BURKE IN SCOTLAND
1784-1785
Burke had been elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in
November 1783 in succession to Dundas, and he came down to Scotland to
be installed in the following April. He spent altogether eight or ten
days in the country, and he spent them all in the company of Smith,
who attended him wherever he went. Burke and Smith, always profound
admirers of one another's writings, had grown warm friends during the
recent lengthened residence of the latter in London. Even in the
brilliant circle round the brown table in Gerrard Street there was
none Burke loved or esteemed more highly than Smith. One of the
statesman's biographers informs us, on the authority of an eminent
literary friend, who paid him a visit at Beaconsfield after his
retirement from public life, that he then spoke with the warmest
admiration of Smith's vast learning, his profound understanding, and
the great importance of his writings, and added that his heart was as
good and rare as his head, and that his manners were "peculiarly
pleasing."[327] Smith on his part was drawn to Burke by no less
powerful an attraction. He once paid him a compliment with which the
latter appears to have been particularly gratified, for he repeated it
to his literary friend on this same occasion. "Burke," said the
economist, "is the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic
subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having
passed between us."[328]
The installation of Lord Rector was to take place on Saturday the 10th
of April, and Burke arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday or Wednesday
previous. Whether he was Smith's guest while there I am unable to say,
but at any rate it was Smith who did the honours of the town to him,
and accompanied him wherever he went. Dalzel, the Greek professor,
gives an account of the statesman's visit, to his old friend and
class-fellow, Sir Robert Liston, and states that "Lord Maitland
attended him constantly and Mr. Adam Smith. They brought him," he
adds, "to my house the day after he arrived." Lord Maitland was the
eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale, and became a well-known figure
both in politics and in scientific economics after he succeeded to the
peerage himself. I have already mentioned him for his admiration of
Smith, and his defence of him from the disparaging remarks of Fox,
though he was himself no blind follower of the _Wealth of Nations_,
but one of the earliest and not the least acute of the critics of that
work. He was at this time one of the rising hopes of the Whigs in the
House of Commons, which he had entered as representative of a Cornish
borough in 1780. Dalzel had been his tutor, and had accompanied him in
that capacity to Oxford; and being also a great favourite with Smith,
whom he respected above all things for his knowledge of Greek, he was
naturally among the first of the eminent citizens to whom they
introduced their distinguished guest.
On Thursday morning Burke and Smith went out with Lord Maitland to
Hatton, the Lauderdale seat in Midlothian, to dine and stay the night
there on their way to Glasgow, and Dugald Stewart and Dalzel joined
them later in the day after they had finished their college classes.
The conversation happened very naturally to touch on party prospects,
for they were at the moment in the thick of a general election--the
famous election of 1784, so fatal to the Whigs, when near 160
supporters of the Coalition Ministry--"Fox's martyrs"--lost their
seats, and Pitt was sent back with an enormous majority behind him.
Parliament had been dissolved a fortnight before, and many of the
elections were already past; Burke himself had been returned for
Malton on his way north, but the battle was still raging; in
Westminster, where the Whig chief was himself fighting, it lasted a
month longer, and in many other constituencies the event was as yet
undecided. As far as returns had been made, however, things had gone
hard with the Whigs, and Burke was despondent. He had been some twenty
years in public life without his party being in power as many months,
and since the party seemed now doomed, as indeed it was, to twenty
years of opposition again, he turned to Lord Maitland and said, "Lord
Maitland, if you want to be in office, if you have any ambition or
wish to be successful in life, shake us off, give us up." But Smith
intervened, and with singular hopefulness ventured to prophesy that in
two years things would certainly come round again. "Why," replied
Burke, "I have already been in a minority nineteen years, and your two
years, Mr. Smith, will just make me twenty-one, and it will surely be
high time for me to be then in my majority."[329]
Smith's hearty remark implies his continued loyalty to the
Rockinghams, and shows that just as he two years before approved of
their separation from Lord Shelburne, which many Whig critics have
censured, so he now equally approved of their coalition with their old
adversary, Lord North, which Whig critics have censured more severely
still. But his sanguine forecast was far astray. Burke never again
returned to office, and the whole conversation reads strangely in the
light of subsequent events. Only a few years more and Burke had
himself shaken off his friends--from no view to power, it is
true--and the young nobleman to whom he gave the advice in jest was to
take the lead in avenging the desertion, and to denounce the pension
it was proposed to give him as the wages of apostasy. The French
Revolution, which drove Burke back to a more conservative position,
carried Lord Maitland, who had drunk in Radicalism from Professor John
Millar, forward into the republican camp. He went over to Paris with
Dugald Stewart and harangued the mob on the streets _pour la
liberté_,[330] and he said one day to the Duchess of Gordon, "I hope,
madame, ere long to have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Maitland to
Mrs. Gordon."[331]
On the present occasion at Hatton, however, they were all one in their
lamentations over the temporary eclipse the cause of liberty had
suffered. On the following morning they all set out together for
Glasgow, Stewart and Dalzel being able to accompany them because it
was Good Friday, and Good Friday was then a holiday at Edinburgh
University. They supped that evening with Professor John Millar,
Smith's pupil and Lord Maitland's master, and next day they assisted
at the ceremony of installation. The chief business was of course the
Rector's address, described in the _Annual Register_ of the year as "a
very polite and elegant speech suited to the occasion." Tradition says
Burke broke down in this speech, and after speaking five minutes
concluded abruptly by saying he was unable to proceed, as he had never
addressed so learned an audience before; but though the tradition is
mentioned by Jeffrey, who was a student at Glasgow only three years
afterwards, and is more definitely stated by Professor Young of the
same University in his _Lectures on Intellectual Philosophy_ (p. 334),
there appears to be no solid foundation for it whatever. It is not
mentioned by Dalzel, who would be unlikely to omit so interesting a
circumstance in the gossiping account of the affair which he gives in
his letter to Sir R. Liston.
After the installation they adjourned to the College chapel for divine
service, where they heard a sermon from Professor Arthur, and then
they dined in the College Hall. On Sunday Stewart and Dalzel returned
to Edinburgh for their classes next day, but Smith and Lord Maitland
accompanied Burke on an excursion to Loch Lomond, of which we know
Smith was a great admirer. He said to Samuel Rogers it was the finest
lake in Great Britain, and the feature that pleased him particularly
was the contrast between the islands and the shore.[332] They did not
return to Edinburgh till Wednesday, and they returned then by way of
Carron, probably to see the ironworks. On Thursday evening they dined
at Smith's, Dalzel being again of the party. Burke seems to have been
at his best--"the most agreeable and entertaining man in conversation
I ever knew," says Dalzel. "We got a vast deal of political anecdotes
from him, and fine pictures of political characters both dead and
living. Whether they were impartially drawn or not, that is
questionable, but they were admirably drawn."[333]
The elections were still proceeding, and the 29th of April was fixed
for the election in Lanarkshire, which had been represented for the
previous ten years by a strong personal friend of Smith, Andrew Stuart
of Torrance. I have already mentioned Stuart's name in connection with
his candidature for the Indian Commissionership, for which Sir William
Pulteney thought of proposing Smith. Though now forgotten, he was a
notable person in his day. He came first strongly into public notice
during the proceedings in the Douglas cause. Having, as law-agent for
the Duke of Hamilton, borne the chief part in preparing the Hamilton
side of the case, he was attacked in the House of Lords--and attacked
with quite unusual virulence--both by Thurlow, the counsel for the
other side, and by Lord Mansfield, one of the judges; and he met those
attacks by fighting a duel with Thurlow, and writing a series of
letters to Lord Mansfield, which obtained much attention and won him a
high name for ability. Shortly thereafter--in 1774--he entered
Parliament as member for Lanarkshire, and made such rapid mark that he
was appointed a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations in 1779, and
seemed destined to higher office. But now in 1784, on the very eve of
the election, Stuart suddenly retired from the field, in consequence
apparently of some personal considerations arising between himself and
the Duke of Hamilton. He was extremely anxious to have his reasons for
this unexpected step immediately and fully explained to his personal
friends in Edinburgh, and on the 22nd of April--the day before he
wrote his resignation--he sent his whole correspondence with the Duke
of Hamilton about the matter through to John Davidson, W.S., for their
perusal, and especially, it would appear, for the perusal of Smith,
the only one he names. "There is particularly," he says, "one friend,
Mr. Adam Smith, whom I wish to be fully informed of everything." Being
the only friend specifically named in the letter, Smith seems to have
been consulted by Davidson as to any other "particular friends" to
whom the correspondence should be submitted, and he wrote Davidson on
the 7th of May 1784 advising him to show it to Campbell of Stonefield,
one of the Lords of Session, and a brother-in-law of Lord Bute. He
says--
My Lord Stonefield is an old attached and faithful friend of
A. Stuart. The papers relative to the County of Lanark may
safely be communicated to him. He is perfectly convinced of
the propriety of what you and I agreed upon, that the
subject ought to be talked of as little as possible, and
never but among his most intimate and cordial friends.
A. SMITH.
_Friday, 7th May_.[334]
After being brightened by the agreeable visit of Burke, Smith was
presently cast into the deepest sadness by what seems to have been the
first trouble of his singularly serene and smooth life--the death of
his mother. She died on the 23rd of May, in her ninetieth year. The
three avenues to Smith, says the Earl of Buchan, were always his
mother, his books, and his political opinions--his mother apparently
first of all. They had lived together, off and on, for sixty years,
and being most tenderly attached to her, he is said, after her death,
never to have seemed the same again. According to Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, he was so disconsolate that people in general could find
no explanation except in his supposed unbelief in the resurrection. He
sorrowed, they said, as those who have no hope. People in general
would seem to have little belief in the natural affections; but while
they extracted from Smith's filial love a proof of his infidelity,
Archdeacon John Sinclair seeks to extract from it a demonstration of
his religious faith. It appears that when Mrs. Smith was visited on
her deathbed by her minister, her famous son always remained in the
room and joined in the prayers, though they were made in the name and
for the sake of Christ; and the worthy Archdeacon thinks no infidel
would have done that.
The depression Smith showed after his mother's death, however, was
unfortunately due in part to the fact that his own health was
beginning to fail. He was now sixty-one; as Stewart tells us, he aged
very rapidly, and in two years more he was in the toils of the malady
that carried him off. The shock of his mother's death could not help
therefore telling severely upon him in his declining bodily condition.
Burke was--no doubt at Smith's instance--elected Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh in June 1784, in spite of several black balls;
for, as Dalzel observes, "it would seem that there are some violent
politicians among us"; and in August 1785 he was again in Scotland
attending to the duties of his Rectorship. He was accompanied this
time by Windham, who was the most attached and the most beloved of his
political disciples, and who had been a student at Glasgow himself in
1766. If Dalzel was delighted with Burke, he was enchanted with
Windham, for, says he to Liston, "besides his being a polite man and a
man of the world, he is perhaps the very best Greek scholar I ever met
with. He did me the honour of breakfasting with me one morning, and
sat for three hours talking about Greek. When we were at Hatton he and
I stole away as often as we could from the rest of the company to read
and talk about Greek.... You may judge how I would delight in him."
Smith was not at Hatton with them this time, but he saw much of them
in Edinburgh.
Smith had probably known Windham already, but at any rate, as soon as
Burke and he arrived in Edinburgh on the 24th of August and took their
quarters in Dun's Hotel, they paid a visit to Smith, and next day they
dined with him at his house. Among the guests mentioned by Windham as
being present were Robertson; Henry Erskine, who had recently been
Burke's colleague in the Coalition Ministry as Lord Advocate; and Mr.
Cullen, probably the doctor, though it may have been his son
(afterwards a judge), who lives in fame chiefly for his feats as a
mimic. Windham gives us no scrap of their conversation except a few
remarks of Robertson about Holyrood; and though he says he recollected
no one else of the company except those he has mentioned, there was at
least one other guest whose presence there that evening he was shortly
afterwards to have somewhat romantic occasion to recall. This was Sir
John Sinclair, who had just re-entered Parliament for a constituency
at the Land's End, after having been defeated in the Wick burghs by
Fox. Burke and Windham proposed making a tour in the Highlands, and
Sir John advised them strongly, when they came to the beautiful
district between Blair-Athole and Dunkeld, to leave their post-chaise
for that stage and walk through the woods and glens on foot. They
took the advice, and about ten miles from Dunkeld came upon a young
lady, the daughter of a neighbouring proprietor, reading a novel under
a tree. They entered into conversation with her, and Windham was so
much struck with her smartness and talent that though he was obliged
at the time, as he said, most reluctantly to leave her, he, three
years afterwards, came to Sinclair in the House of Commons and said to
him, "I have never been able to get this beautiful mountain nymph out
of my mind, and I wish you to ascertain whether she is married or
single." Windham was too late. She was already married to Dr.
Dick--afterwards a much-trusted medical adviser of Sir Walter
Scott--and had gone with her husband to the East Indies.
They returned to Edinburgh on the 13th of September, and, says
Windham, "after dinner walked to Adam Smith's. Felt strongly the
impression of a family completely Scotch. House magnificent and place
fine.... Found there Colonels Balfour and Ross, the former late
aide-de-camp to General Howe, the latter to Lord Cornwallis. Felt
strongly the impression of a company completely Scotch."
Colonel Nesbit Balfour, who won great distinction in the American war,
was the son of one of Smith's old Fifeshire neighbours, a proprietor
in that county, and became afterwards well known in Parliament, where
he sat from 1790 to 1812. Colonel (afterwards General) Alexander Ross
had also taken a distinguished part in the American war, and was
Cornwallis's most intimate friend and correspondent. He was at this
time Deputy-Adjutant-General of the Forces in Scotland. Whether he was
a relation of the Colonel Patrick Ross of whom Smith speaks in one of
his letters as a kinsman of his own,[335] I cannot say.
Next day, the 14th, Burke and Windham dined with Smith. There was no
other guest except a Mr. Skene, no doubt one of Smith's cousins from
Pitlour, probably the Inspector-General of Scotch Roads already
mentioned.[336] On the following morning the two statesmen proceeded
on their way southward.
One of the visits Burke paid in Edinburgh was to a charming poet, to
whom fortune has been singularly unkind, not only treating him cruelly
when alive, but instead of granting the usual posthumous reparation,
treating him even more cruelly after his death. I mean John Logan, the
author of the _Ode to the Cuckoo_, which Burke thought the most
beautiful lyric in the language. Logan was at the moment in the thick
of his troubles. He had written a tragedy called _Runnymede_, which,
though accepted by the management of Covent Garden, was prohibited by
the Lord Chamberlain, who scented current politics in the bold
speeches of the Barons of King John, but it was eventually produced in
the Edinburgh theatre in 1783. Its production immediately involved the
author, as one of the ministers of Leith, in difficulties with his
parishioners and the ecclesiastical courts similar to those which John
Home had encountered twenty years before, and the trouble ended in
Logan resigning his charge in December 1786 on a pension of £40 a
year. Smith, who was an admirer and, as Dr. Carlyle mentions to Bishop
Douglas, a "great patron" of Logan, stood by him through these
troubles. When they first broke out in 1783 he wished, as Logan
himself tells his old pupil Sir John Sinclair, to get the poet
transferred if possible from his parish in Leith to the more liberal
and enlightened parish of the Canongate, and when Logan eventually
made up his mind to take refuge in literature, Smith gave him the
following letter of introduction to Andrew Strahan, who had, since his
father's death, become the head of the firm:--
DEAR SIR--Mr. Logan, a clergyman of uncommon learning,
taste, and ingenuity, but who cannot easily submit to the
puritanical spirit of this country, quits his charge and
proposes to settle in London, where he will probably
exercise what may be called the trade of a man of letters.
He has published a few poems, of which several have great
merit, and which are probably not unknown to you. He has
likewise published a tragedy, which I cannot say I admire in
the least. He has another in manuscript, founded and almost
translated from a French drama, which is much better. But
the best of all his works which I have seen are some
lectures upon universal history, which were read here some
years ago, but which, notwithstanding they were approved and
even admired by some of the best and most impartial judges,
were run down by the prevalence of a hostile literary
faction, to the leaders of which he had imprudently given
some personal offence. Give me leave to recommend him most
earnestly to your countenance and protection. If he was
employed on a review he would be an excellent hand for
giving an account of all books of taste, of history, and of
moral and abstract philosophy.--I ever am, my dear sir, most
faithfully and affectionately yours,
ADAM SMITH.[337]
EDINBURGH, _29th September 1785_.
The lectures which Smith praises so highly were published in 1779, and
are interesting as one of the first adventures in what was afterwards
known as the philosophy of history. But his memory rests now on his
poems, which Smith thought less of, and especially on his _Ode to the
Cuckoo_, which he has been accused so often of stealing from his
deceased friend Michael Bruce, but to which his title has at last been
put beyond all doubt by Mr. Small's publication of a letter, written
to Principal Baird in 1791, by Dr. Robertson of Dalmeny, who acted as
joint editor with him of their common friend Bruce's poems.[338]
FOOTNOTES:
[327] Bisset's _Life of Burke_, ii. 429.
[328] Bisset's _Life of Burke_, ii. 429.
[329] Innes's Memoir of Dalzel in Dalzel's _History of University of
Edinburgh_, i. 42.
[330] Add. MSS., 32,567.
[331] Best's _Anecdotes_, p. 25.
[332] Clayden's _Early Life of Samuel Rogers_, p. 92.
[333] Dalzel's _History of the University of Edinburgh_, i. 42.
[334] Edinburgh University Library.
[335] See above, p. 361.
[336] See above, p. 243.
[337] Morrison MSS.
[338] Small, _Michael Bruce and the Ode to the Cuckoo_, p. 7.