KIRKCALDY
1767-1773. _Aet._ 44-50
When Smith left Glasgow his mother and cousin went back again to
Kirkcaldy, and he now joined them and remained with them there for the
next eleven years. Hume, who thought the country an unsuitable place
for a man of letters, used every endeavour to persuade him to remove
to Edinburgh, but without success. The gaiety and fulness of city life
were evidently much less to him than they were to Hume, and he must
have found what sufficed him in the little town of his birth. He had
his work, he had his mother, he had his books, he had his daily walks
in the sea breeze, and he had Edinburgh always in the offing as a
place of occasional resort. He is said to have taken much real
pleasure, like Shakespeare at Stratford, in mingling again with the
simple old folk who were about him in his youth, and he had a few
neighbours whose pursuits corresponded more nearly with his own. James
Oswald, indeed, was now struck down with illness--"terrible distress"
is Smith's expression--and he died in the second year after Smith's
return to Scotland. Oswald spent some months in Kirkcaldy, however, in
the fall of 1767, and probably again in 1768. One of Smith's other
literary neighbours, whom he saw much of during this eleven years'
residence in Fife, was Robert Beatson, author of the _Political Index_
and other works, to whom there will be occasion to refer again later
on. His chief resource, however, throughout this period was his work,
which engaged his mind late and early till it told hard, as we shall
presently see, on his health.
After being established in Kirkcaldy for some weeks Smith wrote Hume
that he was immersed in study, which was the only business he had,
that his sole amusements were long solitary walks by the seaside
(which, with a man of his gift or infirmity of abstraction, would only
be protractions of the study that preoccupied him), and that he never
was happier or more contented in all his life. The immediate object of
this letter, as so usual with Smith, was to serve a friend--a motive
which never failed to overcome his aversion to writing. A French
friend--"the best and most agreeable friend I had in France," says
Smith--was then in London, and Smith wishes Hume, who was now Under
Secretary of State, to show him some attentions during his residence
there. This friend was Count de Sarsfield, a gentleman of Irish
extraction, an associate of Turgot and the other men of letters in
Paris, and a man who added to almost universal knowledge a special
predilection for economics, and indeed wrote a number of essays on
economic questions, though he never published any of them. He seems to
have really been, as Smith indicates, the perfection of an agreeable
companion. John Adams, the second President of the United States, when
envoy for that country in Paris, was very intimate with him, and says
that Sarsfield was the happiest man he knew, for he led the life of a
peripatetic philosopher. "Observation and reflection are all his
business, and his dinner and his friend all his pleasure. If a man
were born for himself alone, I would take him for a model."[201] He
was "the greatest rider of hobby-horses" in all President Adams's
acquaintance, and some of his hobbies were for the most serious
studies. He published a work in metaphysics, and wrote essays against
serfdom and slavery, and on a number of other subjects, which were
found in MS. among President Adams's papers. Yet he was a
problem--and not a very soluble one--to the worthy President, for he
laid a weight on the merest trifles of ceremony or etiquette which
seemed difficult to reconcile with his devotion to profound and
learned studies. He visited Adams at Washington during his presidency,
and used constantly to lecture the President on his little omissions.
After any entertainment Sarsfield would say, writes Adams, "that I
should have placed the Ambassador of France at my right hand and the
Minister of Spain at my left, and have arranged the other principal
personages; and when I rose from the table I should have said,
Messieurs, voudrez vous, etc., or Monsieur or Duc voudrez vous,
etc.... How is it possible to reconcile these trifling contemplations
of a master of the ceremonies with the vast knowledge of arts,
sciences, history, government, etc., possessed by this nobleman?"[202]
Sarsfield kept a journal about all the people he met with, from which
Adams makes some interesting quotations, and which, if extant, might
be expected to add to our information regarding Smith. Having said so
much of Smith's "best and most agreeable friend in France," I will now
give the letter:--
KIRKALDY, _7th June 1767_.
MY DEAREST FRIEND--The Principal design of this Letter is to
Recommend to your particular attention the Count de
Sarsfield, the best and most agreeable friend I had in
France. Introduce him, if you find it proper, to all the
friends of yr. absent friend, to Oswald and to Elliot in
particular. I cannot express to you how anxious I am that
his stay in London should be rendered agreeable to him. You
know him, and must know what a plain, worthy, honourable man
he is. I enclose a letter for him, which you may either send
to him, or rather, if the weighty affairs of State will
permit it, deliver it to him yourself. The letter to Dr.
Morton[203] you may send by the Penny Post.
My Business here is study, in which I have been very deeply
engaged for about a month past. My amusements are long
solitary walks by the seaside. You may judge how I spend my
time. I feel myself, however, extremely happy, comfortable,
and contented. I never was perhaps more so in all my life.
You will give me great comfort by writing to me now and
then, and by letting me know what is passing among my
friends at London. Remember me to them all, particularly to
Mr. Adams's family and to Mrs. Montagu.[204]
What has become of Rousseau? Has he gone abroad because he
cannot contrive to get himself sufficiently persecuted in
Great Britain?
What is the meaning of the bargain that your ministry have
made with the India Company? They have not, I see, prolonged
their charter, which is a good circumstance.[205]
The rest of the sheet is torn.
Hume replies on the 13th that Sarsfield was a very good friend of his
own, whom he had always great pleasure in meeting, as he was a man of
merit; but that he did not introduce him, as Smith desired, to Sir
Gilbert Elliot, because "this gentleman's reserve and indolence would
make him neglect the acquaintance"; nor to Oswald, because he found
his intimacy with Oswald, which had lasted more than a quarter of a
century, was broken for ever. He goes on to describe his quarrel with
Oswald's brother the bishop; and concludes: "If I were sure, dear
Smith, that you and I should not some day quarrel in some such manner,
I should tell you that I am yours affectionately and sincerely."[206]
Count de Sarsfield seems to have gone on to Scotland to pay Smith a
visit, for on the 14th of July Hume writes Smith, enclosing a packet,
which he desires to be delivered to the Count.
Smith did not reply to either of these letters till the 13th of
September, when he writes from Dalkeith House, where he has gone for
the home-coming of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh. After expressing
his mind in the plainest terms about the bishop with whom Hume had the
tussle--"He is a brute and a beast," says Smith--he goes on to bespeak
Hume's favour for a young cousin of his who happened to be living in
the same house with Hume in London, Captain David Skene, afterwards of
Pitlour, who was in 1787 made inspector of military roads in Scotland.
Be so good (he says) as convey the enclosed letter to the
Count de Sarsfield. I have been much in the wrong for having
delayed so long to write both to him and you.
There is a very amiable, modest, brave, worthy young
gentleman who lives in the same house with you. His name is
David Skeene. He and I are sisters' sons, but my regard for
him is much more founded on his personal qualities than upon
the relations in which he stands to me. He acted lately in a
very gallant manner in America, of which he never acquainted
me himself, and of which I came to the knowledge only within
these few days. If you can be of any service to him you
could not possibly do a more obliging thing to me.
The Duke and Dutchess of Buccleugh have been here now for
almost a fortnight. They begin to open their house on Monday
next, and, I flatter myself, will both be very agreeable to
the People of this country. I am not sure that I have ever
seen a more agreeable woman than the Dutchess. I am sorry
that you are not here, because I am sure you would be
perfectly in love with her. I shall probably be here some
weeks. I could wish, however, that both you and the Count de
Sarsfield would direct for me as usual at Kirkaldy. I should
be glad to know the true history of Rousseau before and
since he left England. You may perfectly depend upon my
never quoting you to any living soul upon that subject.--I
ever am, dear sir, most faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.[207]
The Duke of Buccleugh had never been at Dalkeith since his infancy--if
indeed he had been even then, for Dr. Carlyle's words in describing
this celebration are, "where his grace had never been
before"--because his stepfather, Charles Townshend, was afraid he
might grow up too Scotch in accent and feeling; and his home-coming
now, with his young and beautiful bride, excited the liveliest
interest and expectation, not only on the Buccleugh estates, but over
the whole lowlands of Scotland, from the Forth to the Solway. The day
originally fixed for the celebration was the Duke's birthday, the 13th
of September, the very day Smith wrote Hume; but the event had to be
postponed in consequence of the sudden death of Townshend, from an
attack of putrid fever, between the day of the Duke's arrival at
Dalkeith and the anniversary of his birth. It came off, however, two
or three weeks later. An entertainment was given to about fifty ladies
and gentlemen of the neighbourhood; but Dr. Carlyle, who was present,
and wrote indeed an ode for the occasion, says that though the fare
was sumptuous, the company was formal and dull, because the guests
were all strangers to their host and hostess except Adam Smith, and
Adam Smith, says Carlyle, "was but ill qualified to promote the
jollity of a birthday." "Had it not been for Alexander Macmillan,
W.S., and myself," he proceeds, "the meeting would have been very
dull, and might have been dissolved without even drinking the health
of the day.... Smith remained with them (the Duke and Duchess) for two
months, and then returned to Kirkcaldy to his mother and his studies.
I have often thought since that if they had brought down a man of more
address than he was, how much sooner their first appearance might have
been."[208]
The ice, which Smith is thus blamed for not being able to break on
this first meeting of his pupil with his Scotch neighbours, was not
long in melting naturally away under the warmth of the Duke's own
kindness of heart. He almost settled among them, for on Townshend's
death he gave up the idea on which that statesman had set his heart,
and which was one of his reasons for committing the training of the
young Duke to the care of a political philosopher,--the idea of going
into politics as an active career; and he lived largely on his Scotch
estates; becoming a father to his numerous tenantry, and a powerful
and enlightened promoter of all sound agricultural improvement. Dr.
Carlyle says the family were always kind to their tenants, but Duke
Henry "surpassed them all, as much in justice and humanity as he did
in superiority of understanding and good sense." Without claiming for
Smith's teaching what must in any case have been largely the result of
a fine natural character, it is certain that no young man could live
for three years in daily intimacy with Adam Smith without being
powerfully influenced by that deep love of justice and humanity which
animated Smith beyond his fellows, and ran as warmly through his
conversation in private life as we see it still runs through his
published writings. Smith was always vigorous and weighty in his
denunciation of wrong, and so impatient of anything in the nature of
indifference or palliation towards it, that he could scarce feel at
ease in the presence of the palliator. "We can breathe more freely
now," he once said when a person of that sort had just left the
company; "that man has no indignation in him."[209]
Smith remained the mentor of his pupil all his life. At "Dalkeith,
which all the virtues love," he was always a most honoured guest, and
Dugald Stewart says he always spoke with much satisfaction and
gratitude of his relations with the family of Buccleugh. Several of
the traditional anecdotes of Smith's absence of mind are localised at
Dalkeith House. Lord Brougham, for example, has preserved a story of
Smith breaking out at dinner into a strong condemnation of the public
conduct of some leading statesman of the day, then suddenly stopping
short on perceiving that statesman's nearest relation on the opposite
side of the table, and presently losing self-recollection again and
muttering to himself, "Deil care, deil care, it's all true." Or there
is the less pointed story told by Archdeacon Sinclair of another
occasion when Smith was dining at Dalkeith, and two sons of Lord
Dorchester were of the company. The conversation all turned on Lord
Dorchester's estates and Lord Dorchester's affairs, and at last Smith
interposed and said, "Pray, who is Lord Dorchester? I have never heard
so much of him before." The former anecdote shows at once that Smith
was in the habit of speaking his mind with considerable plainness, and
that he shrank at the same time from everything like personal
discourtesy; and the latter, like other stories of his absence of
mind, is hardly worth repeating, except for showing that he continued
to possess a redeeming infirmity.
From Dalkeith Smith returns to Kirkcaldy and his work. We find him in
1768 in correspondence with the Duke's law-agent, Mr. A. Campbell,
W.S., and with Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, about some
investigation, apparently of no public importance, into the genealogy
of the Scotts, in connection with which he first got Campbell to make
a search in the charter-room of Dalkeith for ancient papers connected
with the Scotts of Thirlestane, and then wanted to know the
explanation Sir James Johnstone had given of Scott of Davington's
claim as heir of Rennaldburn upon the Duke of Buccleugh.[210] It shows
Smith, however, taking an interest, as if he were entitled to do so,
in the business affairs of the Duke. We find him too in correspondence
with Lord Hailes on historical points of some consequence to the
economic inquiries he was now busy upon. Lord Hailes was one of the
precursors of sound historical investigation in this country, and to
Smith, with whom he was long intimate, he afterwards paid the curious
compliment of translating his letter to Strahan on the death of Hume
into Latin.
Of Smith's correspondence with Hailes only two letters have been
preserved. The first is as follows:--
_KIRKALDY, 5th March 1769_.
MY LORD--I should now be extremely obliged to your Lordship
if you would send me the papers you mentioned upon the
prices of provisions in former times. In order that the
conveyance may be perfectly secure, if your Lordship will
give me leave I shall send my own servant sometime this week
to receive them at your Lordship's house at Edinburgh. I
have not been able to get the papers in the cause of Lord
Galloway and Lord Morton. If your Lordship is possessed of
them it would likewise be a great obligation if you would
send me them. I shall return both as soon as possible. If
your Lordship will give me leave I shall transcribe the
manuscript papers; this, however, entirely depends upon your
Lordship.
Since the last time I had the honour of writing to your
Lordship I have read over with more care than before the
Acts of James I., and compared them with your Lordship's
remarks. From this last I have received both much pleasure
and much instruction. Your Lordship's remarks will, I
plainly see, be of much more use to me than, I am afraid,
mine will be to you. I have read law entirely with a view to
form some general notion of the great outlines of the plan
according to which justice has been administered in
different ages and nations; and I have entered very little
into the detail of particulars of which I see your Lordship
is very much master. Your Lordship's particular facts will
be of great use to correct my general views; but the latter,
I fear, will always be too vague and superficial to be of
much use to your Lordship.
I have nothing to add to what your Lordship has observed
upon the Acts of James I. They are framed in general in a
much ruder and more inaccurate manner than either the
English statutes or French ordinances of the same period;
and Scotland seems to have been, even during this vigorous
reign, as our historians represent it, in greater disorder
than either France or England had been from the time of the
Danish and Norwegian incursions. The 5, 24, 56, and 85
statutes seem all to attempt a remedy to one and the same
abuse. Travelling, from the disorders of the country, must
have been extremely dangerous, and consequently very rare.
Few people therefore would propose to live by entertaining
travellers, and consequently there would be few or no inns.
Travellers would be obliged to have recourse to the
hospitality of private families in the same manner as in all
other barbarous countries; and being in this situation real
objects of compassion, private families would think
themselves obliged to receive them even though this
hospitality was extremely oppressive. Strangers, says Homer,
are sacred persons, and under the protection of Jupiter, but
no wise man would ever choose to send for a stranger unless
he was a bard or a soothsayer. The danger too of travelling
either alone or with few attendants made all men of
consequence carry along with them a numerous suite of
retainers, which rendered this hospitality still more
oppressive. Hence the orders to build hostellaries in 24 and
85; and as many people had chosen to follow the old fashion
and to live rather at the expense of other people than at
their own, hence the complaint of the keepers of the
hostellaries and the order thereupon in Act 85.
I cannot conclude this letter, though already too long,
without expressing to your Lordship my concern, and still
more my indignation, at what has lately passed both at
London and at Edinburgh. I have often thought that the
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom very much resembled a
jury. The law lords generally take upon them to sum up the
evidence and to explain the law to the other peers, who
generally follow their opinion implicitly. Of the two law
lords who upon this occasion instructed them, the one has
always run after the applause of the mob; the other, by far
the most intelligent, has always shown the greatest dread of
popular odium, which, however, he has not been able to
avoid. His inclinations also have always been suspected to
favour one of the parties. He has upon this occasion, I
suspect, followed rather his fears and his inclinations than
his judgment. I could say a great deal more upon this
subject to your Lordship, but I am afraid I have already
said too much. I would rather, for my own part, have the
solid reputation of your most respectable president, though
exposed to the insults of a brutal mob, than all the vain
and flimsy applause that has ever yet been bestowed upon
either or both the other two.--I have the honour to be, with
the highest esteem and regard, my Lord, your Lordship's most
obliged and obedient servant,
ADAM SMITH.[211]
A week later Smith wrote Lord Hailes another letter, "giving," says
Lord Brougham, "what is evidently the beginning of his speculations on
the price of silver," but the letter seems to be now lost, and Lord
Brougham quotes from it only the following sentences on the Douglas
cause. "If the rejoicings which I read of in the public papers in
different places on account of the Douglas cause, had no more
foundation than those which were said to have been in this place,
there has been very little joy upon the occasion. There was here no
sort of rejoicing of any kind, unless four schoolboys having set up
three candles upon the trone by way of an illumination, is to be
considered as such."[212]
The first of these letters was written almost immediately after Smith
heard of the decision of the House of Lords in the famous Douglas
case. The news of the decision only reached Edinburgh on the 2nd of
March, and was received with such popular enthusiasm that the whole
city was illuminated. Smith walking by the shore at Kirkcaldy would
have seen the bonfires blazing on Salisbury Crags, and he seems to
have heard before writing that the house of the Lord President of the
Court of Session, who was opposed to the Douglas claim, was attacked
by the mob, and the President himself insulted next morning in the
street on his way to Court. No civil lawsuit ever excited so much
popular interest or feeling. The question, it will be remembered, was
whether Mr. Douglas, who had been served heir to the estates of the
late Duke of Douglas, was really the son of the Duke's sister, Lady
Jane, by her husband, Sir John Stewart of Grandtully, whom she had
secretly married abroad when she was already fifty years old, or
whether he was an impostor, the son of a Frenchwoman, whom Lady Jane
had brought up as her own son with a view to the inheritance of those
estates. Everybody in Scotland was for the time either a Douglas or a
Hamilton, and the sentimental elements in the case had enlisted
popular sympathy strongly on the Douglas side. Smith, as will be seen
from those letters, was quite as strong and even impassioned a
partisan on the unpopular and losing side, and Lord Hailes having been
one of the judges who voted with the Lord President for the decision
against Mr. Douglas which the House of Lords now reversed, he feels he
can give free vent to his disappointment. Brougham, in publishing the
letters, calls the opinion Smith gives not only "very strong" but
"very rash," and his impeachment of the impartiality of the two great
English judges--Lord Camden and Lord Mansfield--cannot seem
defensible. But David Hume, though a Tory and an Under Secretary of
State, is not a whit less sparing in his denunciation of those two law
lords and in his contempt for the general body of the peers than
Smith. "To one who understands the case as I do," he writes to Dr.
Blair, "nothing could appear more scandalous than the pleading of the
two law lords. Such curious misrepresentation, such impudent
assertions, such groundless imputations, never came from that place;
but they were good enough for the audience, who, bating their quality,
are most of them little better than their brothers the Wilkites of the
streets." Hume, having lost his place with a change of ministry,
returned to Edinburgh for good in August 1769, and presently wrote
Smith inviting him over:--
JAMES'S COURT, _20th August 1769_.
DEAR SMITH--I am glad to have come within sight of you, and
to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows, but as I wish
also to be within speaking terms of you, I wish we could
concert measures for that purpose. I am miserably sick at
sea, and regard with horror and a kind of hydrophobia the
great gulf that lies between us. I am also tired of
travelling as much as you ought naturally to be of staying
at home. I therefore propose to you to come hither and pass
some days with me in this solitude. I want to know what you
have been doing, and purpose to exact a rigorous account of
the method in which you have employed yourself during your
retreat. I am positive you are in the wrong in many of your
speculations, especially when you have the misfortune to
differ from me. All these are reasons for our meeting, and I
wish you would make me some reasonable proposal for that
purpose. There is no habitation on the island of Inchkeith,
otherwise I should challenge you to meet me on that spot,
and neither of us ever to leave the place till we were fully
agreed on all points of controversy. I expect General Conway
here to-morrow, whom I shall attend to Roseneath, and I
shall remain there a few days. On my return I expect to find
a letter from you containing a bold acceptance of this
defiance. I am, dear Smith, yours sincerely.[213]
Smith seems to have made such progress with his work in the two years
of what Hume here calls his retreat at Kirkcaldy that in the beginning
of 1770 there was some word of his going up with it to London for
publication. For on the 6th of February Hume again writes him: "What
is the meaning of this, dear Smith, which we hear, that you are not to
be here above a day or two on your passage to London? How can you so
much as entertain a thought of publishing a book full of reason,
sense, and learning to those wicked abandoned madmen?"[214]
He had probably completed his first draft of the work from beginning
to end, but he kept constantly amplifying and altering parts of it for
six years more. He did not go to London in 1770, if he ever
contemplated doing so, but he came to Edinburgh and received the
freedom of the city in June. He seems to have received this honour for
the merits of the Duke of Buccleugh rather than for his own. For the
entry in the minutes of the Council of 6th June 1770 runs thus:
"Appoint the Dean of Guild and his Council to admit and
receive their Graces the Duke of Buccleugh and the Duke of
Montagu in the most ample form, for good services done by
them and their noble ancestors to the kingdome. And also
Adam Smith, LL.D., and the Reverend Mr. John Hallam to be
Burgesses and Gild Brethren of this city in the most ample
form.
(Signed) JAMES STUART, Provost."
The Duke of Montagu was the Duke of Buccleugh's father-in-law, and the
Rev. Mr. John Hallam--afterwards Dean of Windsor, and father of Henry
Hallam, the historian--was the Duke's tutor at Eton, as Adam Smith was
his tutor abroad. The freedom was therefore given to the Duke of
Buccleugh and party. Smith's burgess-ticket is one of the few relics
of him still extant; it is possessed by Professor Cunningham of
Belfast.
Smith promised Hume a visit about Christmas 1771, but the visit was
postponed in consequence of the illness of Hume's sister, and on the
28th of January he received the following letter, in reply apparently
to a request for the address of the Comtesse de Boufflers in Paris:--
EDINBURGH, _28th January 1772_.
DEAR SMITH--I should certainly before this time have
challenged the Performance of your Promise of being with me
about Christmas had it not been for the misfortunes of my
family. Last month my sister fell dangerously ill of a
fever, and though the fever be now gone, she is still so
weak and low, and recovers so slowly, that I was afraid it
would be but a melancholy house to invite you to. However, I
expect that time will reinstate her in her former health, in
which case I shall look for your company. I shall not take
any excuse from your own state of health, which I suppose
only a subterfuge invented by indolence and love of
solitude. Indeed, my dear Smith, if you continue to hearken
to complaints of this nature, you will cut yourself out
entirely from human society, to the great loss of both
parties.
The Lady's Direction is M^e la Comtesse de B., Douanière au
Temple. She has a daughter-in-law, which makes it requisite
to distinguish her.--Yours sincerely,
DAVID HUME.
_P.S._--I have not yet read _Orlando Inamorato_. I am now in
a course of reading the Italian historians, and am confirmed
in my former opinion that that language has not produced one
author who knew how to write elegant correct prose though
it contains several excellent poets. You say nothing to me
of your own work.[215]
Smith seems to have perhaps sent him _Orlando Inamorato_, or at any
rate to have been previously in communication, either by letter or
conversation, on the subject, for the Italian poets were favourite
reading of his. But a more important point in the letter is the
indication it affords that Smith's labours and solitude were beginning
to tell on the state of his health. Indeed, poor health had now become
one of the chief causes of his delay in finishing his work, and it
continued to go from bad to worse. He writes his friend Pulteney in
September that his book would have been ready for the press by the
first of that winter if it were not for the interruptions caused by
bad health, "arising," he says, "from want of amusement and from
thinking too much upon one thing," together with other interruptions
of an equally anxious nature, occasioned by his endeavours to
extricate some of his personal friends from the difficulties in which
they were involved by the commercial crisis of that time.
KIRKALDY, _5th September 1772_.
MY DEAR PULTENEY--I have received your most friendly letter
in due course, and I have delayed a great deal too long to
answer it. Though I have had no concern myself in the Public
calamities, some of the friends in whom I interest myself
the most have been deeply concerned in them; and my
attention has been a good deal occupied about the most
proper method of extricating them.
In the Book which I am now preparing for the press I have
treated fully and distinctly of every part of the subject
which you have recommended to me; and I intended to send you
some extracts from it; but upon looking them over I find
that they are too much interwoven with other parts of the
work to be easily separated from it. I have the same opinion
of Sir James Stewart's book that you have. Without once
mentioning it, I flatter myself that any fallacious
principle in it will meet with a clear and distinct
confutation in mine.[216]
I think myself very much honoured and obliged to you for
having mentioned me to the E. India Directors as a person
who would be of use to them. You have acted in your old way
of doing your friends a good office behind their backs,
pretty much as other people do them a bad one. There is no
labour of any kind which you can impose upon me which I will
not readily undertake. By what Mr. Stewart and Mr. Ferguson
hinted to me concerning your notice of the proper remedy for
the disorders of the coin in Bengal, I believe our opinions
upon that subject are perfectly the same.
My book would have been ready for the press by the beginning
of this winter, but interruptions occasioned partly by bad
health, arising from want of amusement and from thinking too
much upon one thing, and partly by the avocations above
mentioned, will oblige me to retard its publication for a
few months longer.--I ever am, my dearest Pulteney, most
faithfully and affectionately your obliged servant,
ADAM SMITH.
_To_ WILLIAM PULTENEY Esq., _Member of Parliament_,
BATH HOUSE, LONDON.[217]
The public calamities to which Smith refers in the opening paragraph
of his letter are the bankruptcies of the severe commercial crisis of
that year, and the friends he was so much occupied in extricating from
its results were, I think it most likely, the family of Buccleugh. The
crash was especially disastrous in Scotland; only three private banks
in Edinburgh out of thirty survived it, and a large joint-stock bank,
Douglas Heron and Company, started only three years before, for the
public-spirited purpose of promoting improvements, particularly
improvements of land, now seemed to shake all commercial Scotland with
its fall. In this company the Duke of Buccleugh was one of the largest
shareholders, and, liability being unlimited, it was impossible to
foresee how much of its £800,000 of liabilities his Grace might be
eventually called upon to pay. The suggestion that Smith was much
consulted by the Duke and his advisers about this grave business is to
some extent confirmed by the familiarity which he shows with the whole
circumstances of this bank at the time of its failure in the second
chapter of the second book of the _Wealth of Nations_.
The situation for which Pulteney had recommended him to the Court of
Directors of the East India Company was, no doubt, a place as member
of the Special Commission of Supervision which they then contemplated
establishing. In 1772 the East India Company was in extremities; in
July they were nearly a million and a half sterling behind for their
next quarter's payments; and they proposed to send out to India a
commission of three independent and competent men, with full authority
to institute a complete examination into every detail of the
administration, and to exercise a certain supervision and control of
the whole. Burke had already been offered one of the seats on this
commission, but had refused it on finding that Lord Rockingham was
unwilling to part with him; and at the time this letter was written
two of Smith's own Scotch friends, whose names he happens to mention
in the letter--Adam Ferguson and Andrew Stuart, M.P.--were actually
candidates for the places, and had apparently been recently seeing
Pulteney in London on the subject. Pulteney, who had great influence
at the India House, had probably mentioned the names of Smith,
Ferguson, and Stuart to the Court of Directors at the same time, and
if so, that must have been at least two months before Smith wrote this
letter, for Ferguson was in the month of July getting influence
brought to bear on the Edinburgh Town Council to secure their
permission to retain his professorship in the event of his going to
India.[218] Ferguson pushed his candidature vigorously, and went to
London repeatedly about it between July and November, but Smith,
although he would have accepted the post if he received the offer of
it, does not seem to have taken any steps to procure it, and did not
even answer Pulteney's letter till September. Stuart's candidature was
defeated, Horace Walpole says, by Lord Mansfield, but eventually no
appointment was made, because Parliament intervened, and forbade any
such commission to be sent out at all.
In sending the letter to the _Academy_ for publication Professor
Rogers observes that it is plain the delay in the publication of the
_Wealth of Nations_ was due to the negotiations which Mr. Pulteney was
evidently making for the purpose of getting Smith appointed to this
place. "Had he succeeded," proceeds Mr. Rogers, "it is probable that
the _Wealth of Nations_ would never have seen the light; for every one
knows that in the first and second books of that work the East India
Company is criticised with the greatest severity.... I have no doubt
that owing to Pulteney's negotiations it lay unrevised and unaltered
during four years in the author's desk."
With all respect, this is a strange remark to fall from an editor of
the _Wealth of Nations_, for the evidences of continuous revision and
alteration during those four years are very numerous in the text of
the work itself. He made many changes or additions in 1773; for
example, the remarks on the price of hides,[219] in the chapter on
Rent, were written in February 1773; and those on the decline of
sugar-refining in colonies taken from the French, in the chapter on
the Colonies,[220] were written in October; while the passage on
American wages, in the chapter on Wages, was inserted some time in the
same year. The extensive additions in the chapters on the Revenue,
occasioned by reading the _Mémoires concernant les Droits_, must have
been written after 1774, because Smith probably obtained that book
after Turgot became Minister in the middle of that year; his remarks,
in the chapter on Colonies, on the effects of recent events on the
trade with North America,[221] and his remarks on the Irish revenue in
the chapter on Public Debts, were added in 1775.[222] The chapter on
the Regulated Companies, in which the East India Company receives most
systematic attention, and which did not appear in the first edition of
the book, was apparently not written till 1782.[223]
The book therefore did not lie "unrevised and unaltered" in the
author's desk from 1772 to 1776; on the contrary, the chief cause of
the four years' delay was the revision and alteration to which it was
being incessantly subjected during that whole term. The particular
Indian appointment for which Pulteney had recommended him could have
nothing to do with the delay, inasmuch as the proposed office was
suppressed altogether within two months after this letter was written;
and even if he entertained expectations of any other sort from the
East India Company, there is no reason why he should on that account
have withheld his work from publication. The more elaborate criticism
of that Company in the chapter on Public Works did not appear in the
original edition of the book at all, but the only remarks on Indian
administration which did appear in that edition, although they are
merely incidental in character, are very strong and decided, and might
easily have been omitted, had the author been so minded, to please the
Company, without any injury to the general argument with which they
are connected.
On the other hand, there exists abundance of evidence that Smith was
busy for most of three years after this date, and mainly in London,
altering, improving, and adding to the manuscript of the book. New
lines of investigation would suggest themselves, new theories to be
thought out, and the task would grow day by day by a very simple but
unforeseen process of natural accretion. Hume thought it near
completion in 1769; but towards the end of 1772, a couple of months
after Smith's answer to Pulteney, he gives it most of another year yet
for being finished. He writes from his new quarters in St. Andrew
Square, asking Smith to break off his studies for a few weeks'
relaxation with him in Edinburgh about Christmas, and then to return
and finish his work before the following autumn.
ST. ANDREW'S SQUARE, _23rd November 1772_.
DEAR SMITH--I should agree to your Reasoning if I could
trust your Resolution. Come hither for some weeks about
Christmas; dissipate yourself a little; return to Kirkaldy;
finish your work before autumn; go to London, print it,
return and settle in this town, which suits your studious,
independent turn even better than London. Execute this plan
faithfully, and I forgive you....
Ferguson has returned fat and fair and in good humour,
notwithstanding his disappointment,[224] which I am glad of.
He comes over next week to a house in this neighbourhood.
Pray come over this winter and join us.--I am, my dear
Smith, ever yours,
DAVID HUME.[225]
While Pulteney was suggesting Smith's name for employment under the
East India Company, Baron Mure was trying to secure his services as
tutor to the Duke of Hamilton, and Lord Stanhope possibly offered him
the position of tutor to his lordship's ward, the young Earl of
Chesterfield. Baron Mure was one of the guardians of the young Duke of
Hamilton (the son of the beautiful Miss Gunning), and had in that
capacity had the chief responsibility in raising and carrying on the
great Douglas cause. He was a man of great sagacity and weight, whom
we have seen in communication with Hume and Oswald on economic
subjects; he had long been also on terms of personal intimacy with
Smith, and he seems to have been anxious in 1772 to send Smith abroad
with the Duke of Hamilton, as he had already been sent abroad with
the Duke of Buccleugh. Smith would appear to have been sounded on the
subject, and even to have given what was considered a favourable
reply, for Andrew Stuart, a fellow-guardian of the Duke along with
Mure, writes the latter acknowledging receipt of his letter
"intimating"--these are the words--"the practicability of having Mr.
Smith," but the Duke's mother (then Duchess of Argyle) and the Duke
himself preferred Dr. John Moore, the author of _Zelucco_, who was the
family medical attendant, and was indeed chosen because he could act
in that capacity to his very delicate young charge, though he was
strictly required to drop the "doctor," and was severely censured by
the Duchess for assisting at a surgical operation in Geneva, inasmuch
as if it got known that he was a medical man it would be a bar to
their reception in the best society.[226] Accordingly Mure was told
that it was "the united opinion of all concerned that matters go no
further with Mr. Smith."
The circumstance that so wise and practical a head as Baron Mure's
should have thought of Smith for this post is at least a proof that
the Buccleugh tutorship had been a success, and that Smith was not
considered by other men of the world who knew him well as being so
unfit for the situation of travelling tutor as some of his friends
thought him.
During this period of severe study in Kirkcaldy his fits of absence
might be expected to recur occasionally, and Dr. Charles Rogers
relates an anecdote of one of them, which may be repeated here, though
Dr. Rogers omits mentioning any authority for it; and stories of that
kind must naturally be accepted with scruples, because they are so apt
to agglomerate round any person noted for the failing they indicate.
According to Dr. Rogers, however, Smith, during his residence in
Kirkcaldy, went out one Sunday morning in his dressing-gown to walk in
the garden, but once in the garden he went on to the path leading to
the turnpike road, and then to the road itself, along which he
continued in a condition of reverie till he reached Dunfermline,
fifteen miles distant, just as the bells were sounding and the people
were proceeding to church. The strange sound of the bells was the
first thing that roused the philosopher from the meditation in which
he was immersed.[227] The story is very open to criticism, but if
correct it points to sleepless nights and an incapacity to get a
subject out of the head, due to over-application.
The persistency of his occupation with his book, according to Robert
Chambers in his _Picture of Scotland_, left a mark on the wall of his
study which remained there till the room was repainted shortly before
that author wrote of it in 1827. Chambers says that it was Smith's
habit to compose _standing_, and to dictate to an amanuensis. He
usually stood with his back to the fire, and unconsciously in the
process of thought used to make his head vibrate, or rather, rub
sidewise against the wall above the chimney-piece. His head being
dressed, in the ordinary style of that period, with pomatum, could not
fail to make a mark on the wall.
M'Culloch says Smith dictated the _Wealth of Nations_ but did not
dictate the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_. Whether he had any external
ground for making this assertion I cannot tell, and, apart from such,
the probability would seem to be that if he dictated his lectures in
Edinburgh to an amanuensis, as seems probable, as well as his _Wealth
of Nations_, he would have done the same with his _Theory_. But
M'Culloch professes to see internal evidences of this difference of
manual method in the different style of the respective works. Moore
met M'Culloch one evening at Longman's, and they were discussing
writers who were in the habit of dictating as they composed. One of
the party said the habit of dictating always bred a diffuse style, and
M'Culloch supported this view by the example of Adam Smith, whose
_Wealth of Nations_, he said, was very diffuse because it had been
dictated, while his _Theory_, which was not dictated, was admirable in
style. But in reality there is probably more diffuse writing in the
_Theory_ than in the _Wealth of Nations_, which is for the most part
packed tightly enough. Another Scotch critic, Archibald Alison the
elder, the author of the _Essay on Taste_, even surpasses M'Culloch in
his keenness in detecting the effects of this dictating habit. He says
that Smith used to walk up and down the room while he dictated, and
that the consequence is that his sentences are nearly all the same
length, each containing as much as the amanuensis could write down
while the author took a single turn.[228] This is excessive acuteness.
Smith's sentences are not by any means all of one length, or all of
the same construction. It need only be added that the habit of
dictating would in his case arise naturally from his slow and laboured
penmanship.
As I have mentioned the house in which the _Wealth of Nations_ was
composed, it may be added that it stood in the main street of the
town, but its garden ran down to the beach, and that it was only
pulled down in 1844, without anybody in the place realising at the
moment, though it has been a cause of much regret since, that they
were suffering their most interesting association to be destroyed. An
engraving of it, however, exists.
FOOTNOTES:
[201] Adams's _Works_, ix. 589.
[202] Adams's _Works_, iii. 276.
[203] Secretary of the Royal Society. The letter was probably in
acknowledgment of the intimation of his election as Fellow.
[204] Mr. Adams is Adam the architect, and Mrs. Montagu is the
well-known Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu of Portman Square, whose hospitable
house was a rival to any of the most brilliant salons of Paris.
[205] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.
[206] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 390.
[207] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.
[208] Carlyle's _Autobiography_, p. 489.
[209] Sinclair's _Life of Sir John Sinclair_, i. 37.
[210] Fraser's _Scotts of Buccleuch_, I. lxxxviii., II. 406.
[211] Brougham's _Men of Letters_, ii. 219.
[212] Brougham's Men of Letters, ii. 219.
[213] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 429.
[214] _Ibid._, ii. 433.
[215] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library. Partially published by Burton.
[216] Sir James Steuart's _Inquiry into the Principles of Political
Economy_ was published in 1767.
[217] Published by Professor Thorold Rogers in the _Academy_ of 28th
February 1885.
[218] _Caldwell Papers_, iii. 207.
[219] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. xi.
[220] _Ibid._, Book IV. chap. vii.
[221] _Wealth of Nations_, Book IV. chap. vii.
[222] _Ibid._, Book V. chap. iii.
[223] _Ibid._, Book V. chap. i.
[224] From the suppression of the Indian supervisorship; see p. 255.
[225] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.
[226] _Caldwell Papers_, i. 192.
[227] Rogers' _Social Life of Scotland_, iii. 181.
[228] Sinclair's _Old Times and Distant Places_, p. 9.