VISIT TO LONDON
1787. _Aet._ 64
In April he had improved enough to undertake the journey to London to
consult Hunter, but he was wasted to a skeleton. William
Playfair--brother of his friend the Professor of Mathematics, and
afterwards one of the early editors of the _Wealth of Nations_--met
him soon after his arrival in London, and says he was looking very
ill, and was evidently going to decay. While in his usual health he
was, though not corpulent, yet rather stout than spare, but he was now
reduced to skin and bone. He was able, however, to move about in
society and see old friends and make new. Windham in his Diary
mentions meeting him at several different places, and he was now
introduced for the first time to the young statesman who was only a
student in the Temple when he was last in London in 1777, but who was
already one of the most powerful ministers England had ever seen, and
was at the moment reforming the national finances with the _Wealth of
Nations_ in his hand. Pitt always confessed himself one of Smith's
most convinced disciples. The first few years of his long ministry saw
the daybreak of free trade. He brought in a measure of commercial
emancipation for Ireland; he carried a commercial treaty with France;
he passed, in accordance with Smith's recommendations, laws
simplifying the collection and administration of the revenue. In this
very year 1787 he introduced his great Consolidation Bill, which
created order out of the previous chaos of customs and excise, and was
so extensive a work that it took 2537 separate resolutions to state
its provisions, and these resolutions had only just been read on the
7th of March, a few weeks before Smith arrived in London.
No one in London therefore was more interested to meet Smith than the
young minister who was carrying the economist's principles out so
extensively in practical legislation. They met repeatedly, but they
met on one occasion, of which recollection has been preserved, at
Dundas's house on Wimbledon Green,--Addington, Wilberforce, and
Grenville being also of the company; and it is said that when Smith,
who was one of the last guests to arrive, entered the room, the whole
company rose from their seats to receive him and remained standing.
"Be seated, gentlemen," said Smith. "No," replied Pitt; "we will stand
till you are first seated, for we are all your scholars." This story
seems to rest on Edinburgh tradition, and was first published, so far
as I know, in the 1838 edition of Kay's _Portraits_, more than half a
century after the date of the incident it relates. Most of the
biographies contained in that work were written by James Paterson, but
a few of the earliest, including this of Smith, were not. They were
all written, however, from materials which had been long collected by
Kay himself, who only died in 1832, or which were obtained before the
time of publication from local residents who had known the men
themselves, or had mingled with those who did. The whole were edited
by the well-known and learned antiquary, James Maidment, whose
acceptance of the story is some security that it came from an
authoritative though unnamed source.
Smith was highly taken with Pitt, and one evening when dining with
him, he remarked to Addington after dinner, "What an extraordinary man
Pitt is; he understands my ideas better than I do myself."[342] Other
statesmen have been converts to free trade. Pitt never had any other
creed; it was his first faith. He was forming his opinions as a young
man when the _Wealth of Nations_ appeared, and he formed them upon
that work. Smith saw much of this group of statesmen during his visit
to the capital in that year.[343] We find Wilberforce sounding him
about some of his philanthropic schemes, Addington writing an ode to
him after meeting him at Pitt's, and Pitt himself seeking his counsels
concerning some contemplated legislation, and perhaps setting him to
some task of investigation for his assistance. Bentham had in the
early part of 1787 sent from Russia the manuscript of his _Defence of
Usury_, written in antagonism to Smith's doctrine on the subject, to
his friend George Wilson, barrister, and Wilson a month or two
later--14th of July--writes of "Dr. Smith," who can, I think, be no
other than the economist: "Dr. Smith has been very ill here of an
inflammation in the neck of the bladder, which was increased by very
bad piles. He has been cut for the piles, and the other complaint is
since much mended. The physicians say he may do some time longer. He
is much with the Ministry, and the clerks of the public offices have
orders to furnish him with all papers, and to employ additional hands,
if necessary, to copy for him. I am vexed that Pitt should have done
so right a thing as to consult Smith, but if any of his schemes are
effectuated I shall be comforted."[344] It may be, of course, that
Smith was examining papers in the public offices in connection with
his own work on Government, but Wilson's statement rather leaves the
impression that the researches were instituted in pursuance of some
idea of Pitt's, probably related to the reform of the finances. If the
Dr. Smith of Wilson's letter is the economist, he would appear to have
stayed in London a considerable time on this occasion, and to have
suffered a serious relapse of ill-health during his stay there.
Wilberforce did not think quite so highly of Smith as Pitt did, being
disappointed to find him too hard-headed to share his own enthusiasm
about a great philanthropic adventure of the day, which, to the very
practical mind of the economist, seemed entirely wanting in the
ordinary conditions of success. With some of the other philanthropic
movements in which Wilberforce was interested--with his anti-slavery
agitation, for example, begun in that very year 1787--he would have
found no more cordial sympathiser than Smith, who had condemned
slavery so strongly in his book. The Sunday school movement, too,
started by Thomas Raikes two or three years before, won Smith's
strongest commendation; for Raikes writes William Fox on 27th July of
this same year, and writes as if the remark had been made in
conversation with himself, "Dr. Adam Smith, who has very ably written
on the Wealth of Nations, says: 'No plan has promised to effect a
change of manners with equal ease and simplicity since the days of the
Apostles.'" These schools were instituted for the purpose of giving
gratuitous instruction to all comers for four or five hours every
Sunday in the ordinary branches of primary education, and they were
opposed by some leading ecclesiastics--among others by a liberal
divine like Bishop Horsley--on the ground that they might become
subservient to purposes of political propagandism. The ecclesiastical
mind is too often suspicious of the consequences of mental improvement
and independence, but to Smith these were merely the first broad
conditions of all popular progress.
No man could be less chargeable with indifference to honest and
practicable schemes of philanthropy, but the particular scheme towards
which Wilberforce found him "characteristically cool" was one which,
in his opinion, held out extravagant expectations that could not
possibly be realised. It was a project--first suggested, I believe, by
Sir James Steuart, the economist, and taken up warmly after him by Dr.
James Anderson, and especially by that earliest and most persistent
of crofters' friends, John Knox, bookseller in the Strand--for
checking the depopulation and distress of the Scotch Highlands by
planting a series of fishing villages all round the Highland coast.
Knox's idea was to plant forty fishing villages at spots twenty-five
miles apart between the Mull of Cantyre and the Dornoch Firth at a
cost of £2000 apiece, or at least as many of them as money could be
obtained to start; and the scheme rose high in public favour when the
parliamentary committee on Scotch Fisheries gave it a general
recommendation in 1785, and suggested the incorporation of a limited
liability company by Act of Parliament in order to carry it out.
The Scotch nobility adopted the suggestion with great spirit, and in
1786 the British Society for extending the Fisheries was incorporated
for that purpose by Royal Charter with a capital of £150,000, with the
Duke of Argyle for Governor, and many leading personages, one of them
being Wilberforce, for directors. It was indeed the grand
philanthropic scheme of the day. The shares were rapidly subscribed
for sufficiently to justify a start, and when Smith was in London in
1787 the society had just begun operations on a paid-up capital of
£35,000. One of the directors, Isaac Hawkins Browne, M.P., was
actually down in Scotland choosing the sites for the villages; and
Wilberforce was already almost hearing the "busy hum" of the little
hives of fishermen, coopers, boat-builders, and ropemakers, whom they
were settling along the desolate coasts.
He naturally spoke to Smith about this large and generous project for
the benefit of his countrymen, but was disappointed to find him very
sceptical indeed as to its practical results. "Dr. Smith," writes
Wilberforce to Hawkins Browne, "with a certain characteristic
coolness, observed to me that he looked for no other consequence from
the scheme than the entire loss of every shilling that should be
expended on it, granting, however, with uncommon candour, that the
public would be no great sufferer, because he believed the
individuals meant to put their hands only in their own pockets."[345]
The event, however, has justified the sagacity of Smith's
prognostication. The society began by purchasing the ground for three
fishing settlements on the west coast,--one at Ullapool, in
Ross-shire; a second at Lochbeg, in Inverness-shire; and a third at
Tobermory, in Argyle. They prepared their feuing plans, built a few
houses at their own cost, tried to attract settlers by offering
building feus at low rents and fishing-boats on credit at low rates,
but, except to a slight extent at Ullapool, their offers were not
taken; not a single boat ever sailed from Tobermory under their
auspices, and before many years elapsed the society deserted these
three original west coast stations and sold its interest in them at a
loss of some £2000. But meanwhile the directors had in 1803 bought
land at a small port on the east coast, Wick, where a flourishing
fishery with 400 boats had already been established by local
enterprise without their aid, and they founded there the settlement of
Pulteneytown (named by them after Smith's friend, Sir William
Pulteney), which has grown with the industry of the port. The society
never again tried to resume its original purpose of creating new
fishing centres, and here in Pulteneytown it has obviously only acted
the part of the shrewd building speculator, investing in the
ground-rents of a rising community and prudently helping in its
development. Through this change of purpose it has contrived to save
some of its capital, and having recently resolved to be wound up, it
sold its whole estate in 1893 for £20,000, and after all claims are
met may probably have £15,000 of its original capital of £35,000 left
to divide. The net result of the scheme therefore on the development
of Highland fisheries has been as near _nil_ as Smith anticipated; and
if the shareholders have not, as he predicted, lost every shilling of
their money, they have lost half of it, and only saved the other half
by abandoning the scheme for which it was subscribed. In the whole
course of its one hundred and eight years' existence the society never
paid more than eleven annual dividends, because for many years it
saved up its income for building an extension to its harbour, and
eventually lost all these savings and £100,000 of Government money
besides in a great breakwater, which proved an irremediable
engineering failure, and lies now in the bottom of the sea.
Smith returned to Edinburgh deeply pleased with the reception he met
with from the ministers and the progress he saw his principles making.
He came back, says the Earl of Buchan, "a Tory and a Pittite instead
of a Whig and a Foxite, as he was when he set out. By and by the
impression wore off and his former sentiments returned, but
unconnected either with Pitt, Fox, or anybody else."[346] Had the
impression remained till his death, it would be no matter for wonder.
A Liberal has little satisfaction in contemplating the conflict of
parties during the first years of Pitt's long administration, and
seeing the young Tory minister introducing one great measure of
commercial reform after another, while his own Whig chief, Charles
Fox, offers to every one of them a most factious and unscrupulous
opposition.
Soon after his return Smith received another, and to him a very
touching, recognition of his merit in being chosen in November Lord
Rector of his old alma mater, the University of Glasgow. The
appointment lay with the whole University, professors and students
together, but as the students had the advantage of numbers, the
decision was virtually in their hands, and their unanimous choice came
to Smith (as Carlyle said a similar choice came to him) at the end of
his labours like a voice of "Well done" from the University which had
sent him forth to do them, and from the coming generation which was to
enter upon the fruits of them. There was at first some word of
opposition to his candidature, on the good old electioneering plea
that he was the professors' nominee, and that it was essential for the
students to resent dictation and assert their independence. One of
Smith's keenest opponents among the students was Francis Jeffrey, who
was then a Tory. Principal Haldane, who was also a student at
Glasgow at the time, used to tell of seeing Jeffrey--a little,
black, quick-motioned creature with a rapid utterance and a
prematurely-developed moustache, on which his audience teased him
mercilessly--haranguing a mob of boys on the green and trying to rouse
them to their manifest duty of organising opposition to the
professors' nominee. His exertions failed, however, and Smith was
chosen without a contest.
On receiving intimation of his appointment Smith wrote to Principal
Davidson the following reply:--
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR--I have this moment received the
honour of your letter of the 15th instant. I accept with
gratitude and pleasure the very great honour which the
University of Glasgow have done me in electing me for the
ensuing year to be the Rector of that illustrious Body. No
preferment could have given me so much real satisfaction. No
man can own greater obligations to a Society than I do to
the University of Glasgow. They educated me, they sent me to
Oxford, soon after my return to Scotland they elected me one
of their own members, and afterwards preferred me to another
office to which the abilities and virtues of the
never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Hutcheson had given a superior
degree of illustration. The period of thirteen years which I
spent as a member of that Society, I remember as by far the
most useful and therefore as by far the happiest and most
honourable period of my life; and now, after
three-and-twenty years' absence, to be remembered in so very
agreeable a manner by my old friends and protectors gives me
a heartfelt joy which I cannot easily express to you.
I shall be happy to receive the commands of my colleagues
concerning the time when it may be convenient for them to do
me the honour of admitting me to the office. Mr. Millar
mentions Christmass. We have commonly at the Board of
Customs a vacation of five or six days at that time. But I
am so regular an attendant that I think myself entitled to
take the play for a week at any time. It will be no
inconveniency to me therefore to wait upon you at whatever
time you please. I beg to be remembered to my colleagues in
the most respectful and the most affectionate manner; and
that you would believe me to be, with great truth, reverend
and dear sir, your and their most obliged, most obedient,
and most humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.
EDINBURGH, _16th November 1787_.
The Rev. Dr. ARCHIBALD DAVIDSON,
Principal of the College, Glasgow.[347]
He was installed as Rector on the 12th December 1787 with the usual
ceremonies. He gave no inaugural address, nor apparently so much as a
formal word of thanks. At least Jeffrey, who might have been present,
though he does not seem to speak from personal recollection, says he
remained altogether silent. His predecessor, Graham of Gartmore, held
the Rector's chair for only one year, but Smith, like Burke and
Dundas, was re-elected for a second term, and was Rector therefore
from November 1787 till November 1789.
One of the new friends Smith made during his last visit to London was
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, who seems to have
shown him particular attentions; and shortly after his return he gave
a young Scotch scientific man a letter of very warm recommendation to
Sir Joseph. The young man of science was John Leslie, afterwards Sir
John, the celebrated Professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh
University. Leslie, who belonged to the neighbourhood of Smith's own
town of Kirkcaldy, had been employed by him for the previous two years
as tutor to his cousin and heir, David Douglas, and being thus a daily
visitor at Smith's house, had won a high place in his affections and
regard. Accordingly when Leslie in 1787 gave up his original idea of
entering the Church, and resolved to migrate to London with a view to
literary or scientific employment, Smith furnished him with a number
of letters of introduction, and, as Leslie informed the writer of his
biography in Chambers's _Biographical Dictionary_, advised him, when
the letter was addressed to an author, to be always sure to read that
author's book before presenting it, so as to be able to speak of the
book should a fit opportunity occur. The letter to Sir Joseph Banks
runs as follows:--
SIR--The very great politeness and attention with which you
was so good as to honour me when I was last in London has
emboldened me to use a freedom which I am afraid I am not
entitled to, and to introduce to your acquaintance a young
gentleman of very great merit, and who is very ambitious of
being known to you. Mr. Leslie, the bearer of this letter,
has been known to me for several years past. He has a very
particular happy turn for the mathematical sciences. It is
no more than two years and a half ago that he undertook the
instruction of a young gentleman, my nearest relation, in
some of the higher parts of these sciences, and acquitted
himself most perfectly both to my satisfaction and to that
of the young gentleman. He proposes to pursue the same lines
in London, and would be glad to accept of employment in some
of the mathematical academies. Besides his knowledge in
mathematics he is, I am assured, a tolerable Botanist and
Chymist. Your countenance and good opinion, provided you
shall find he deserves them, may be of the highest
importance to him. Give me leave, upon that condition, to
recommend him in the most anxious and earnest manner to your
protection. I have the honour to be, with the highest
respect and regard, sir, your most obliged and most obedient
humble servant,
ADAM SMITH.[348]
EDINBURGH, _18th December 178(sic)_.
Sir JOSEPH BANKS.
Why does so large a proportion of Smith's extant letters consist of
letters of introduction? Have they a better principle of vitality than
others, that they should be more frequently preserved? There certainly
seems less reason to preserve them, but then there is also less reason
to destroy them.
Smith's health appears to have improved so much during the spring of
1788 that his friends, who, as we know from Robertson's letter to
Gibbon, had been seriously alarmed about his condition, were now again
free from anxiety. He seemed to them to be "perfectly re-established."
But in the autumn he suffered another great personal loss in the death
of his cousin, Miss Jean Douglas, who had lived under his roof for so
many years. His home was now desolate. His mother and his cousin--the
two lifelong companions of his hearth--were both gone; his young heir
was only with him during the vacations from Glasgow College, where he
was now living with Professor John Millar, and being a man for whom
the domestic affections went for so much, there seemed, amid all the
honour, love, obedience, troops of friends that enrich the close of an
important career, to remain a void in his life that could not be
filled.
Gibbon had sent him a present of the three concluding volumes of the
_Decline and Fall_, and Smith writes him in November a brief letter of
thanks, in which he sets the English historian where he used to set
Voltaire, at the head of all living men of letters.
EDINBURGH, _18th December 1788_.
MY DEAR FRIEND--I have ten thousand apologies to make for
not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very
agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of
your History. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives
me to find that by the universal consent of every man of
taste and learning whom I either know or correspond with, it
sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at
present existing in Europe.--I ever am, my dear friend, most
affectionately yours,
ADAM SMITH.[349]
In this letter Smith makes no complaint of his condition of health,
but he seems to have got worse again in the course of the winter, for
we find Gibbon writing Cadell, the bookseller, with some apparent
anxiety on the 11th of February 1789: "If you can send me a good
account of Adam Smith, there is no man more sincerely interested in
his welfare than myself." If, however, he were ill then, he recovered
in the summer, and was in excellent spirits in July, when Samuel
Rogers saw him often during a week he spent in Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[342] Pellew's _Life of Sidmouth_, i. 151.
[343] Wilberforce's _Correspondence_, i. 40.
[344] Bowring's Memoir of Bentham, Bentham's _Works_, x. 173.
[345] Wilberforce's _Correspondence_, i. 40.
[346] The _Bee_, vol. in. p. 165.
[347] Glasgow College Minutes.
[348] Morrison MSS.
[349] Gibbon's _Miscellaneous Works_, ii. 429.