LONDON
1773-1776. _Aet._ 50-53
In the spring of 1773, Smith, having, as he thought, virtually
completed the _Wealth of Nations_, set out with the manuscript for
London, to give it perhaps some finishing touches and then place it in
the hands of a publisher. But his labours had told so seriously on his
health and spirits that he thought it not improbable he might die, and
even die suddenly, before the work got through the press, and he wrote
Hume a formal letter before he started on his journey, constituting
him his literary executor, and giving him directions about the
destination of the various unpublished manuscripts that lay in his
depositories:--
MY DEAR FRIEND--As I have left the care of all my literary
papers to you, I must tell you that except those which I
carry along with me, there are none worth the publishing but
a fragment of a great work which contains a history of the
astronomical systems that were successively in fashion down
to the time of Descartes. Whether that might not be
published as a fragment of an intended juvenile work I leave
entirely to your judgment, tho' I begin to suspect myself
that there is more refinement than solidity in some parts of
it. This little work you will find in a thin folio paper
book in my writing-desk in my book-room. All the other loose
paper which you will find either in that desk or within the
glass folding-doors of a bureau which stands in my bedroom,
together with about eighteen thin paper folio books, which
you will likewise find within the same glass folding-doors,
I desire may be destroyed without any examination. Unless I
die very suddenly, I shall take care that the Papers I
carry with me shall be carefully sent to you.--I ever am, my
dear friend, most faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.
EDINBURGH, _16th April 1773_.
_To_ DAVID HUME, Esq., 9 St. Andrew's Square,
Edinburgh.[229]
Smith went to London shortly after writing this letter, and spent most
of the next four years there. We find him there in May 1773, for he is
admitted to the Royal Society on the 27th of that month; he is there
in September, for Ferguson then writes to him as if he were still
there. He is there in February 1774, for Hume writes him in that
month, "Pray what accounts are these we hear of Franklyn's
conduct?"--a question he would hardly have addressed except to one in
a better position for hearing the truth about Franklin than he was
himself. He is there in September 1774, for he writes Cullen from town
in that month, and speaks of having been for some time in it. He is
there in January 1775, for on the 11th Bishop Percy met him at dinner
at Sir Joshua Reynolds', along with Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, and
others.[230] He is there in February, for a young friend, Patrick
Clason, addresses a letter to him during that month to the care of
Cadell, the bookseller, in the Strand. He is there in December, for on
the 27th Horace Walpole writes the Countess of Ossory that "Adam Smith
told us t'other night at Beauclerk's that Major Preston--one of two,
but he is not sure which--would have been an excellent commander some
years hence if he had seen any service. I said it was a pity that the
war had not been put off till the Major should be some years
older."[231] He returned to Scotland in April 1776, about a month
after his book was issued, but we find him back again in London in
January 1777, for his letter to Governor Pownall in that month is
dated from Suffolk Street. Whether the first three years of his stay
in London was continuous I cannot say, but it would almost appear so
from the circumstance that nothing remains to indicate the contrary.
Those three years were spent upon the _Wealth of Nations_. Much of the
book as we know it must have been written in London. When he went up
to London he had no idea that any fresh investigations he contemplated
instituting there would detain him so long. He wrote Pulteney, as we
have seen, even in the previous September that the book would be
finished in a few months, and he led not only Hume but Adam Ferguson
also to look for its publication in 1773. In a footnote to the fourth
edition of his _History of Civil Society_, published in that year,
Ferguson says, "The public will probably soon be furnished (by Mr.
Smith, author of the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_) with a theory of
national economy equal to what has ever appeared on any subject of
science whatever." But the researches the author now made in London
must have been much more important than he expected, and have
occasioned extensive alterations and additions, so that Hume, in
congratulating him on the eventual appearance of the work in 1776,
writes, "It is probably much improved by your last abode in London."
Whole chapters seem to have been put through the forge afresh; and on
some of them the author has tool-marked the date of his handiwork
himself.
A very circumstantial account of Smith's London labours at the book
comes from America. Mr. Watson, author of the _Annals of
Philadelphia_, says: "Dr. Franklin once told Dr. Logan that the
celebrated Adam Smith when writing his _Wealth of Nations_ was in the
habit of bringing chapter after chapter as he composed it to himself,
Dr. Price, and others of the literati; then patiently hear their
observations and profit by their discussions and criticisms, sometimes
submitting to write whole chapters anew, and even to reverse some of
his propositions."[232]
Franklin's remark may have itself undergone enlargement before it
appeared in print, but though it may have been exaggerated, there
seems no ground for rejecting it altogether. Smith became acquainted
with Franklin in Edinburgh in 1759, and could not fail to see much of
him in London, because some of the most intimate of his own London
friends, Sir John Pringle and Strahan, for example, were also among
the most intimate friends of Franklin. Then a considerable proportion
of the additions, which we know from the text of the _Wealth of
Nations_ itself to have been made to the work during this London
period, bear on colonial or American experience.[233] And as Smith
always obtained a great deal of his information from the conversation
of competent men, no one would be more likely than Franklin to be laid
under contribution or to be able to contribute something worth
learning on such questions. The biographer of Franklin states that his
papers which belong to this particular period "contain sets of
problems and queries as though jotted down at some meeting of
philosophers for particular consideration at home," and then he adds:
"A glance at the index of the _Wealth of Nations_ will suffice to show
that its author possessed just that kind of knowledge of the American
Colonies which Franklin was of all men the best fitted to impart. The
allusions to the Colonies may be counted by hundreds; illustrations
from their condition and growth occur in nearly every chapter. We may
go further and say that the American Colonies constitute the
experimental evidence of the essential truth of the book, without
which many of its leading positions had been little more than
theory."[234] It ought of course to be borne in mind that Smith had
been in the constant habit of hearing much about the American Colonies
and their affairs during his thirteen years in Glasgow from the
intelligent merchants and returned planters of that city.
After coming to London Smith seems to have renewed his acquaintance
with Lord Stanhope, who sought Smith's counsel as to a tutor for his
ward the Earl of Chesterfield, and appointed Adam Ferguson on Smith's
recommendation. The negotiations with Ferguson were conducted through
Smith, and some of Ferguson's letters to Smith on the matter still
exist, but contain nothing of any interest for the biography of the
latter. But in contemplation of Ferguson's going abroad with the Earl
of Chesterfield, Hume, ever anxious to have his friend near him,
sounds Smith on the possibility of his agreeing to act during
Ferguson's absence as his substitute in the Moral Philosophy chair at
Edinburgh. Smith, however, was apparently unwilling to undertake that
duty. As we have already seen, he was strongly opposed to professorial
absenteeism, and in the present case it was associated with unpleasant
circumstances. The Town Council, the administrators of the College,
refused to sanction Ferguson's absence, and called upon him either to
stay at home or to resign his chair. Ferguson merely snapped his
fingers, appointed young Dugald Stewart his substitute, and went off
on his travels, quietly remarking that fools and knaves were necessary
in the world to give other people something to do. Hume's letter is as
follows:--
ST. ANDREW'S SQUARE, _13th February 1774_.
DEAR SMITH--You are in the wrong for never informing me of
your intentions and resolutions, if you have fix'd any. I am
now obliged to write to you on a subject without knowing
whether the proposal, or rather Hint, which I am to give you
be an absurdity or not. The settlement to be made on
Ferguson is a very narrow compensation for his class if he
must lose it. He wishes to keep it and to serve by a Deputy
in his absence. But besides that this scheme will appear
invidious and is really scarce admissible, those in the Town
Council who aim at filling the vacancy with a friend will
strenuously object to it, and he himself cannot think of one
who will make a proper substitute. I fancy that the chief
difficulty would be removed if you could offer to supply his
class either as his substitute or his successor, with a
purpose of resigning upon his return. This notion is
entirely my own, and shall never be known to Ferguson if it
appear to you improper. I shall only say that he deserves
this friendly treatment by his friendly conduct of a similar
kind towards poor Russell's family.
Pray what strange accounts are these we hear of Franklyn's
conduct? I am very slow in believing that he has been guilty
in the extreme degree that is pretended, tho' I always knew
him to be a very factious man, and Faction next to
Fanaticism is of all passions the most destructive of
morality. I hear that Wedderburn's treatment of him before
the Council was most cruel without being in the least
blamable. What a pity![235]
Smith's headquarters in London, to which Hume's letters to him were
addressed, was the British Coffee-House in Cockspur Street, a great
Scotch resort in last century, kept, as I have said, by a sister of
his old Balliol friend, Bishop Douglas, "a woman," according to Henry
Mackenzie, "of uncommon talents and the most agreeable conversation."
Wedderburn founded a weekly dining club in this house, which Robertson
and Carlyle used to frequent when they came to town, and no doubt
Smith would do the same, for many of his Scotch friends belonged to
it--Dr. William Hunter, John Home, Robert Adam the architect, and Sir
Gilbert Elliot. Indeed, though men like Goldsmith, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Garrick, and Richard Cumberland were members, it was
predominantly a Scotch club, and both Carlyle and Richard Cumberland
say an extremely agreeable one. But during his residence at this
period in London Smith was in 1775 admitted to the membership of a
much more famous club, the Literary Club of Johnson and Burke and
Reynolds at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, and he no doubt
attended their fortnightly dinners. The only members present on the
night of his election were Beauclerk, Gibbon, Sir William Jones, and
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Boswell, writing his friend Temple on 28th April
1776, immediately after the _Wealth of Nations_ was published, says,
"Smith too is now of our club. It has lost its select merit." But
another member of the club, Dean Barnard--husband of the authoress of
"Auld Robin Gray"--appreciates his worth better, though he wrote the
lines in which his appreciation occurs before the _Wealth of Nations_
appeared, and his words may therefore be taken perhaps to convey the
impression made by Smith's conversation. One of the Dean's verses
runs--
If I have thoughts and can't express 'em,
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em
In form select and terse;
Jones teach me modesty and Greek,
Smith how to think, Burke how to speak,
And Beauclerk to converse.
Smith's conversation seems, from all the accounts we have of it, to
have been the conversation of a thinker, often lecturing rather than
talk, but always instructive and solid. William Playfair, the brother
of Professor John Playfair, the mathematician, says, "Those persons
who have ever had the pleasure to be in his company may recollect that
even in his common conversation the order and method he pursued
without the smallest degree of formality or stiffness were beautiful,
and gave a sort of pleasure to all who listened to him."[236]
Bennet Langton mentions the "decisive professorial manner" in which he
was used to talk, and according to Boswell, Topham Beauclerk conceived
a high opinion of Smith's conversation at first, but afterwards lost
it, for reasons unreported, though if Beauclerk was himself, as Dean
Barnard indicates, the model converser of the club, he would probably
grow tired of expository lectures, however excellent and instructive.
A criticism of Garrick's is more curious. After listening to Smith one
evening, the great player turned to a friend and whispered, "What say
you to this? eh, flabby, eh?" but whatever may have been the case that
particular evening, flabbiness at least was not a characteristic of
Smith's talk. It erred rather in excess of substance. He had Johnson's
solidity and weight, without Johnson's force and vivacity. Henry
Mackenzie, author of the _Man of Feeling_, talking of Smith soon after
his death with Samuel Rogers, said of him, "With a most retentive
memory, his conversation was solid beyond that of any man. I have
often told him after half an hour's conversation, 'Sir, you have said
enough to make a book.'"[237] His conversation, moreover, was
particularly wide in its range. Dugald Stewart says that though Smith
seldom started a topic of conversation, there were few topics raised
on which he was not found contributing something worth hearing, and
Boswell, no very partial witness, admits that his talk evinced "a mind
crowded with all manner of subjects." Like Sir Walter Scott, Smith has
been unjustly accused of habitually abstaining from conversing on the
subjects he had made his own. Boswell tells us that Smith once said to
Sir Joshua Reynolds that he made it a rule in company never to talk of
what he understood, and he alleges the reason to have been that Smith
had bookmaking ever in his mind, and the fear of the plagiarist ever
before his eyes. But the fact thus reported by Boswell cannot be
accepted exactly as he reports it, and his explanation cannot be
accepted at all. Men able to converse on a variety of subjects will
naturally prefer to converse on those unconnected with their own shop,
because they go into company for diversion from their own shop, but
it is a question of company and circumstances. If Smith ever made any
such rule as Boswell speaks of, he certainly seems to have honoured it
as often by the breach as by the observance, for when his friends
brought round the conversation to his special lines of research, he
never seems to have failed to give his ideas quite freely, nay, as may
be seen from the remark just quoted from Henry Mackenzie, not freely
merely but abundantly--as many as would make a book. He does not
appear to have been in this respect a grudging giver. I have already
quoted his remark on hearing of Blair's borrowing some of his
juridical ideas, "There's enough left." When Sir John Sinclair was
writing his _History of the Revenue_ Smith offered him the use of
everything, either printed or manuscript, in his possession bearing
upon the subject. And if it is true that he was discussing his own
book chapter by chapter with Franklin, Price, and others, about the
very period when this remark to Sir Joshua purports to have been made,
it appears most unlikely that he could have thought of setting any
churlish watch on his lips in ordinary conversation. But however it be
with his disposition to talk about his own pursuits, we know from
Dugald Stewart that he was very fond of talking of subjects remote
from them, and as Stewart says, he was never more entertaining than
when he gave a loose rein to his speculation on subjects off his own
line. "Nor do I think," says Stewart, "I shall be accused of going too
far when I say that he was scarcely ever known to start a new topic
himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were
introduced by others. Indeed, his conversation was never more amusing
than when he gave a loose rein to his genius upon the very few
branches of knowledge of which he only possessed the outlines."[238]
One of his defects, according to both Stewart and Carlyle, was his
poor penetration into personal character; but he was very fond of
drawing the character of any person whose name came up in
conversation, and Stewart says his judgments of this kind, though
always decided and lively, were generally too systematic to be just,
leaning ever, however, to charity's side, and erring by partiality
rather than prejudice; while Carlyle completes the description by
stating that when any one challenged or disputed his opinion of a
character, he would retrace his steps with the greatest ease and
nonchalance and contradict every word he had been saying. Carlyle's
statement is confirmed by the remarks of certain of Smith's other
friends who speak incidentally of the amusing inconsistencies in which
he indulged in private conversation. He was fond of starting theories
and supporting them, but it is not so easy to explain a man on a
theory as to explain some abstract subject on a theory.
His voice seems to have been harsh, his utterance often stammering,
and his manner, especially among strangers, often embarrassed, but
many writers speak of the remarkable animation of his features as he
warmed to his subject, and of the peculiar radiancy of his smile. "His
smile of approbation," says Dr. Carlyle, "was captivating." "In the
society of those he loved," says Stewart, "his features were often
brightened with a smile of inexpressible benignity."
While living in London, Smith, along with Gibbon, attended Dr. William
Hunter's lectures on anatomy,[239] as we are told by a writer who was
one of Hunter's students at the time, and during that very period he
had an opportunity of vindicating the value of the lectures of private
teachers of medicine like Hunter against pretensions to monopoly set
up at the moment on behalf of the universities. In a long letter
written to Cullen in September 1774 Smith defends with great vigour
and vivacity the most absolute and unlimited freedom of medical
education, treating the University claims as mere expressions of the
craft spirit, and recognising none of those exceptional features of
medical education which have constrained even the most extreme
partisans of economic liberty now to approve of government
interference in that matter.
The letter was occasioned by an agitation which had been long
gathering strength in Scotch medical circles against the laxity with
which certain of the Scotch universities--St. Andrews and Aberdeen in
particular--were in the habit of conferring their medical degrees. The
candidate was not required either to attend classes or to pass an
examination, but got the degree by merely paying the fees and
producing a certificate of proficiency from two medical practitioners,
into whose qualifications no inquiry was instituted. In London a
special class of agent--the broker in Scotch degrees--sprang up to
transact the business, and England was being overrun with a horde of
Scotch doctors of medicine who hardly knew a vein from an artery, and
had created south of the Border a deep prejudice against all Scotch
graduates, even those from the unoffending Universities of Edinburgh
and Glasgow. A case seemed to be brought home even to Edinburgh in the
year 1771. The offender--one Leeds--had not, indeed, got his degree
from Edinburgh without examination, but he showed his competency to be
so doubtful in his duties at the London Hospital that the governors
made it a condition of the continuance of his services that he should
obtain the diploma of the London College of Physicians, and he failed
to pass this London examination and was deprived of his post. This
case created much sensation both in London and Edinburgh, and when the
Duke of Buccleugh was elected an honorary Fellow of the College of
Physicians of Edinburgh in 1774, he made that body something like an
offer to take up the question of examination for medical degrees in
Parliament and try what could be done to remove this reproach from his
country. The College of Physicians thereupon drew up a memorial to
Government for the Duke of Buccleugh to present, praying for the
prohibition of the universities from granting medical degrees, except
honorary ones, to any person in absence, or to any person without
first undergoing a personal examination into his proficiency, and
bringing a certificate of having attended for two years at a
university where physic was regularly taught, and of having applied
himself to all branches of medical study. They add that they fix on
two years not because they think two years enough, but because that
was the term adopted by the London College of Physicians, and they
suggest the appointment of a royal commission of inquiry if Government
is not prepared for immediate action.
The Duke of Buccleugh sent the memorial for the consideration of Adam
Smith, and asked him to write to Cullen his views on the subject.
Smith thought that it was not very practicable in any event for the
public to obtain a satisfactory test of medical efficiency, that it
was certainly not practicable if the competition by the private
teachers were suppressed, that otherwise the medical examination might
become as great a quackery as the medical degree, and that the whole
question was a mere squabble between the big quack and the little one.
He unfolds his views in the following letter:--
DEAR DOCTOR--I have been very much in the wrong both to you
and to the Duke of Buccleugh, to whom I certainly promised
to write you in a post or two, for having delayed so long to
fulfil my promise. The truth is that some occurrences which
interested me a good deal, and which happened here
immediately after the Duke's departure, made me forget
altogether a business which, I do acknowledge, interested me
very little.
In the present state of the Scotch universities I do most
sincerely look upon them as, in spite of all their faults,
without exception the best seminaries of learning that are
to be found anywhere in Europe. They are perhaps, upon the
whole, as unexceptionable as any public institutions of that
kind, which all contain in their very nature the seeds and
causes of negligency and corruption, have ever been or are
ever likely to be. That, however, they are still capable of
amendment, and even of considerable amendment, I know very
well, and a Visitation (that is, a Royal Commission) is, I
believe, the only proper means of procuring them this
amendment. Before any wise man, however, would apply for the
appointment of so arbitrary a tribunal in order to improve
what is already, upon the whole, very well, he ought
certainly to know with some degree of certainty, first, who
are likely to be appointed visitors, and secondly, what plan
of reformation those visitors are likely to follow; but in
the present multiplicity of pretenders to some share in the
prudential management of Scotch affairs, these are two
points which, I apprehend, neither you nor I, nor the
Solicitor-General nor the Duke of Buccleugh, can possibly
know anything about. In the present state of our affairs,
therefore, to apply for a Visitation in order to remedy an
abuse which is not perhaps of great consequence to the
public, would appear to me to be extremely unwise.
Hereafter, perhaps, an opportunity may present itself for
making such an application with more safety.
With regard to an admonition, or threatening, or any other
method of interfering in the affairs of a body corporate
which is not perfectly and strictly regular and legal, these
are expedients which I am convinced neither his Majesty nor
any of his present Ministers would choose to employ either
now or at any time hereafter in order to obtain an object
even of much greater consequence than this reformation of
Scottish degrees.
You propose, I observe, that no person should be admitted to
examination for his degrees unless he brought a certificate
of his having studied at least two years in some university.
Would not such a regulation be oppressive upon all private
teachers, such as the Hunters, Hewson, Fordyce, etc.? The
scholars of such teachers surely merit whatever honour or
advantage a degree can confer much more than the greater
part of those who have spent many years in some
universities, where the different branches of medical
knowledge are either not taught at all, or are taught so
superficially that they had as well not be taught at all.
When a man has learnt his lesson very well, it surely can be
of little importance where or from whom he has learnt it.
The monopoly of medical education which this regulation
would establish in favour of universities would, I
apprehend, be hurtful to the lasting prosperity of such
bodies corporate. Monopolists very seldom make good work,
and a lecture which a certain number of students must
attend, whether they profit by it or no, is certainly not
very likely to be a good one. I have thought a great deal
upon this subject, and have inquired very carefully into the
constitution and history of several of the principal
universities of Europe; I have satisfied myself that the
present state of degradation and contempt into which the
greater part of these societies have fallen in almost every
part of Europe arises principally, first, from the large
salaries which in some universities are given to professors,
and which render them altogether independent of their
diligence and success in their professions; and secondly,
from the great number of students who, in order to get
degrees or to be admitted to exercise certain professions,
or who, for the sake of bursaries, exhibitions,
scholarships, fellowships, etc., are obliged to resort to
certain societies of this kind, whether the instructions
which they are likely to receive there are or are not worth
the receiving. All these different cases of negligence and
corruption no doubt take place in some degree in all our
Scotch universities. In the best of them, however, these
cases take place in a much less degree than in the greater
part of other considerable societies of the same kind; and I
look upon this circumstance as the real cause of their
present excellence. In the Medical College of Edinburgh in
particular the salaries of the professors are insignificant.
There are few or no bursaries or exhibitions, and their
monopoly of degrees is broken in upon by all other
universities, foreign and domestic. I require no other
explication of its present acknowledged superiority over
every other society of the same kind in Europe.
To sign a certificate in favour of any man whom we know
little or nothing about is most certainly a practice which
cannot be strictly vindicated. It is a practice, however,
which from mere good-nature and without interest of any kind
the most scrupulous men in the world are sometimes guilty
of. I certainly do not mean to defend it. Bating the
unhandsomeness of the practice, however, I would ask in what
manner does the public suffer by it? The title of Doctor,
such as it is, you will say, gives some credit and authority
to the man upon whom it is bestowed; it extends his practice
and consequently his field for doing mischief; it is not
improbable too that it may increase his presumption and
consequently his disposition to do mischief. That a degree
injudiciously conferred may sometimes have some little
effect of this kind it would surely be absurd to deny, but
that this effect should be very considerable I cannot bring
myself to believe. That Doctors are sometimes fools as well
as other people is not in the present time one of those
profound secrets which is known only to the learned. The
title is not so very imposing, and it very seldom happens
that a man trusts his health to another merely because that
other is a Doctor. The person so trusted has almost always
some knowledge or some craft which would procure him nearly
the same trust, though he was not decorated with any such
title. In fact the persons who apply for degrees in the
irregular manner complained of are, the greater part of
them, surgeons or apothecaries who are in the custom of
advising and prescribing, that is, of practising as
physicians; but who, being only surgeons and apothecaries,
are not fee-ed as physicians. It is not so much to extend
their practice as to increase their fees that they are
desirous of being made Doctors. Degrees conferred even
undeservedly upon such persons can surely do very little
harm to the public. When the University of St. Andrews very
rashly and imprudently conferred a degree upon one Green who
happened to be a stage-doctor, they no doubt brought much
ridicule and discredit upon themselves, but in what respect
did they hurt the public? Green still continued to be what
he was before, a stage-doctor, and probably never poisoned a
single man more than he would have done though the honours
of graduation had never been conferred upon him.
Stage-doctors, I must observe, do not much excite the
indignation of the faculty; more reputable quacks do. The
former are too contemptible to be considered as rivals; they
only poison the poor people; and the copper pence which are
thrown up to them in handkerchiefs could never find their
way to the pocket of a regular physician. It is otherwise
with the latter: they sometimes intercept a part of what
perhaps would have been better bestowed in another place. Do
not all the old women in the country practise physic without
exciting murmur or complaint? And if here and there a
graduated Doctor should be as ignorant as an old woman,
where can be the great harm? The beardless old woman indeed
takes no fees; the bearded one does, and it is this
circumstance, I strongly suspect, which exasperates his
brethren so much against him.
There never was, and I will venture to say there never will
be, a university from which a degree could give any
tolerable security that the person upon whom it had been
conferred was fit to practise physic. The strictest
universities confer degrees only upon students of a certain
standing. Their real motive for requiring this standing is
that the student may spend more money among them and that
they may make more profit by him. When he has attained this
standing therefore, though he still undergoes what they call
an examination, it scarce ever happens that he is refused
his degree. Your examination at Edinburgh, I have all reason
to believe, is as serious, and perhaps more so, than that of
any other university in Europe; but when a student has
resided a few years among you, has behaved dutifully to all
his professors, and has attended regularly all their
lectures, when he comes to his examination I suspect you are
disposed to be as good-natured as other people. Several of
your graduates, upon applying for license from the College
of Physicians here, have had it recommended to them to
continue their studies. From a particular knowledge of some
of the cases I am satisfied that the decision of the College
in refusing them their license was perfectly just--that is,
was perfectly agreeable to the principles which ought to
regulate all such decisions; and that the candidates were
really very ignorant of their profession.
A degree can pretend to give security for nothing but the
science of the graduate; and even for that it can give but a
very slender security. For his good sense and discretion,
qualities not discoverable by an academical examination, it
can give no security at all; but without these the
presumption which commonly attends science must render it in
the practice of physic ten times more dangerous than the
grossest ignorance when accompanied, as it sometimes is,
with some degree of modesty and diffidence.
If a degree, in short, always has been, and, in spite of all
the regulations which can be made, always must be, a mere
piece of quackery, it is certainly for the advantage of the
public that it should be understood to be so. It is in a
particular manner for the advantage of the universities that
for the resort of students they should be obliged to depend,
not upon their privileges but upon their merit, upon their
abilities to teach and their diligence in teaching; and that
they should not have it in their power to use any of those
quackish arts which have disgraced and degraded the half of
them.
A degree which can be conferred only upon students of a
certain standing is a statute of apprenticeship which is
likely to contribute to the advancement of science, just as
other statutes of apprenticeship have contributed to that of
arts and manufactures. Those statutes of apprenticeship,
assisted by other corporation laws, have banished arts and
manufactures from the greater part of towns corporate. Such
degrees, assisted by some other regulations of a similar
tendency, have banished almost all useful and solid
education from the greater part of universities. Bad work
and high price have been the effect of the monopoly
introduced by the former; quackery, imposture, and
exorbitant fees have been the consequences of that
established by the latter. The industry of manufacturing
villages has remedied in part the inconveniences which the
monopolies established by towns corporate had occasioned.
The private interest of some poor Professors of Physic in
some poor universities inconveniently situated for the
resort of students has in part remedied the inconveniences
which would certainly have resulted from that sort of
monopoly which the great and rich universities had attempted
to establish. The great and rich universities seldom
graduated anybody but their own students, and not even these
till after a long and tedious standing; five and seven years
for a Master of Arts; eleven and sixteen for a Doctor of
Law, Physic, or Divinity. The poor universities on account
of the inconvenience of their situation, not being able to
get many students, endeavoured to turn a penny in the only
way in which they could turn it, and sold their degrees to
whoever would buy them, generally without requiring any
residence or standing, and frequently without subjecting the
candidate even to a decent examination. The less trouble
they gave, the more money they got, and I certainly do not
pretend to vindicate so dirty a practice. All universities
being ecclesiastical establishments under the immediate
protection of the Pope, a degree from one of them gave all
over Christendom very nearly the same privileges which a
degree from any other could have given; and the respect
which is to this day paid to foreign degrees, even in
Protestant countries, must be considered as a remnant of
Popery. The facility of obtaining degrees, particularly in
physic, from those poor universities had two effects, both
extremely advantageous to the public, but extremely
disagreeable to graduates of other universities whose
degrees had cost them much time and expense. First, it
multiplied very much the number of doctors, and thereby no
doubt sunk their fees, or at least hindered them from rising
so very high as they otherwise would have done. Had the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge been able to maintain
themselves in the exclusive privilege of graduating all the
doctors who could practise in England, the price of feeling
the pulse might by this time have risen from two and three
guineas, the price which it has now happily arrived at, to
double or triple that sum; and English physicians might, and
probably would, have been at the same time the most ignorant
and quackish in the world. Secondly, it reduced a good deal
the rank and dignity of a doctor, but if the physician was a
man of sense and science it would not surely prevent his
being respected and employed as a man of sense and science.
If he was neither the one nor the other, indeed, his
doctorship would no doubt avail him the less. But ought it
in this case to avail him at all? Had the hopeful project of
the rich and great universities succeeded, there would have
been no occasion for sense or science. To have been a
doctor would alone have been sufficient to give any man
rank, dignity, and fortune enough. That in every profession
the fortune of every individual should depend as much as
possible upon his merit and as little as possible upon his
privilege is certainly for the interest of the public. It is
even for the interest of every particular profession, which
can never so effectually support the general merit and real
honour of the greater part of those who exercise it, as by
resting on such liberal principles. Those principles are
even most effectual for procuring them all the employment
which the country can afford. The great success of quacks in
England has been altogether owing to the real quackery of
the regular physicians. Our regular physicians in Scotland
have little quackery, and no quack accordingly has ever made
his fortune among us.
After all, this trade in degrees I acknowledge to be a most
disgraceful trade to those who exercise it; and I am
extremely sorry that it should be exercised by such
respectable bodies as any of our Scotch universities. But as
it serves as a corrective of what would otherwise soon grow
up to be an intolerable nuisance, the exclusive and
corporation spirit of all thriving professions and of all
great universities, I deny that it is hurtful to the public.
What the physicians of Edinburgh at present feel as a
hardship is perhaps the real cause of their acknowledged
superiority over the greater part of other physicians. The
Royal College of Physicians there, you say, are obliged by
their charter to grant a license without examination to all
the graduates of Scotch universities. You are all obliged, I
suppose, in consequence of this, to consult sometimes with
very unworthy brethren. You are all made to feel that you
must rest no part of your dignity upon your degree, a
distinction which you share with the men in the world
perhaps whom you despise the most, but that you must found
the whole of it upon your merit. Not being able to derive
much consequence from the character of Doctor, you are
obliged perhaps to attend more to your character as men, as
gentlemen, and as men of letters. The unworthiness of some
of your brethren may perhaps in this manner be in part the
cause of the very eminent and superior worth of many of the
rest. The very abuse which you complain of may in this
manner perhaps be the real source of your present
excellence. You are at present well, wonderfully well, and
when you are so, be assured there is always some danger in
attempting to be better.
Adieu, my dear Doctor; after having delayed to write to you
I am afraid I shall _get my lug_ (ear) _in my lufe_ (hand),
as we say, for what I have written. But I ever am, most
affectionately yours,
ADAM SMITH.
LONDON, _20th September 1774_.[240]
Whether this decided expression of unfavourable opinion on the part of
his old and venerated tutor altered the Duke of Buccleugh's mind on
the subject, or in any way prevented him from persevering in his
contemplated application to Government, we have no means of knowing,
but at any rate no further action seems to have been taken in the
matter, and it was left to the Scottish universities themselves to
remedy abuses which were seriously telling on their own interest and
good name.
The last year of Smith's residence in London was overcast by growing
anxiety about the condition of his friend Hume, who had always enjoyed
fairly good health till the beginning of the year 1775, and then
seemed to fall rapidly away. As Smith said one evening at Lord
Shelburne's to Dr. Price, who asked him about Hume's health, it seemed
as if Hume was one of those persons who after a certain time of life
go down not gradually but by jumps.[241] Under those circumstances
Smith had determined as soon as his new book was out to go down to
Edinburgh and if possible persuade Hume to come back with him to
London, to try the effect of change of scene and a little wholesome
diversion. But, bad correspondent that he was, he appears to have left
Hume to gather his intentions from the reports of friends, and
consequently received from Hume the following remonstrance a few weeks
before the publication of his work:--
EDINBURGH, _8th February, 1776_.
DEAR SMITH--I am as lazy a correspondent as you, but my
anxiety about you makes me write.
By all accounts your book has been printed long ago, yet it
has never yet been so much as advertised. What is the
reason? If you wait till the fate of Bavaria be decided you
may wait long.
By all accounts you intend to settle with us this spring,
yet we hear no more of it. What is the reason? Your chamber
in my house is always unengaged; I am always at home; I
expect you to land here.
I have been, am, and shall be probably in an indifferent
state of health. I weighed myself t'other day, and find I
have fallen five compleat stones. If you delay much longer I
shall probably disappear altogether.
The Duke of Buccleugh tells me that you are very zealous in
American affairs. My notion is that this matter is not so
important as is commonly imagined. If I be mistaken I shall
probably correct my error when I see you or read you. For
navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our
manufactures. Should London fall as much in its size as I
have done it will be the better. It is nothing but a Hulk of
bad and unclean Humours.[242]
The American question was of course the great question of the hour,
for the Colonies were already a year in active rebellion, and they
issued their declaration of independence but a few months later. Smith
followed the struggle, as we see from many evidences in the concluding
portion of the _Wealth of Nations_, with the most patriotic interest
and anxiety, and having long made a special study of the whole problem
of colonial administration, had arrived at the most decided opinions
not only on the rights and wrongs of the particular quarrel then at
issue, but on the general policy it was requisite to adopt in the
government of dependencies. Hume was in favour of separation, because
he believed separation to be inevitable sooner or later in the
ordinary course of nature, like the separation of the fruit from the
tree or the child from the parent. But Smith, shunning all such
misleading metaphors, held that there need never be any occasion for
separation as long as mother country and dependency were wise enough
to keep together, and that the sound policy to adopt was really the
policy of closer union--of imperial federation, as we should now call
it. He would not say, "Perish dependencies," but "Incorporate them."
He would treat a colony as but a natural expansion of the territory of
the kingdom, and have its inhabitants enjoy the same rights and bear
the same burdens as other citizens. He did not think it wrong to tax
the Colonies; on the contrary, he would make them pay every tax the
inhabitants of Great Britain had to pay; but he thought it wrong to
put restrictions on their commerce from which the commerce of Great
Britain was free, and he thought it wrong to tax them for imperial
purposes without giving them representation in the Imperial
Parliament--full and equal representation, "bearing the same
proportion to the produce of their taxes as the representation of
Great Britain might bear to the produce of the taxes levied upon Great
Britain." The union he contemplated was to be more than federal; it
was to preclude home rule by local assemblies; it was to be like the
union which had been established with Scotland, and which he strongly
desired to see established with Ireland; and the Imperial Parliament
in London was to make laws for the local affairs of the provinces
across the Atlantic exactly as it made laws for the local affairs of
the province across the Tweed. He shrank from none of the consequences
of his scheme, admitting even that when the Colonies grew in
population and wealth, as grow they must, till the real centre of
empire changed, the time would then arrive when the American members
of the Imperial Parliament would far outnumber the British, and the
seat of Parliament itself would require to be transferred from London
to some Constantinople on the other side of the Atlantic.
He was quite sensible that this scheme of his would be thought wild
and called a "new Utopia," but he was not one of those who counted the
old Utopia of Sir Thomas More to be either useless or chimerical, and
he says that this Utopia of his own is "no more useless or chimerical
than the old one." The difficulties it would encounter came, he says,
"not from the nature of things, but from the prejudices and opinions
of the people both on this and on the other side of the Atlantic." He
held, moreover, very strongly that a union of this kind was the only
means of making the Colonies a useful factor instead of a showy and
expensive appendage of the empire, and the only alternative that could
really prevent their total separation from Great Britain. He pleaded
for union, too, not merely for the salvation of the Colonies to the
mother country, but even more for the salvation of the Colonies to
themselves. Separation merely meant mediocrity for Great Britain, but
for the Colonies it meant ruin. There would no longer be any check on
the spirit of rancorous and virulent faction which was always
inseparable from small democracies. The coercive power of the mother
country had hitherto prevented the colonial factions from breaking out
into anything worse than brutality and insult, but if that coercive
power were entirely taken away they would probably soon break out into
open violence and bloodshed.[243]
The event has falsified the last anticipation, but this is not the
place to criticise Smith's scheme. It was only requisite to recall for
a moment the ideas which, according to the Duke of Buccleugh's
statement to Hume, Smith was at this time so zealously working for in
the important circles in which he then moved in London.
FOOTNOTES:
[229] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.
[230] Add. MSS., 32,336. It must have been during this period that
Smith entertained Reynolds at dinner at Mrs. Hill's, Dartmouth Street,
Westminster, on Sunday 11th March, and not, as Mr. Tom Taylor places
it, in 1764, from finding the dinner engagement noted on "a tiny
old-fashioned card bearing the name of 'Mr. Adam Smith'" lying in one
of Reynolds' pocket-books for 1764. In March 1764 Smith, as we know,
was in France, and Mr. Taylor must have mistaken the year for 1774,
unless, indeed, it may have been 1767.
[231] Walpole's _Letters_, vi. 302.
[232] Watson's _Annals of Philadelphia_, i. 533.
[233] See above, pp. 256-7.
[234] Parton's _Life of Franklin_, i. 537.
[235] _Hume MSS._, R.S.E. Library.
[236] Playfair's edition of _Wealth of Nations_, I. xiii.
[237] Clayden's _Early Life of Samuel Rogers_, p. 168.
[238] _Works_, v. 519.
[239] Taylor's _Records of my Life_, ii. 262.
[240] Thomson's _Life of Cullen_, i. 481.
[241] Notes of S. Rogers' Conversation. Add. MSS., 32, 571.
[242] Burton's _Life of Hume_, ii. 483.
[243] _Wealth of Nations_, Book V. chap. iii.