GLASGOW AND ITS UNIVERSITY
Mr. Rae’s diligent researches have disposed of the idea that Smith was
one of those profound philosophers who are helpless in the practical
affairs of life. It appears from the records of the Glasgow University,
that during his thirteen years’ residence he did more college business
than any other professor. He audited accounts, inspected drains and
hedges, examined encroachments on college land, and served as college
quæstor, or treasurer, with the management of the library funds, for the
last six years of his professorship. He was Dean of Faculty from 1760 to
1762, when he was appointed Vice-Rector. As such, in the frequent
absence of the Rector, he had to preside over all University meetings,
including the Rector’s Court, which had judicial as well as
administrative powers, and could even punish students by imprisonment in
the college steeple. He went frequently to Edinburgh, and at least once
to London, on college business; and altogether we may discredit the
remark made by one of Smith’s Edinburgh neighbours and reported by
Robert Chambers: “It is strange that a man who wrote so well on exchange
and barter had to get a friend to buy his horse-corn for him.”
There is one picturesque incident in the history of Smith’s connection
with the college. The imposition of octroi duties on food coming into
the city was still the principal means of raising municipal revenue in
Glasgow as in most other towns of Scotland. But the students of the
University were so far exempt from the tribute that they were allowed at
the beginning of each session to bring in with them as much oatmeal as
would keep them till the end of it. In 1757 this ancient privilege was
contested, and the students were obliged by the “tackman” of the meal
market to pay duty on their meal. Smith and another professor were sent
to the Provost to protest against this infraction of University
privileges, and to demand repayment. At the next meeting of the Senate,
“Mr. Smith reported that he had spoken to the Provost of Glasgow about
the ladles, exacted by the town from students, for meal brought into the
town for their own use, and that the Provost promised to cause what had
been exacted to be returned, and that accordingly the money was offered
by the town’s ladler to the students.”
The intellectual level of the professors and lecturers in the University
of Glasgow was already high when Smith joined them, and the place was
free from the monopolistic spirit which dulled and enervated the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In 1752, a year after his arrival,
Smith took part in founding what was called the Literary Society of
Glasgow. Besides the professors a number of outsiders were
admitted—David Hume, Sir John Dalrymple the historian, John Callander
the antiquary, Robert Foulis the famous printer, and others. In one of
the first papers read to this society (January 1753) Adam Smith reviewed
Hume’s _Essays on Commerce_. He had no doubt read the essays in proof,
as there is a letter from Hume in the previous September, asking him for
criticisms towards a new edition he was then preparing of his _Essays,
Moral and Political_, in which these new Commercial Essays were to be
incorporated.
Another and more convivial club was presided over by Simson, the
professor of Mathematics, whose genius and amiability had impressed Adam
Smith from his student days. When Simson died in 1768 he had spent half
a century in the college. He divided each day with precision between
work, sleep, refection in the tavern at the gate, and a measured walk in
the gardens. Every Friday evening his club supped in the tavern, and
every Saturday the members walked out a mile to the neighbouring village
of Anderston, and there feasted on the customary one-course dinner of
chicken broth, with a tankard of claret followed by whist and punch.
Ramsay of Ochtertyre says that Smith was a bad partner. If an idea came
to him in the middle of the game he would renounce or neglect to call.
After cards they would talk, or Simson, who was the soul of gaiety,
would sing Greek odes to modern airs. A more distinguished circle than
this of plain livers and high thinkers could hardly have been found in
Europe. Besides the editor of Euclid it included the founders of
political economy and modern chemistry, and the inventor of the steam
engine. For Joseph Black and his young assistant, James Watt, sat round
the same fireside with Simson and Adam Smith. To the conversation of the
club, said Watt, “my mind owed its first bias towards such subjects
[literature, philosophy, etc.], in which they were all my superiors, I
never having attended college, and being then but a mechanic.” In 1756
young Watt had come from London to Glasgow, and being refused permission
by the close corporation of hammermen to set up as a mechanic in the
town, he was welcomed by the professors, who appointed him maker of
mathematical instruments to the University, and gave him a workshop and
saleroom within its precincts. It is easy to imagine the delight with
which Smith joined in rescuing Watt from the tyranny of a close
corporation. The workshop was one of his favourite resorts, and the two
became fast friends. More than half a century afterwards, one of the
first works which the “young” artist of eighty-three executed with his
newly invented “sculpture machine” was a bust of Smith in ivory.
In another part of the college space had been found for Robert Foulis’s
printing-office. Encouraged by Hutcheson, Foulis had begun his business
in Glasgow just before Smith left for Oxford. His “immaculate” Horace,
the famous duodecimo, appeared in 1744, the proof-sheets having been
hung up in the college and a reward offered for the detection of any
inaccuracy. Adam Smith was a subscriber for two sets of Hutcheson’s
_System of Moral Philosophy_, two beautifully printed quarto volumes
issued by the Foulis press in 1755. The type used by the press came from
Alexander Wilson’s typefoundry at Camlachie. But in 1760 the college
built an observatory, and with the aid of the Crown founded a new chair
of Astronomy. Thereupon Wilson, being appointed to the chair, asked to
be allowed to transfer his foundry to the college, and the authorities,
on the motion of Adam Smith, resolved to build a foundry in the grounds.
Thus during Smith’s residence there were set up within the precincts of
the University Watt’s workshop, Foulis’s printing-press, Wilson’s
observatory and foundry, and last but not least, Cullen’s laboratory,
where Black his assistant discovered the existence of latent heat.
The professors even started a series of lectures on natural science to a
class of working men. In 1761 Smith and others sought to establish a
school for dancing, fencing, and riding. But this project failed; and in
the following year Smith is found as an active opponent of a proposal
started in the town for the erection of a permanent theatre. He presides
at a meeting which resolves that the University should join forces with
the magistracy against this innovation. Shortly after his departure the
opposition dropped and the theatre was built. But it was burned down by
a mob of zealots, and in the _Wealth of Nations_ Smith not only lashes
those “fanatical promoters of popular frenzies,” who have always made
the theatre an object of their peculiar abhorrence, but demands that the
State should give “entire liberty to all those who for their own
interest would attempt, without scandal or indecency, to amuse and
divert the people by painting, poetry, music, dancing, by all sorts of
dramatic representations and exhibitions.” Such public diversions would
easily dissipate “that melancholy and gloomy humour which is almost
always the nurse of popular superstition and enthusiasm,” and would,
with the aid of science and philosophy, correct whatever was unsocial or
disagreeably rigorous in the morals of the country. By then he had
learned to admire the French theatre as well as the French dramatists. A
true liberal, he was always open to new ideas, and this last stump of
Scottish prejudice was rooted out by his continental tour.
In the fifties Smith and Black helped Foulis to start an institution
called the Academy of Design, said to have been the first of its kind in
Great Britain. The authorities of the University found rooms for the
purpose in the college, and they may therefore claim to have been the
fathers, not only of the University extension movement, but also of
technical instruction. Painting, sculpture, and engraving were the
principal arts taught in this Academy. Tassie and David Allan were among
the students; and Lord Buchan, who boasted of walking “after the manner
of the ancients in the porticoes of Glasgow with Smith and with Millar,”
learned to etch in Foulis’s studio. A shop was started in Edinburgh for
the sale of works of art produced in the Academy, and Sir John
Dalrymple, writing to Foulis in 1757, begs him to take the advice of Mr.
Smith and Dr. Black, who are the best judges of what will sell. He also
advises Foulis to have a circular drafted showing the advantages of the
Academy. “Mr. Smith is too busy or too indolent, but I flatter myself
Dr. Black will be happy to make out this memorial for you.” He invites
Foulis and Smith to visit him in the Christmas vacance.
There is no doubt, from the amount of business they laid on his
shoulders, and their choice of him as “Præses” in 1762, that Smith’s
colleagues had a high opinion of his practical abilities. His public
spirit and loyalty to the University were unbounded. The warmest and
most generous of friends, he was also one of those rare spirits,
especially rare in the reign of George the Third, who never let private
interests turn the scale against the common good. He made three protests
against a professor exercising the legal right of voting for himself in
an election to an office of profit. When Rouet, the professor of
History, asked for leave of absence, so that he might travel abroad as
Lord Hope’s tutor without relinquishing his professorship, Smith voted
with a majority for refusing the leave, and on a later occasion for
depriving him of office. This led to a quarrel with the Lord Rector, but
the pressure of college opinion eventually forced Rouet to resign. We
shall see that Smith on a similar occasion was careful to practise as he
had preached.
From this reformed and progressive University the economist often issued
forth to breathe the eager air of a thriving mart. The town was
remarkably free from poverty and crime. In his lectures he said that in
Glasgow there was less crime than in Edinburgh, because it had more
commerce and independence, fewer servants and retainers. When he first
went to Glasgow as a student it was still poor; when he returned as a
professor, its commercial prosperity had fairly begun. Its loyalty to
the Hanoverian dynasty had cost it heavily in 1745, but that loyalty is
intelligible enough; for the Act of Union which deprived Edinburgh of
its Parliament, and of much of its resident aristocracy, opened up the
colonial markets to Glasgow, and enabled its enterprising merchants to
participate in the profitable monopoly of the American trade. By the
middle of the century it was already the emporium for colonial tobacco.
A tannery employed several hundred men; linen, copper, tin, and pottery
became staple manufactures in the forties; carpets, crape, and silk in
the fifties. Gibson, in his history of the town, tells us that after
1750 (when the first Glasgow Bank was opened) “not a beggar was to be
seen in the streets.” When he adds that “the very children were busy,”
we think of the early history of factories and shudder. “I have heard it
asserted,” says Smith in the _Wealth of Nations_ (Book II. chap. ii.),
“that the trade of the city of Glasgow doubled in about fifteen years
after the first erection of the banks there, and that the trade of
Scotland has more than quadrupled since the first erection of the two
public banks at Edinburgh.” He will not vouch for the figures, and holds
such an effect “too great to be accounted for by the sole operation of
this cause,” but says it cannot be doubted that the trade of Scotland
did increase very considerably during the period, and that the banks
contributed a good deal to this increase.
All these external marks of enterprise and progress indicated the truth
of another of Smith’s sayings, that a few spirited merchants are a much
better thing for a town than the residence of a court. According to Sir
John Dalrymple, the three leading merchants of that time were together
worth a quarter of a million of money. Measured by modern standards
these are petty figures; but Mr. Rae says that commercial men in Glasgow
still look back to John Glassford and Andrew Cochrane as perhaps the
greatest merchants the Clyde had ever seen. Cochrane, who was Provost
when the Young Pretender paid his unwelcome visit, founded a weekly
club, the express design of which, according to Dr. Carlyle, was to
inquire into the nature and principles of trade. Smith, who joined the
club, became intimate with Cochrane, and afterwards, in Dr. Carlyle’s
words, “acknowledged his obligations to this gentleman’s information
when he was collecting materials for his _Wealth of Nations_.” The
junior merchants, adds the Doctor, who flourished after Cochrane,
“confess with respectful remembrance that it was Andrew Cochrane who
first opened and enlarged their views.” In _Humphrey Clinker_ he is
described as “one of the first sages of the Scottish Kingdom.”
Dugald Stewart, who drew his information from James Ritchie, an eminent
merchant of Glasgow, tells us that Smith’s intimacy with its most
respected inhabitants gave him the commercial information he needed; and
he adds: “It is a circumstance no less honourable to their liberality
than to his talents, that notwithstanding the reluctance so common among
men of business to listen to the conclusions of mere speculation and the
direct opposition of his leading principles to all the old maxims of
trade, he was able before he quitted his situation in the University to
rank some very eminent merchants in the number of his proselytes.” That
Provost Cochrane and his brethren were well inclined to these doctrines
is probable, as they suffered severely from the duties on American iron;
and that interest in economic subjects was strong is proved by the
printing of several important books at Glasgow about this time.
The merchants were, however, much under the influence of an economist of
the old school, Sir James Steuart, who lived in the neighbourhood, and
the progress of Smith’s opinions was more rapid in the University. It
was the students, as Dugald Stewart tells us, “that first adopted his
system with eagerness and diffused a knowledge of its fundamental
principles over this part of the kingdom.”
During these thirteen years at Glasgow Smith kept up his connection with
Edinburgh by pretty constant visits. Shorn of royalty by the union of
crowns, and of its parliament by the union of parliaments, Edinburgh was
slowly recovering in trade what it had lost in political significance.
It had kept its Courts of Justice, and its boards of customs and excise.
Above all, it was the centre of an intellectual activity which gave
Scotland for the first time a name and a fame in European philosophy and
letters.
The social and intellectual leader of the new movement was Smith’s early
friend and benefactor, Henry Home, who was raised to the bench as Lord
Kames in 1752, a man of very liberal and progressive ideas, full of
patriotic schemes for the improvement of Scottish art, manufactures, and
agriculture. His writings, though highly praised for their learning,
have long been forgotten, for sufficient reason. “I am afraid of Kames’s
_Law Tracts_,” Hume once wrote to Smith. “The man might as well think of
making a fine sauce by a mixture of wormwood and aloes as an agreeable
combination by joining metaphysics and Scottish Law.” Robertson, already
a prominent preacher and ecclesiastical politician, was feeling his way
towards Edinburgh and literary fame. John Home, a brother minister, was
composing the _Tragedy of Douglas_, counted by Hume, so he told Smith in
1756, “the best, and by French critics the only tragedy in our
language.” Another member of this circle, quite a fashionable oddity,
who ploughed his own glebe like a peasant, and startled a passer-by with
apt quotations from Theocritus, was Wilkie, the author of the
_Epigoniad_, a particular friend and admirer of our philosopher. Then
there were the two Dalrymples, both historians, and the gossipy
autobiographer, Dr. Carlyle. Three politicians of distinction often
adorned Edinburgh society at this time: brilliant Charles Townshend, who
was to make a revolution in Smith’s life, James Oswald, his old friend
and neighbour, and William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney). Among the
relics of Smith’s correspondence is an introductory letter, dated
January 19, 1752, to Oswald, then at the Board of Trade, which “will be
delivered to you by Mr. William Johnstone, son of Sir James Johnstone of
Westerhall, a young gentleman whom I have known intimately these four
years, and of whose discretion, good temper, sincerity, and honour, I
have had during all that time frequent proof.” The young gentleman was
to give a further signal proof of his discretion by bestowing his
affections on a Pulteney, whose vast fortune doubtless consoled him for
the surrender of his name. The letter continues:—
“You will find in him too, if you come to know him better, some
qualities which from real and unaffected modesty he does not at first
discover; a refinement and depth of observation and an accuracy of
judgment, joined to a natural delicacy of sentiment, as much improved
as study and the narrow sphere of acquaintance this country affords
can improve it. He had, first when I knew him, a good deal of vivacity
and humour, but he has studied them away. He is an advocate; and
though I am sensible of the folly of prophesying with regard to the
future fortune of so young a man, yet I could almost venture to
foretell that if he lives he will be eminent in that profession. He
has, I think, every quality that ought to forward, and not one that
should obstruct his progress, modesty and sincerity excepted, and
these, it is to be hoped, experience and a better sense of things may
in part cure him of. I do not, I assure you, exaggerate knowingly, but
could pawn my honour upon the truth of every article.”
A cluster of these and many other stars formed, in 1754, a constellation
known as the Select Society, an institution, as we learn from Dugald
Stewart’s life of Robertson, “intended partly for philosophical inquiry,
and partly for the improvement of the members in public speaking.” It
was projected, he says, by Mr. Allan Ramsay, the painter, and a few of
his friends—Dr. Robertson, Mr. David Hume, Mr. Adam Smith, Mr.
Wedderburn (afterwards Lord Chancellor), Lord Kames, Mr. John Home, Dr.
Carlyle, and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Hailes, Monboddo, and Dalrymple were
also members. In the Select Society, writes Stewart, “the most splendid
talents that have ever adorned this country were roused to their best
exertions by the liberal and ennobling discussions of literature and
philosophy.”
When the projectors met in May 1754, Smith, who had come from Glasgow,
was required to explain the proposals. At the second meeting, as appears
from the minutes now preserved in the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh,
he was “Præses,” and gave out as subjects for the next debate (1)
whether a general naturalisation of Foreign Protestantism would be
advantageous to Britain; and (2) whether bounties on the exportation of
corn would be advantageous to manufactures as well as to agriculture.
Many economic questions such as pauperism, slavery, hiring, banking,
export bounties on linen, rent, leases, highways, the relative
advantages of large and small farms, were discussed by a society which,
in Stewart’s words, contributed so much to the fame and improvement of
Scotland. A year after its foundation Hume wrote to Allan Ramsay that it
had grown to be a national concern. “Young and old, noble and ignoble,
witty and dull, laity and clergy, all the world are ambitious of a place
amongst us, and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates
as if we were to choose a member of Parliament.” The society did more
than debate. Adam Smith and eight others were appointed managers to
carry out a scheme for the promotion of Scottish arts, sciences,
manufactures, and agriculture. Executive committees were formed.
Contributions poured in; and prizes and premiums large in those days
were offered and awarded for every subject under the sun. From the
researches of Mr. Rae we learn, for example, that twenty-six prizes were
offered in the first year (1755), including three gold medals for the
best discovery in science, the best essay on taste, and the best on
vegetation. Six silver medals were given, including one for the best and
most correctly printed book, another for the best imitation of English
blankets, and a third for the best hogshead of strong ale. Four years
later the number of prizes given had increased to 142, and they included
one for the person who cured most smoky chimneys.
The society sank as suddenly as it rose. After only a decade of
brilliant usefulness, the meteor fell, and expired, it is said, in a
flash of Townshend’s wit. “Why,” he asked, after listening to a debate
rich in eloquence, but unintelligible to a southern ear, “why can you
not learn to speak the English language as you have already learned to
write it?” So the society died, and Thomas Sheridan, father of the
statesman, came to Edinburgh with a course of lectures on English
elocution, which he delivered to about three hundred eminent gentlemen
in Carrubber’s Close.
Upon the ashes of this famous society arose an equally patriotic but
perhaps less beneficent organisation. The Poker Club, as its name
indicated, was intended to be an instrument for stirring opinion. The
cause to be agitated was the establishment of a Scotch Militia on
national lines, to be followed, as some of its radical members hoped, by
a parliamentary reform which would “let the industrious farmer and
manufacturer share at last in a privilege now engrossed by the great
lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener bailie.”
Adam Smith was one of the original members of the Poker Club, which
gathered in most of the Select Society; but before 1776 he had changed
his opinions, for, in the _Wealth of Nations_, he comes to the
conclusion that “it is only by means of a well regulated standing army
that a civilised country can be defended.” If it relied for its defence
on a militia, it would be exposed to conquest. The militia movement is
mentioned by Smith in a letter to Strahan (April 4, 1760), in the course
of some reflections suggested by the Memoirs of Colonel Hooke. The
passage is interesting as a Scotch Whig’s explanation and defence of the
disaffection which prevailed north of the Tweed in the early part of the
eighteenth century:—
“_Apropos_ to the Pope and the Pretender, have you read Hook’s
Memoirs? I have been ill these ten days, otherwise I should have
written to you sooner, but I sat up the day before yesterday in my bed
and read them thro’ with infinite satisfaction, tho’ they are by no
means well written. The substance of what is in them I knew before,
tho’ not in such detail. I am afraid they are published at an unlucky
time, and may throw a damp upon our militia. Nothing, however, appears
to me more excusable than the disaffection of Scotland at that time.
The Union was a measure from which infinite good has been derived to
this country. The Prospect of that good, however, must then have
appeared very remote and very uncertain. The immediate effect of it
was to hurt the interest of every single order of men in the country.
The dignity of the nobility was undone by it. The greater part of the
gentry who had been accustomed to represent their own country in its
own Parliament were cut out for ever from all hopes of representing it
in a British Parliament. Even the merchants seemed to suffer at first.
The trade to the Plantations was, indeed, opened to them. But that was
a trade which they knew nothing about; the trade they were acquainted
with, that to France, Holland, and the Baltic, was laid under new
embar[r]assments, which almost totally annihilated the two first and
most important branches of it. The Clergy, too, who were then far from
insignificant, were alarmed about the Church. No wonder if at that
time all orders of men conspired in cursing a measure hurtful to their
immediate interest. The views of their Posterity are now very
different; but those views could be seen by but few of our
forefathers, by those few in but a confused and imperfect manner.”
In the same letter he asks to be remembered to Benjamin Franklin (who
had lately visited Glasgow), and also to Griffiths, the editor of the
_Monthly Review_, which had just paid a handsome tribute to the
_Theory_.
In the notes of lectures, given as we have seen about the time when the
Poker Club was established, Smith admitted the necessity of a standing
army, but seems to have thought that its abuse should be guarded against
by a militia. The Poker Club proved little more than a convivial
society, and felt the scarcity and dearness of claret more than the want
of a national army. Lord Campbell says that when the duty on French wine
was raised to pay for the American War, they “agreed to dissolve the
‘Poker,’ and to form another society which should exist without
consumption of any excisable commodity.” When the duties were again
reduced by Pitt’s French Treaty in 1786, a Younger Poker Club arose, but
Pitt’s master, who had contributed so substantially to this revival of
patriotism, was too old or too indifferent to become a member.
In one other important Edinburgh project the Glasgow professor played a
prominent part. In 1755 an _Edinburgh Review_ was started to supply the
rising authors of North Britain with the stimulus of sympathetic
criticism. Wedderburn, then a young advocate, was chosen editor;
Robertson and Smith were contributors in chief. But only two numbers
appeared of this precursor in name and in intention of the most famous
and successful review ever launched in our islands. Smith’s two articles
are of considerable, although of unequal, interest. The first and less
important is a review of Dr. Johnson’s _Dictionary_. “When we compare
this book with other dictionaries,” writes the critic, “the merit of its
author appears very extraordinary.” In previous English dictionaries the
chief purpose had been to explain hard words and terms of art; “Mr.
Johnson has extended his views much further, and has made a very full
collection of all the different meanings of each English word, justified
by examples from authors of good reputation.” The defects of the work
consisted chiefly in the plan, which was not sufficiently grammatical.
To show what he meant he took Johnson’s articles on _but_ and _humour_,
appending more philosophical and lucid articles of his own. Johnson
seems to have taken no notice of these criticisms in later editions of
the dictionary. We may observe in passing that Smith’s _but_ is better
than his _humour_. He seems singularly mistaken when he observes that “a
man of wit is as much above a man of humour as a gentleman is above a
buffoon.” In Scotland, he thinks, the usefulness of the _Dictionary_
will soon be felt, “as there is no standard of correct language in
conversation.”
A far more remarkable contribution is a letter to the editors, which
appeared in the second number. It is a protest against the reviewers
confining themselves to accounts of books published in Scotland, a
country “which is but just beginning to attempt figuring in the learned
world.” He proposes therefore that they should enlarge their scope, and
observe with regard to Europe the same plan that was being followed with
regard to England, that is to say, examine all books of permanent value
while contriving to take notice “of every Scotch production that is
tolerably decent.” Smith illustrated his plea by a very luminous and
masterly survey of French literature, and a comparison of the French,
German, and Italian genius with the English.
The review was intended to appear every six months, but it never reached
a third number, either because it was not well received by the public,
or because a formidable theologian spied heresy lurking in its pages.
It was at this time that the General Assembly was proposing to pass a
censure on Hume’s _Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_, and to
excommunicate the author. Hume wrote to Allan Ramsay in Rome: “You may
tell that reverend gentleman the Pope, that there are men here who rail
at him, and yet would be much greater persecutors had they equal power.
The last Assembly sat on me. They did not propose to burn me, because
they cannot, but they intended to give me over to Satan. My friends
prevailed, and my damnation has accordingly been postponed a
twelve-month, but next Assembly will surely be upon me.” Lord Kames was
also attacked; but Smith seems to have escaped, though his turn was to
come later.
The pupil of Hutcheson was also in many ways the philosophical disciple
and ally of Hume. Their intercourse during all these years was close and
constant. They paid mutual visits, and interchanged many letters, too
few of which have been preserved. Hume had been abroad, or at Ninewells,
during most of Smith’s stay in Edinburgh, and had only just made
Edinburgh his home when Smith obtained the professorship at Glasgow;
but, as Mr. Rae notes, before a year was out, Smith’s “dear sir” had
ripened into “my dearest friend,” and on these terms the two
philosophers remained until death parted them.
We have seen how in the spring of 1759 Charles Townshend was much taken
with the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, and told Oswald he would put his
young ward the Duke of Buccleuch under the author’s care. Hume did not
at first believe that Townshend would persevere, or if he did, that he
would offer such terms as would tempt Smith from Glasgow. But on this
occasion he was in earnest and never relinquished the idea, anxious, it
is said, to connect the fleeting fame of a parliamentarian with the
lasting renown of a philosopher. Townshend had married the widowed
Countess of Dalkeith. Her eldest son, the Duke of Buccleuch, was then a
boy at Eton, under Hallam, father of the historian. The time when his
stepson would leave school was still distant, but Townshend had made up
his mind to send the boy abroad. In England it was becoming more and
more the fashion for the sons of the nobility to travel abroad when they
left school, instead of going to one of the universities. It was thought
that they returned home much improved by their travels, and with some
knowledge of one or two living languages, whereas if they went to Oxford
or Cambridge they would learn nothing but idleness and dissipation. Adam
Smith himself afterwards came to the conclusion that foreign travel was
no substitute for a sound university training. The schoolboy, he wrote
after his continental tour, “commonly returns home more conceited, more
unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious
application either to study or business, than he could well have become
in so short a time had he lived at home.... Nothing but the discredit
into which the universities had fallen could ever have brought into
repute so very absurd a practice.”[20]
In the summer of 1759 Townshend went to see Smith at Glasgow, and
apparently prevailed, for in the following September Smith wrote to him
about some books which he had been getting for Buccleuch, as if he were
already in the position of an educational adviser to the boy. As might
have been expected of one whom Burke immortalised as “the delight and
ornament of the House, and the charm of every private society which he
honoured with his presence,” Townshend captivated Glasgow. “Everybody
here remembers you with the greatest admiration and affection.”
Smith was doubtless informed from time to time of the boy’s progress,
but we hear no more of the subject for four years. In the early part of
1763 he invited Hume to pay a visit to Glasgow. Hume was then in
Edinburgh; he had just brought out two volumes of his _History_, and was
drinking the nectar of general applause. At the end of March he replied
with a bantering reference, perhaps, to his friend’s economic studies:
“I set up a chaise in May next, which will give me the liberty of
travelling about, and you may be sure a journey to Glasgow will be one
of the first I shall undertake. I intend to require with great
strictness an account how you have been employing your leisure, and I
desire you to be ready for that purpose. Woe be to you if the Balance be
against you. Your friends here will also expect that I should bring you
with me. It seems to me very long since I saw you.” But in the summer
Lord Hertford was appointed Ambassador to the Court of France, and Hume
accepted the post of Secretary to the British Embassy at Paris, “with
great prospects and expectations.” He told his friend not to expect him
back for some time; “but we may meet abroad.” And so they did; for, a
couple of months later, Smith received the following letter:—
“Dear Sir,—The time now drawing near when the Duke of Buccleugh
intends to go abroad, I take the liberty of renewing the subject to
you: that if you should still have the same disposition to travel with
him I may have the satisfaction of informing Lady Dalkeith and his
Grace of it, and of congratulating them upon an event which I know
that they, as well as myself, have so much at heart. The Duke is now
at Eton; he will remain there till Christmas. He will then spend some
short time in London, that he may be presented at Court, and not pass
instantaneously from school to a foreign country, but it were to be
wished he should not be long in Town, exposed to the habits and
companions of London, before his mind has been more formed and better
guarded by education and experience.
“I do not enter at this moment upon the subject of establishment,
because, if you have no objection to the situation, I know we cannot
differ about the terms. On the contrary, you will find me more
solicitous than yourself to make the connection with Buccleugh as
satisfactory and advantageous to you as I am persuaded it will be
essentially beneficial to him.
“The Duke ... has sufficient talents; a very manly temper, and an
integrity of heart and reverence for truth, which in a person of his
rank and fortune are the firmest foundations of weight in life and
uniform greatness. If it should be agreeable to you to finish his
education and mould these excellent materials into a settled
character, I make no doubt that he will return to his family and
country the very man our fondest hopes have fancied him.
“I go to Town next Friday, and should be obliged to you for your
answer to this letter.—I am, with sincere affection and esteem, dear
sir your most faithful and most obedient humble servant,
C. Townshend.
Adderbury, _25th October 1763_.”
The offer was accepted, and an arrangement concluded, in a pecuniary
point of view certainly “satisfactory and advantageous.” Smith was to
have a salary of £300 a year with travelling expenses, and a pension of
£300 a year for life. He was thus to enjoy, as Mr. Rae says, twice his
Glasgow income, and to have it assured till death. Altogether, Smith
drew more than £8000 from his three years’ tutorship. On November 8th,
“Dr. Smith represented,” so runs the record of the Faculty, “that some
interesting business would probably require his leaving the College some
time this winter”, and he was thereupon granted leave of absence for
three months.
For some time, however, Smith heard nothing more. In the middle of
December, when he wrote to tell Hume of Townshend’s letter, he was still
in uncertainty. But a few days afterwards it was arranged that they
should start early in the new year, and on January the 9th Smith told
the Faculty that he should make use of his leave of absence, that he
should pay his deputy his half-year’s salary commencing from October the
10th, and that he had returned all his students’ fees. This last act of
liberality he was only able to carry out by a display of violence at the
end of his last lecture. The scene has luckily been reproduced with
unusual animation by the pen of Tytler, Lord Kames’s pedestrian
biographer. After concluding his last lecture, and describing the
arrangements he had made for them, “he drew from his pocket the several
fees of the students, wrapped up in separate paper parcels, and
beginning to call up each man by his name, he delivered to the first who
was called the money into his hand. The young man peremptorily refused
to accept it, declaring that the instruction and pleasure he had already
received was much more than he either had repaid or ever could
compensate; and a general cry was heard from every one in the room to
the same effect. But Mr. Smith was not to be bent from his purpose.
After warmly expressing his feelings of gratitude and the strong sense
he had of the regard shown to him by his young friends, he told them
this was a matter betwixt him and his own mind, and that he could not
rest satisfied unless he performed what he deemed right and proper. ‘You
must not refuse me this satisfaction; nay, by heavens, gentlemen, you
shall not’; and seizing by the coat the young man who stood next to him,
he thrust the money into his pocket and then pushed him from him. The
rest saw it was in vain to contest the matter, and were obliged to let
him take his own way.”[21]
Scotch professors at that time often continued to hold their chairs
during a temporary appointment like a travelling tutorship, and paid
their salaries to a substitute until they returned. But Smith was no
friend of absenteeism. The interest of the College was his chief
anxiety, and accordingly in the following month he sent his formal
letter of resignation to the Lord Rector, immediately on his arrival in
Paris. “I never was,” he writes, “more anxious for the good of the
College than at this moment; and I sincerely wish that whoever is my
successor may not only do credit to the office by his abilities, but be
a comfort to the very excellent men with whom he is likely to spend his
life, by the probity of his heart and the goodness of his temper.”
(February 14, 1764.)
In accepting his resignation the Senate added a few words which may
fittingly conclude our account of what Smith always regarded as the most
fruitful and honourable period of his life:—“The University cannot help
at the same time expressing their sincere regret at the removal of Dr.
Smith, whose distinguished probity and amiable qualities procured him
the esteem and affection of his colleagues; whose uncommon genius, great
abilities, and extensive learning did so much honour to this society;
his elegant and ingenious _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ having
recommended him to the esteem of men of taste and literature throughout
Europe. His happy talents in illustrating abstracted subjects, and
faithful assiduity in communicating useful knowledge, distinguished him
as a professor, and at once afforded the greatest pleasure and the most
important instruction to the youth under his care.”