without the _corvée_ under which the rest of
rural France was groaning. They farmed the imperial taxes of the
province themselves, to avoid the exactions of the farmers-general.
They allowed the _noblesse_ none of the exemptions so unfairly enjoyed
by them elsewhere. The _taille_, which was a personal tax in other
parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed
according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a
poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and
excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market
than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to
get more favourable terms, to borrow on the security of the States of
Languedoc instead of his own.[152]
Under those circumstances it is not surprising that one of the
favourite remedies for the political situation in France was the
revival of the provincial assemblies and the suppression of the
intendants--"Grattan's Parliament and the abolition of the Castle."
Turgot, among others, favoured this solution, though he was an
intendant himself. Necker had just put it into execution when the
Revolution came and swept everything away. Smith himself has expressed
the strongest opinion in favour of the administration of provincial
affairs by a local body instead of by an intendant, and he must have
witnessed with no ordinary interest the proceedings of this remarkable
little assembly at Montpellier, with its 23 prelates on the right, its
23 barons on the left, and the third estate--representatives of 23
chief towns and 23 dioceses--in the centre, and on a dais in front of
all, the President, the Archbishop of Narbonne. The Archbishop, to
whom, it will be remembered, Smith asked, and no doubt received, a
letter of introduction from Lord Hertford, was a countryman of his
own, Cardinal Dillon, a prince of prelates, afterwards Minister of
France; a strong champion of the rights of the States against the
pretensions of the Crown, and, if we may judge from the speech with
which Miss Knight heard him open the States of Languedoc in 1776, a
very thorough free-trader.
With all these excursions, Smith was now evidently realising in some
reasonable measure the "gayetty and amusement" he told Hume he
anticipated to enjoy during the rest of his stay in the South of
France. His command of the language, too, grew easier, though it never
became perfect, and he not only went more into society, but was able
to enjoy it better. Among those he saw most of in Toulouse were, he
used to tell Stewart, the presidents and counsellors of the
Parliament, who were noted, like their class in other parliament
towns, for their hospitality, and noted above those of other
parliament towns for keeping up the old tradition of blending their
law with a love of letters. They were men, moreover, of proved
patriotism and independence; in no other society would Smith be likely
to hear more of the oppressed condition of the peasantry, and the
necessity for thoroughgoing reforms. In those days the king's edict
did not run in a province till it was registered by the local
parliament, and the Parliament of Toulouse often used this privilege
of theirs to check bad measures. They had in 1756 remonstrated with
the king against the _corvée_, declaring that the condition of the
peasantry of France was "a thousand times less tolerable than the
condition of the slaves in America." At the very moment of Smith's
first arrival in Toulouse they were all thrown in prison--or at least
put under arrest in their own houses--for refusing to register the
_centième denier_, and Smith no doubt had that circumstance in his
mind when he animadverted in the _Wealth of Nations_ on the violence
practised by the French Government to coerce its parliaments. He
thought very highly of those parliaments as institutions, stating that
though not very convenient courts of law, they had never been accused
or even suspected of corruption, and he gives a curious reason for
their incorruptibility; it was because they were not paid by salary,
but by fees dependent on their diligence.
During Smith's residence in Toulouse the town was raging (as Abbé
Colbert mentions in his letters to Hume) about one of the judgments of
this Parliament, and for the most part, strangely enough, taking the
Parliament's side. This was its judgment in the famous Calas case, to
which Smith alludes in the last edition of his _Theory_. Jean Calas,
it may be remembered, had a son who had renounced his Protestantism in
order to become eligible for admission to the Toulouse bar, and then
worried himself so much about his apostasy that he committed suicide
in his father's house; and the father was unjustly accused before the
Parliament of the town of having murdered the youth on account of his
apostasy, was found guilty without a particle of proof, and then
broken on the wheel and burnt on the 9th of March 1762. But the great
voice of Voltaire rose against this judicial atrocity, and after three
years' agitation procured a new trial before a special court of fifty
masters of requests, of whom Turgot was one, on the 9th of March 1765,
with the result that Calas was pronounced absolutely innocent of the
crime he suffered for, and his family was awarded a compensation of
36,000 livres. The king received them at court, and all France
rejoiced in their rehabilitation except their own townsfolk in
Toulouse. On the 10th of April 1765--a month after the verdict--Abbé
Colbert writes Hume: "The people here would surprise you with their
fanaticism. In spite of all that has happened, they every man believe
Calas to be guilty, and it is no use speaking to them on the
subject."[153]
Smith makes use of the incident to illustrate the proposition that
while unmerited praise gives no satisfaction except to the frivolous,
unmerited reproach inflicts the keenest suffering even on men of
exceptional endurance, because the injustice destroys the sweetness
of the praise, but enormously embitters the sting of the condemnation.
"The unfortunate Calas," he writes--"a man of much more than ordinary
constancy (broken upon the wheel and burnt at Tholouse for the
supposed murder of his own son, of which he was perfectly
innocent)--seemed with his last breath to deprecate not so much the
cruelty of the punishment, as the disgrace which the imputation must
bring upon his memory. After he had been broke, and when just going to
be thrown into the fire, the monk who attended the execution exhorted
him to confess the crime for which he had been condemned. 'My father,'
said Calas, 'can you bring yourself to believe that I was guilty?'"
FOOTNOTES:
[140] _Hume Correspondence_, R.S.E. Library.
[141] Ibid.
[142] Lord Beauchamp was the eldest son of the English Ambassador, the
Earl of Hertford, and Dr. Trail, or properly Traill, was the
Ambassador's chaplain, who was made Bishop of Down and Connor soon
afterwards, when Lord Hertford became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
[143] _Hume Correspondence_, R.S.E. Library.
[144] Burton's _Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume_, p. 37.
[145] _Wealth of Nations_, Book II. chap. iii.
[146] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. xi.
[147] The Duke's servant.
[148] _Hume Correspondence_, R.S.E. Library.
[149] _Hume Correspondence_, R.S.E. Library.
[150] Stephen's _Life of Horne Tooke_, i. 75.
[151] Samuel Rogers told this to his friend the Rev. John Mitford. See
Add. MSS. 32,566.
[152] Tocqueville, _State of Society in France_, pp. _265, 271._
[153] _Hume Correspondence_, R.S.E. Library.