LONDON
1766-1767. _Aet._ 43
Arriving in London early in November, Smith seems to have remained on
in the capital for the next six months. The body of his unfortunate
pupil, which he brought over with him, was ultimately buried in the
family vault at Dalkeith, for Dr. Norman Macleod and Mr. Steel say so;
but the interment there does not seem to have taken place immediately
after the arrival from France, for the London journals, which announce
the Duke of Buccleugh's landing at Dover on the 1st of November,
mention his presence at the Guildhall with his stepfather, Mr.
Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the 10th, Lord Mayor's Day;
and the Duke, who is stated by Dr. Macleod to have brought his
brother's remains north, could not have been to Scotland and back in
that interval. Smith was accordingly not required to proceed to
Scotland on that sad duty, and on the 22nd of November Andrew Millar,
the publisher, writing to David Hume in Edinburgh, mentions the fact
that Smith was then in London and moving about among the great. This
letter was written about a question on which Hume had sought Smith's
counsel, and on which Millar had held some conversation with Smith,
the upshot of which he now communicates to Hume--the question whether
he should continue his _History of England_. While Smith was still in
Paris Hume had written saying: "Some push me to continue my _History_.
Millar offers any price. All the Marlborough papers are offered me,
and I believe nobody would venture to refuse me, but _cui bono?_ Why
should I forego dalliance and sauntering and society, and expose
myself again to the clamours of a stupid factious public? I am not yet
tired of doing nothing, and am become too wise either to want censure
or praise. By and by I shall be too old to undergo so much
labour."[195]
Smith does not appear to have answered this letter at the time, but
his opinion is communicated to Hume in this letter from Millar, who no
doubt had a conversation with him on the subject. Millar says: "He is
of opinion, with many more of your very good sensible friends, that
the history of this country from the Revolution is not to be met with
in books yet printed, but from MSS. in this country, to which he is
sure you will have ready access, from all accounts he learns from the
great here; and therefore you should lay the groundwork here after
your perusal of the MSS. you may have access to, and doing it below
will be laying the wrong foundation. I think it my duty to inform you
the opinion of your most judicious friends, and I think he and Sir
John Pringle may be reckoned amongst that number."[196]
Smith was himself publishing with Millar at this time a new edition of
his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_--the third, which appeared in 1767,
containing, like the second, the addition of the _Dissertation upon
the Origin of Languages_. One of his reasons for staying so long in
London this winter was no doubt to see the sheets through the press.
The book was printed by Strahan, who was also a partner in Millar's
publishing business; and there is a letter to him from Smith which,
though bearing no date but Friday and no place of writing at all, must
have been written, as indeed those two very circumstances indicate, in
London, and some time during the winter of 1766-67.
MY DEAR STRAHAN--I go to the country for a few days this
afternoon, so that it will be unnecessary to send me any
more sheets till I return. The _Dissertation upon the Origin
of Languages_ is to be printed at the end of the _Theory_.
There are some literal errors in the printed copy of it
which I should have been glad to have corrected, but have
not the opportunity, as I have no copy by me. They are of no
great consequence. In the titles, both of the _Theory_ and
_Dissertation_, call me simply Adam Smith without any
addition either before or behind.--I ever am, etc.,
ADAM SMITH.
Friday.[197]
When the _Wealth of Nations_ came out in 1776 the author described
himself on the title-page as LL.D. and F.R.S., late Professor of Moral
Philosophy in Glasgow University, but he wants here on the _Theory_
nothing but plain Adam Smith, his mind being at this period apparently
averse to making use of his degree even on public and formal
occasions, as it always was to using it in private life. He described
himself on his visiting cards as "Mr. Adam Smith," he was known in the
inner circle of his personal friends as Mr. Smith, and when Dugald
Stewart was found fault with by certain critics for speaking of him so
in his memoirs, he replied that he never heard Smith called anything
else.
But while Smith was superintending the republication of his first
book, he was at the same time using his opportunities in London to
read up at the British Museum, then newly established, or elsewhere,
for his second and greater, of which he had laid the keel in France.
One of the subjects which he was engaged in studying at that time was
colonial administration. He seems to have been discussing the subject
with Lord Shelburne, who was now Secretary of State, and he gives that
statesman the results of his further investigations into at least one
branch of the subject in the following letter, written in the first
instance, like so many others of Smith's extant letters, to do a
service to a friend. He wished to interest Lord Shelburne in the
claims of a Scotch friend, Alexander Dalrymple, for the command of the
exploring expedition which it was then in contemplation to send to the
South Sea, and which was eventually committed to Captain Wallis. This
Alexander Dalrymple was afterwards the well-known Hydrographer to the
Admiralty and the East India Company, to whom the progress of
geographical knowledge lies under deep obligations. He was one of the
numerous younger brothers of Lord Hailes, the Scotch judge and
historian, and having returned in 1765 from thirteen years' work in
the East India Company's service, had devoted himself since then to
the study of discoveries in the South Sea, and arrived at a confident
belief in the existence of a great undiscovered continent in that
quarter. Lord Shelburne would have given him the command of this
expedition had not Captain Wallis been already engaged, and next year
he was actually offered, and had he been granted naval rank, which he
thought essential for maintaining discipline on board ship, he would
have undertaken command of the more memorable expedition to observe
the transit of Venus, which made Captain Cook the most famous explorer
of his age.
The following is Smith's letter:--
MY LORD--I send you enclosed Quiros's memorial, presented to
Philip the Second after his return from his voyage,
translated from the Spanish in which it is published in
Purchass. The voyage itself is long, obscure, and difficult
to be understood, except by those who are particularly
acquainted with the geography and navigation of those
countries, and upon looking over a great number of
Dalrymple's papers I imagined this was what you would like
best to see. He is besides just finishing a geographical
account of all the discoveries that have yet been made in
the South Seas from the west coast of America to Tasman's
discoveries. If your lordship will give him leave, he would
be glad to read this to you himself, and show you on his map
the geographical ascertainment of the situation of each
island. I have seen it; it is extremely short; not much
longer than this memorial of Quiros. Whether this may be
convenient for your lordship I know not; whether this
continent exists or not may perhaps be uncertain; but
supposing it does exist, I am very certain you never will
find a man fitter for discovering it, or more determined to
hazard everything in order to discover it. The terms that he
would ask are, first, the absolute command of the ship, with
the naming of all the officers, in order that he may have
people who both have confidence in him and in whom he has
confidence; and secondly, that in case he should lose his
ship by the common course of accidents before he gets into
the South Sea, that the Government will undertake to give
him another. These are all the terms he would insist upon.
The ship properest for such an expedition, he says, would be
an old fifty-gun ship without her guns. He does not,
however, insist upon this, as a _sine quâ non_, but will go
in any ship from an hundred to a thousand tons. He wishes to
have but one ship with a good many boats. Most expeditions
of this kind have miscarried from one ship's being obliged
to wait for the other, or losing time in looking out for the
other.
Within these two days I have looked over everything I can
find relating to the Roman Colonys. I have not yet found
anything of much consequence. They were governed upon the
model of the Republic: had two consuls called _duumviri_; a
senate called _decuriones_ or _collegium decurionum_, and
other magistrates similar to those of the Republic. The
colonists lost their right of voting or of being elected to
any magistracy in the Roman comitia. In this respect they
were inferior to many municipia. They retained, however, all
the other privileges of Roman citizens. They seem to have
been very independent. Of thirty colonies of whom the Romans
demanded troops in the second Carthaginian war, twelve
refused to obey. They frequently rebelled and joined the
enemies of the Republic; being in some measure little
independent republics, they naturally followed the interests
which their peculiar situation pointed out to them.--I have
the honour to be, with the highest regard, my lord, your
lordship's most obedient humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.
Tuesday, _12th February 1767_.[198]
The problem of colonial rights and responsibilities had just come
rapidly to the forefront of public questions in England. The
abandonment of North America by the French in 1763 had given a new
importance to the plantations, and seemed to develop at the same time
a stronger disposition to assert colonial rights on the one side of
the Atlantic, and to interfere with them on the other. The Stamp Act
of 1765 had already begun the struggle against imperial taxation which
Charles Townshend's tea duty, imposed a few months after this letter
was written, was to precipitate into rebellion. There was therefore
very good reason why statesmen like Lord Shelburne should be studying
the relations of dependencies to mother countries, and turning their
attention to earlier colonial experiments such as those of ancient
Rome. It will be observed that Smith came in the _Wealth of Nations_
to modify somewhat the view he expresses in this letter of the
independence of the Roman colonies, and explains that the reason they
were less prosperous than the Greek colonies was because they were
not, like the latter, independent, and were "not always at liberty to
manage their own affairs in the way that they judged most suitable to
their own interest."[199]
Smith's absent-minded habit, while it seems from various accounts to
have been lessened by his travels abroad, was not entirely removed by
them, for on the 11th of February 1767 Lady Mary Coke writes her
sister that Lady George Lennox and Sir Gilbert Elliot had happened to
meet while visiting her, and had talked of "Mr. Smith, the gentleman
that went abroad with the Duke of Buccleugh," saying many things in
his praise, but adding that he was the most absent man they ever knew.
Sir Gilbert mentioned that Mr. Damer (probably Mr. John Damer, Lord
Milton's son) had paid Smith a visit a few mornings before as he was
sitting down to breakfast, and falling into discourse Smith took a
piece of bread and butter, and after rolling it round and round put it
into the teapot and poured the water upon it. Shortly after he poured
out a cup, and on tasting it declared it was the worst tea he had
ever met with. "I have not the least doubt of it," said Mr. Damer,
"for you have made it of bread and butter instead of tea."[200]
The Duke of Buccleugh was married in London on the 3rd of May 1767 to
Lady Betsy, only daughter of the Duke of Montagu, and Smith probably
returned to Scotland immediately after that event. For in writing Hume
from Kirkcaldy on the 9th of June 1767, he mentions having now been
settled down to his work for about a month. Another circumstance
confirms this inference. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
of London on the 21st of May 1767, but was not admitted till the 27th
of May 1773, and that seems to imply that he had left London before
the former date, and never returned to it again till shortly before
the latter one.
FOOTNOTES:
[195] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 392.
[196] Ibid.
[197] _New York Evening Post._ Original in possession of Mr. David A.
Wells of Norwich, U.S.A.
[198] Lansdowne MSS.
[199] _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV. chap. vii.
[200] Lady Mary Coke's _Journal_, i. 141.