THE AMERICAN QUESTION AND OTHER POLITICS
Notwithstanding the patronage he received from Lord North and his
relations of friendship and obligation with the Duke of Buccleugh and
Henry Dundas, Smith continued to be a warm political supporter of the
Rockingham Whigs and a warm opponent of the North ministry. The first
Earl of Minto (then Sir Gilbert Elliot) visited Edinburgh in 1782, and
wrote in his journal. "I have found one just man in Gomorrah, Adam
Smith, author of the _Wealth of Nations_. He was the Duke of
Buccleugh's tutor, is a wise and deep philosopher, and although made
Commissioner of the Customs here by the Duke and Lord Advocate, is
what I call an _honest fellow_. He wrote a most kind as well as
elegant letter to Burke on his resignation, as I believe I told you
before, and on my mentioning it to him he told me he was the only man
here who spoke out for the Rockinghams."[322] This letter is now lost,
but Burke's answer to it remains, and was sold at Sotheby's a few
years ago. Smith must have expressed the warmest approval of the step
Fox and Burke had taken, on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham in
July 1782, in resigning their offices in the Ministry rather than
serve under their colleague Lord Shelburne, and he must have felt
strongly on the subject to overcome his aversion to letter-writing on
the occasion. Fox and Burke have been much censured for their refusal
to serve under Shelburne, inasmuch as that refusal meant a practical
disruption of the Whig party; and Burke could not help feeling
strengthened, as he says he was in his letter, by the approval of a
man like Smith, who was not only a profound political philosopher, but
a thorough and loyal Whig. Notwithstanding his personal friendship
with Lord Shelburne, Smith never seems to have trusted him as a
political leader. We have already seen him condemning Shelburne at the
time of that statesman's first collision with Fox--the "pious fraud"
occasion--and now nineteen years later he shows the same distrust of
Shelburne, and doubtless for the same reason, that he believed
Shelburne was willing to be subservient to the king's designs, and to
increase the power of the Crown, which it had ever been the aim of the
Whigs to limit. Shelburne's acceptance of office, after the king's
positive refusal to listen to the views of the Rockinghams themselves
regarding the leadership of their own party, was probably regarded by
Smith as a piece of open treason to the popular cause, and open
espousal of the cause of the Court.
In those critical times the thoughts of even private citizens brooded
on the arts of war. An Edinburgh lawyer who had never been at sea
invented the system of naval tactics which gave Rodney his victories,
and here is a Highland laird, who had spent his days among his herds
in Skye, writing Smith about a treatise he has composed on
fortification, which he believes to contain original discoveries of
great importance, and which he sends up to Smith and Henry Mackenzie,
with a five-pound note to pay the expenses of its publication. The
author was Charles Mackinnon of Mackinnon, the chief of his clan, who
fell into adverse circumstances shortly after the date of this
correspondence, and parted with all the old clan property, and the
treatise on fortification itself still exists among the manuscripts of
the British Museum. It is certainly a poor affair, from which the
author could have reaped nothing but disappointment, and Smith, who
seems to have held Mr. Mackinnon in high esteem personally, strongly
dissuades him from giving it to the press. This opinion is
communicated in the following candid but kind letter:--
DEAR SIR--I received your favour of the 13th of this month,
and am under some concern to be obliged to tell you that I
have not only not got out of the press, but that I have not
yet gone into it, and would most earnestly once more
recommend it to your consideration whether upon this
occasion we should go into it at all. It was but within
these few days that I could obtain a meeting with Mr.
Mackinzie, who was occupied with the Exchequer Business. I
find he had seen your papers before, and was of the same
opinion with me that in their present condition they would
not do you the honour we wish you to derive from whatever
work you publish. We read them over together with great care
and attention, and we both continued of our first opinion. I
hope you will pardon me if I take the liberty to tell you
that I cannot discover in them those original ideas which
you seem to suppose that they contain. I am not very certain
whether I understand what you hint obscurely in your former
letter, but it seems to me as if you had some fear that some
person might anticipate you, and claim the merit of your
discoveries by publishing them as his own. From the
character of the gentleman to whom your property has been
communicated, I should hope there is no danger of this. But
to prevent the Possibility of the Public being imposed upon
in this manner, your Papers now lie sealed up in my writing
Desk, superscribed with directions to my executors to return
them unopened to you or your heirs as their proper owners.
In case of my death and that of Mr. M'Kinzie, the production
of these papers under my seal and superscribed by my hand
will be sufficient to refute any plagiarism of this kind.
While we live our evidence will secure to you the reputation
of whatever discoveries may be contained in them. I return
you the five Pound note, in hopes that you will not insist
upon this publication, at least for some time; at any rate,
I shall always be happy to advance a larger sum upon your
account, though I own I could wish it was for some other
purpose. I have not shown your Papers to Smellie. It will
give me great pleasure to hear from you, and to be informed
that you forgive the freedom I have used in offering you, I
am afraid, a disagreeable advice. I can assure you that
nothing but the respect which I think I owe to the character
of a person whom I know to be a man of worth, delicacy, and
honour, could have extorted it from me.--I ever am, dear
sir, most faithfully yours,
ADAM SMITH.
CUSTOM HOUSE, EDINBURGH,
_21st August 1782_.
If you should not chuse that your Papers should remain in my
custody, I shall either send them to you or deliver to whom
you please.[323]
While one Highland laird was planning to save his country by an
improved system of fortification, another was conceiving a grander
project of saving her by continental alliances. The moment was among
the darkest England has ever passed through. We were engaged in a
death-struggle against France, Spain, and the American colonies
combined. Cornwallis had just repeated at Yorktown the humiliating
surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Elliot lay locked in Gibraltar.
Ireland was growing restive and menacing on one side, and the Northern
powers of Europe on the other--the Armed Neutrality, as they were
called--sat and watched, with their hands on their sword-hilts and a
grudge against England in their hearts. Now Sir John Sinclair believed
that these neutral powers held the key of the situation, and wrote a
pamphlet in 1782, which he proposed to translate into their respective
tongues for the purpose of persuading them to join this country in a
crusade against the House of Bourbon, and "to emancipate the colonies
both in the West Indies and on the continent of America for the
general interest of all nations." The price he was prepared to offer
these powers for their adhesion was to be a share in the colonial
commerce of England, and the acquisition of some of the French and
Spanish colonial dependencies for themselves. Sinclair sent his
pamphlet to Smith, apparently with a request for his opinion on the
advisability of translating it for the conversion of the powers, and
he received the following reply. I may add that I have not been able
to see this pamphlet, but that it is evidently not the pamphlet
entitled "Impartial Considerations on the Propriety of retaining
Gibraltar," as Sinclair's biographer supposes; for in the former
pamphlet Sinclair is advocating not only a continuance, but an
extension of the war, whereas in the latter he has come round to the
advocacy of peace, and instead of contemplating the deprivation of
France and Spain of their colonies, he recommends the cession of
Gibraltar as a useless and expensive possession, using very much the
same line of argument which Smith suggests in this letter. Smith's
letter very probably had some influence in changing his views, though
it is true the idea of ceding Gibraltar was in 1782 much favoured by a
party in Lord Shelburne's government, and even by the king himself.
Smith's letter ran thus:--
MY DEAR SIR--I have read your pamphlet several times with
great pleasure, and am very much pleased with the style and
composition. As to what effect it might produce if
translated upon the Powers concerned in the Armed
Neutrality, I am a little doubtful. It is too plainly
partial to England. It proposes that the force of the Armed
Neutrality should be employed in recovering to England the
islands she has lost, and the compensation which it is
proposed that England should give for this service is the
islands which they may conquer for themselves, with the
assistance of England indeed, from France and Spain. There
seems to me besides to be some inconsistency in the
argument. If it be just to emancipate the continent of
America from the dominion of every European power, how can
it be just to subject the islands to such dominion? and if
the monopoly of the trade of the continent be contrary to
the rights of mankind, how can that of the islands be
agreeable to these rights? The real futility of all distant
dominions, of which the defence is necessarily most
expensive, and which contribute nothing, either by revenue
or military forces, to the general defence of the empire,
and very little even to their own particular defence, is, I
think, the subject on which the public prejudices of Europe
require most to be set right. In order to defend the barren
rock of Gibraltar (to the possession of which we owe the
union of France and Spain, contrary to the natural interests
and inveterate prejudices of both countries, the important
enmity of Spain and the futile and expensive friendship of
Portugal) we have now left our own coasts defenceless, and
sent out a great fleet, to which any considerable disaster
may prove fatal to our domestic security; and which, in
order to effectuate its purpose, must probably engage a
fleet of superior force. Sore eyes have made me delay
writing to you so long.--I ever am, my dear sir, your most
faithful and affectionate humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.
CUSTOM HOUSE, EDINBURGH,
_14th October 1782_.[324]
The strong opinion expressed in this letter of the uselessness of
colonial dependencies, which contributed nothing to the maintenance of
the mother country, had of course been already expressed in the
_Wealth of Nations_. "Perish uncontributing colonies" is the very pith
of the last sentence of that work. "If any of the provinces of the
British Empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the
whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself
from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war and of
supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time
of peace; and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to
the real mediocrity of her circumstances."
The principles of free trade presently got an impetus from the
conclusion of peace with America and France in 1783. Lord Shelburne
wrote Abbé Morellet in 1783 that the treaties of that year were
inspired from beginning to end by "the great principle of free trade,"
and that "a peace was good in the exact proportion that it recognised
that principle." A fitting opportunity was thought to have arisen for
making somewhat extended applications of the principle, and many
questions were asked about how far such applications should go in this
direction or that. When the American Intercourse Bill was before the
House in 1783, one of Lord Shelburne's colleagues in the Ministry,
William Eden, approached Smith in considerable perplexity as to the
wisdom of conceding to the new republic free commercial intercourse
with this country and our colonies. Eden had already done something
for free trade in Ireland, and he was presently to earn a name as a
great champion of that principle, after successfully negotiating with
Dupont de Nemours the Commercial Treaty with France in 1786; but in
1787 he had not accepted the principle so completely as his chief,
Lord Shelburne. Perhaps, indeed, he never took a firm hold of the
principle at any time, for Smith always said of him, "He is but a man
of detail."[325] Anyhow, when he wrote Smith in 1783 he was under
serious alarm at the proposal to give the United States the same
freedom to trade with Canada and Nova Scotia as we enjoyed ourselves.
Being so near those colonies, the States would be sure to oust Great
Britain and Ireland entirely out of the trade of provisioning them.
The Irish fisheries would be ruined, the English carrying trade would
be lost. The Americans, with fur at their doors, could easily beat us
in hats, and if we allowed them to import our tools free, they would
beat us in everything else for which they had the raw materials in
plenty. Eden and Smith seem to have exchanged several letters on this
subject, but none of them remain except the following one from Smith,
in which he declares that it would be an injustice to our own colonies
to restrict their trade with the United States merely to benefit Irish
fish-curers or English hatters, and to be bad policy to impose special
discouragements on the trade of one foreign nation which are not
imposed on the trade of others. His argument is not, it will be
observed, for free trade, which he perhaps thought then impracticable,
but merely for equality of treatment,--equality of treatment between
the British subject in Canada and the British subject in England, and
equality of treatment between the American nation and the Russian, or
French, or Spanish.
DEAR SIR--If the Americans really mean to subject the goods
of all different nations to the same duties and to grant
them the same indulgence, they set an example of good sense
which all other nations ought to imitate. At any rate it is
certainly just that their goods, their naval stores for
example, should be subjected to the same duties to which we
subject those of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, and that we
should treat them as they mean to treat us and all other
nations.
What degree of commercial connection we should allow between
the remaining colonies, whether in North America or the West
Indies, and the United States may to some people appear a
more difficult question. My own opinion is that it should be
allowed to go on as before, and whatever inconveniences
result from this freedom may be remedied as they occur. The
lumber and provisions of the United States are more
necessary to our West India Islands than the rum and sugar
of the latter are to the former. Any interruption or
restraint of commerce would hurt our loyal much more than
our revolted subjects. Canada and Nova Scotia cannot justly
be refused at least the same freedom of commerce which we
grant to the United States.
I suspect the Americans do not mean what they say. I have
seen a Revenue Act of South Carolina by which two shillings
are laid upon every hundredweight of brown sugar imported
from the British plantations, and only eighteenpence upon
that imported from any foreign colony. Upon every pound of
refined sugar from the former one penny, from the latter one
halfpenny. Upon every gallon of French wine twopence; of
Spanish wine threepence; of Portuguese wine fourpence.
I have little anxiety about what becomes of the American
commerce. By an equality of treatment of all nations we must
soon open a commerce with the neighbouring nations of Europe
infinitely more advantageous than that of so distant a
country as America. This is an immense subject upon which
when I wrote to you last I intended to have sent you a
letter of many sheets, but as I expect to see you in a few
weeks I shall not trouble you with so tedious a
dissertation. I shall only say at present that every
extraordinary, either encouragement or discouragement that
is given to the trade of any country more than to that of
another may, I think, be demonstrated to be in every case a
complete piece of dupery, by which the interest of the state
and the nation is constantly sacrificed to that of some
particular class of traders. I heartily congratulate you
upon the triumphant manner in which the East India Bill has
been carried through the Lower House. I have no doubt of
its passing through the Upper House in the same manner. The
decisive judgment and resolution with which Mr. Fox has
introduced and supported that Bill does him the highest
honour.--I ever am, with the greatest respect and esteem,
dear sir, your most affectionate and most humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.
EDINBURGH, _15th December 1783_.[326]
Fox's East India Bill, of which Smith expresses such unqualified
commendation, proposed to transfer the government of British India
from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to a new board
of Crown nominees. This measure was entirely to Smith's mind. He had
already in the former editions of his book condemned the company
which, as he says, "oppresses and domineers in India," and in the
additional matter which he wrote about the company immediately before
this bill was introduced he declared of them that "no other sovereigns
ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly
indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the
improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of
their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater
part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are and
necessarily must be."
FOOTNOTES:
[322] Lady Minto's _Life of the Earl of Minto_, i. 84.
[323] Add. MSS., 5035.
[324] _Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair_, i. 389.
[325] Mackintosh, _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 17.
[326] _Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland_, i. 64.