LAST YEARS
(1776-1790)
After seeing the _Wealth of Nations_ through the press, Smith lingered a
few weeks in London. He was anxious to persuade Hume to come up and
consult the London physicians, but Hume shrank from the journey, and
implored his friend to return to Edinburgh. So about the middle of
April, Smith and John Home[37] took the coach for Edinburgh. But at
Morpeth, where the coach stopped, they saw Hume’s servant at the door of
the inn. Hume had changed his mind, and was on his way to see Sir John
Pringle. Home returned with Hume to London, but Smith, hearing that his
aged mother was ill, went on to Kirkcaldy. Before parting, however, the
two friends carefully discussed the question of what should be done with
Hume’s papers in the event of his death. From a desire to avoid
religious controversy and public clamour, Hume had kept by him
unpublished his _Dialogues on Natural Religion_; and he now tried to
persuade his friend and literary executor to edit them after his death.
But Smith resolutely declined the task. Although he had himself lectured
on Natural Religion, he had warily avoided the subject in his own
publications. Moreover, he was now hoping to be appointed to an office
under the Crown, and such a publication would certainly be prejudicial.
Hume argued that these objections were groundless: “Was Mallet anywise
hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke? He received an office
afterwards from the present king, and Lord Bute, the most prudent man in
the world, and he always justified himself by his sacred regard to the
will of a dead friend.” And he reminded Smith of a saying of
Rochefoucauld, that “a wind, though it extinguishes a candle, blows up a
fire.” So he wrote from London at the beginning of May. However, he
agreed to leave the question of publication entirely to Smith’s
discretion. “By the little company I have seen,” he added, “I find the
town very full of your book, which meets with general approbation.” Soon
afterwards Hume changed his mind, and made Strahan his literary
executor, with instructions to publish the _Dialogues_ within two and a
half years.
In July the two friends were again in Edinburgh, conversing together.
Smith was deeply impressed by the philosophic courage, and even gaiety,
with which the great sceptic faced the approach of death. In the
well-known letter to Strahan,[38] that is always printed with Hume’s
autobiography, he mentions among other touching incidents that a certain
Colonel Edmondstone paid a farewell visit to Hume, but afterwards could
not forbear writing a last letter “applying to him as to a dying man the
beautiful French verses in which the Abbé Chaulieu, in expectation of
his own death, laments his approaching separation from his friend the
Marquis de la Fare.” “Mr. Hume’s magnanimity and firmness were such,”
continued Smith, “that his most affectionate friends knew that they
hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as a dying man, and that,
far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and
flattered with it.”
At the end of the first week of August, Hume had now become so very weak
that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him:—
“At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, and
returned to my mother’s house here at Kirkcaldy, upon condition that
he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who
saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking in the meantime to
write me occasionally an account of the state of his health.”
The correspondence which followed marks the close of a deep, unbroken,
and memorable attachment. On August 15th Hume’s anxiety for the
_Dialogues_ revived: “On revising them (which I have not done these five
years) I find that nothing can be more cautiously and more artfully
written. You had certainly forgotten them. Will you permit me to leave
you the property of the copy, in case they should not be published in
five years after my decease? Be so good as write me an answer soon.” On
the 22nd Smith replied:—
“I have this moment received yr. letter of the 15th inst. You had, in
order to save me the sum of one penny sterling, sent it by the carrier
instead of the Post, and (if you have not mistaken the date) it has
lain at his quarters these eight days, and was, I presume, very likely
to lie there for ever.”
Then, after reassuring Hume about the _Dialogues_, he continued:—
“If you will give me leave I will add a few lines to yr. account of
your own life, giving some account in my own name of your behaviour in
this illness, if, contrary to my own hopes, it should prove your last.
Some conversations we had lately together, particularly that
concerning your want of an excuse to make to Charon, the excuse you at
last thought of, and the very bad reception wh. Charon was likely to
give it, would, I imagine, make no disagreeable part of the history.
You have in a declining state of health, under an exhausting disease,
for more than two years together now looked at the approach of death
with a steady cheerfulness such as very few men have been able to
maintain for a few hours, tho’ otherwise in the most perfect Health. I
shall likewise, if you give me leave, correct the sheets of the new
edition of your works, and shall take care that it shall be published
exactly according to your last corrections. As I shall be at London
this winter, it will cost me very little trouble.”
But “the cool and steady Dr. Black” still gave him some hopes of his
friend’s recovery. On the following day Hume dictated a brief answer to
this letter, explaining that he had only taken an extra precaution in
case anything might happen to Strahan. “You are too good,” he added, “in
thinking any trifles that concern me are so much worthy of your
attention, but I give you entire liberty to make what additions you
please to the account of my life.”
Two days afterwards Hume died, and was buried in Calton Cemetery. Smith
did not like the round tower erected under a provision of the will to
mark the grave—“it is the greatest piece of vanity I ever saw in my
friend Hume.” By the will a legacy of £200 and copies of all Hume’s
published works were left to him; but he stoutly refused to accept the
money, as he had ceased to be executor, although he had no thought of
relinquishing his promise to edit Hume’s life and works. “I have added,”
he wrote to Hume’s brother (Kirkcaldy, October 7th), “at the bottom of
my will the note discharging the legacy of £200 which your brother was
so kind as to leave me. Upon the most mature deliberation I am fully
satisfied that in justice it is not due to me. Tho’ it should be due to
me therefore in strict law, I cannot with honour accept of it.”
A month earlier he had written to Strahan from Dalkeith, where he was
staying with the Duke of Buccleuch, a careful explanation of Hume’s will
and last wishes. “Both from his will and from his conversation I
understand that there are only two [manuscripts] which he meant should
be published—an account of his life, and _Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion_. The latter, tho’ finely written, I could have wished had
remained in manuscript to be communicated only to a few friends. I
propose to add to his Life a very well authenticated account of his
behaviour during his last illness.”
Smith’s addition to Hume’s autobiography took the form of a letter to
Strahan giving an account of Hume’s last illness, concluding with the
words: “Upon the whole, I have always considered him both in his
lifetime and since his death as approaching as nearly to the idea of a
perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty
will permit.” This warm-hearted and eloquent, but surely extravagant
eulogy of the “virtuous heathen,” created precisely the kind of popular
clamour that Smith had been so anxious to avoid. Strahan liked the
addition exceedingly; but as this and the autobiography together were
too short to make even a tiny volume, he wrote back, good publisher that
he was:—
“I have been advised by some very good judges to annex some of his
letters to me on political subjects. What think you of this? I will do
nothing without your advice and approbation, nor would I for the world
publish any letter of his but such as in your opinion would do him
honour. Mr. Gibbon thinks such as I have shown him would have that
tendency. Now if you approve of this in any manner, you may perhaps
add partly to the collection from your own cabinet and those of Mr.
John Home, Dr. Robertson, and others of your mutual friends which you
may pick up before you return hither. But if you wholly disapprove of
this scheme, say nothing of it, here let it drop, for without your
concurrence I will not publish a single word of it.”
A decisive reply came at once from Kirkcaldy. It gives a peremptory
judgment—quite against the drift of modern opinion—upon what will always
be a case for the casuist:—
“I am sensible that many of Mr. Hume’s letters would do him great
honour, and that you would publish none but such as would. But what in
this case ought principally to be considered is the will of the Dead.
Mr. Hume’s constant injunction was to burn all his Papers except the
_Dialogues_ and the account of his own life. This injunction was even
inserted in the body of his will. I know he always disliked the
thought of his letters ever being published. He had been in long and
intimate correspondence with a relation of his own who dyed a few
years ago. When that gentleman’s health began to decline he was
extremely anxious to get back his letters, least the heir should think
of publishing them. They were accordingly returned, and burnt as soon
as returned. If a collection of Mr. Hume’s letters besides was to
receive the public approbation, as yours certainly would, the Curls of
the times would immediately set about rummaging the cabinets of all
those who had ever received a scrap of paper from him. Many things
would be published not fit to see the light, to the great
mortification of all those who wish well to his memory. Nothing has
contributed so much to sink the value of Swift’s works as the
undistinguished publication of his letters; and be assured that your
publication, however select, would soon be followed by an
undistinguished one. I should therefore be sorry to see any beginning
given to the publication of his letters. His life will not make a
volume, but it will make a small pamphlet.”
The nervous objection felt by Hume and Smith to the publication of
correspondence or of any manuscript not carefully considered by the
writer, and intended by him for publication, may be overstrained; but
perhaps this generation errs as much in its anxiety to penetrate the
privacy of the dead as they did in wishing to destroy everything that
was incomplete, or too easy, intimate, and negligent—as they thought—for
the eye of a critical posterity.
Fortune now played our provident philosopher one of her most insolent
tricks. When the dreaded _Dialogues_ appeared, they fell perfectly flat;
but the letter to Strahan excited, as Mr. Rae says, “a long
reverberation of angry criticism.” His words, few and simple, but warm
with the glow of friendship, “rang like a challenge to religion itself.”
Pamphlets poured forth, the cleverest of which, “A Letter to Adam Smith,
LL.D., on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of David Hume, Esquire, by one
of the People called Christians,” was still being printed and circulated
for edification by the Religious Tract Society in the thirtieth year of
the nineteenth century. Its anonymous author, Dr. George Horne,
President of Magdalen College, Oxford, proclaimed that no unbeliever
could be virtuous or charitable, and charged Smith as well as Hume with
the atrocious wickedness of diffusing atheism through the land. “You
would persuade us,” he cried, “by the example of David Hume, Esq., that
atheism is the only cordial for low spirits and the proper antidote
against the fear of death; but surely he who can reflect with
complacency on a friend thus employing his talents in this life, and
thus amusing himself with Lucian, whist, and Charon at his death, can
smile over Babylon in ruins, esteem the earthquakes which destroyed
Lisbon as agreeable occurrences, and congratulate the hardened Pharaoh
on his overthrow in the Red Sea.”
Smith made no answer to this attack, for which the author was afterwards
rewarded by a Bishopric. After Christmas, when his mother’s health
allowed him to leave her, he travelled to London, and early in January
1777 he had taken lodgings in Suffolk Street, near the British Coffee
House, and was busy preparing his second edition of the _Wealth of
Nations_, a reprint, with corrections and two additional pages. In March
he was at a dinner of the Literary Club with Gibbon, Garrick, Reynolds,
Johnson, Burke, and Fox. Mr. Rae thinks he remained most of the year in
London, and probably he had some intercourse with Lord North and other
members of the Government. At any rate Lord North, who had studied
Smith’s chapters on taxation to more purpose than his chapters on
expenditure and policy, borrowed two of his ideas in the Budget of
1777—for he laid taxes on men-servants and on property sold by
auction.[39] Smith was back in Edinburgh by the end of this year, and
there heard from Strahan that he had been appointed by Lord North one of
the Commissioners of the Customs in Scotland. In the middle of January
he writes from Kirkcaldy to Strahan, requesting him to send two copies
of the second edition of the _Wealth of Nations_, “handsomely bound and
gilt, one to Lord North, the other to Sir Gray Cooper,” and adds, “I
believe that I have been very highly obliged to him [Cooper] in this
business.”[40] The Commissionership was worth £600 a year, and Smith at
once proposed to relinquish his pension; but the Duke of Buccleuch would
not hear of it.
Early in 1778 Smith removed to Edinburgh. He was now in the enjoyment of
a certain income of £900 a year apart from the considerable sums which
he derived from the sale of his books. He took Panmure House in the
Canongate, not far from the deserted palace of Holyrood—a fashionable
quarter where some of the Scottish nobility, forsaken by King and Court,
still kept their town houses. Panmure House is now a dismantled store;
and it needs some imagination to realise how Windham, accustomed to
London palaces, should have called it “magnificent,” as he looked from
its newly painted windows and plastered walls “over the long strip of
terraced garden on to the soft green slopes of the Calton.”[41]
The rent was probably very nearly £20 a year. But Smith was one of the
richest men in Edinburgh, and felt, no doubt, that he could well afford
to take one of the best houses in the city. To share and crown his
happiness he brought his mother, his cousin Miss Douglas, and her
nephew, a schoolboy David Douglas (afterwards Lord Strathendry), whom he
made his heir. From Panmure House “Mr. Commissioner Smith” walked every
day to his official duties in Exchange Square, attired in a
light-coloured coat, white silk stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat,
holding a cane at his shoulder as a soldier carries a musket. He used to
turn his head gently from side to side as he walked, and swayed his body
“vermicularly,” as if at every other step he meant to alter his
direction or even to turn back.[42] His lips often moved, and he would
smile like one conversing with an invisible companion. He was not always
unaware of his surroundings, and was fond of relating how a market woman
in the High Street took him for a well-to-do lunatic. “Hech, sirs!” she
cried, “to let the like of him be about! And yet he’s weel enough put
on!”
His letters show that he was very regular in attending to his duties at
the Customs, which indeed were important in themselves, and not
unattractive to one who took so deep an interest in the art of revenue
and the growth of wealth. The duties of the Commissioners were
administrative and judicial. Sometimes they had to despatch soldiers to
guard part of the coast against smugglers, or to put down an illegal
still. They heard merchants’ appeals from assessments; they appointed
and controlled the local officers, and every year they prepared returns
of customs’ revenue and expenditure. There is good reason to think that
he found his work congenial, though Dugald Stewart, who always grows
morbid at the thought of any check to the output of philosophic
literature, laments that these duties, “though they required little
exertion of thought, were yet sufficient to waste his spirits and
dissipate his attention,” and that the time they consumed was not
employed in labours more profitable to the world and more equal to his
mind. During the first years of his residence in Edinburgh “his studies
seemed to be entirely suspended, and his passion for letters served only
to amuse his leisure and to animate his conversation.” This young mentor
often caught our misguided veteran wasting precious time in his library
with Sophocles or Euripides, and would be told that re-acquaintance with
the favourites of one’s youth is the most grateful and soothing
diversion of old age. Let us forgive, and more than forgive, the tired
economist, who disapproved that care, though wise in show,
“That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.”
It is indeed to be wished that the notes on Jurisprudence could have
been worked up into an ample study after the manner of Montesquieu’s
_Spirit of the Laws_; but probably all that would have been gained by
retirement would have been the publication of his lectures on _belles
lettres_; and it is certain that some of the most instructive additions
to the _Wealth of Nations_ could never have been written, had Smith
declined the office of Commissioner.
At any rate, a problematical loss to the world was a great gain to
Edinburgh. Smith, though personally the most frugal, was also the most
hospitable, genial, and charitable of men. Hume’s death, indeed, left a
gap that could not be filled. But every city in Europe might still envy
Edinburgh her Republic of Letters. Robertson the historian, who formed
with Hume and Gibbon what Gibbon proudly called the Triumvirate, and
Adam Ferguson, a little jealous at this time of his greater rival, lived
outside the town. Black, too, who had taken Hume’s place as Smith’s
dearest living friend, had what was in those days a country house, now
the Royal Blind Asylum in Nicolson Street. Kames, Hailes, and Monboddo,
Sir John Dalrymple and Dugald Stewart, and many other minor celebrities,
lived close at hand. Smith seems to have kept something like open house.
His Sunday suppers were remembered long after his death, and many
distinguished visitors to Edinburgh enjoyed the hospitality of Panmure
House.
He loved good conversation. In Glasgow and in London he had belonged to
several dining-clubs, and he now helped to found another. Swediaur, a
Parisian doctor, wrote from Edinburgh in 1784 to Jeremy Bentham: “we
have a club here which consists of nothing but philosophers.” They met
every Friday at two o’clock in a Grassmarket tavern, and the Frenchman
found it “a most enlightened, agreeable, cheerful, and social company.”
Smith, Black, and Hutton, the fathers of the three modern sciences of
political economy, modern chemistry, and modern geology, were the
illustrious founders of this society. All three, wrote another member,
Professor John Playfair, had enlarged views and wide information,
“without any of the stateliness which men of letters think it sometimes
necessary to affect; ... and as the sincerity of their friendship had
never been darkened by the least shade of envy, it would be hard to find
an example where everything favourable to good society was more
perfectly united, and everything adverse more entirely excluded.” Henry
Mackenzie, who wrote the _Man of Feeling_, and Dugald Stewart were also
members.
The club was called the Oyster Club, though Hutton was an abstainer,
Black a vegetarian, and Smith’s only extravagant taste was for lump
sugar.
“We shall never,” wrote Sir Walter Scott in some recollections of these
“old Northern Lights,” which appeared in an early number of the
_Quarterly Review_, “forget one particular evening when he [Smith] put
an elderly maiden lady who presided at the tea-table to sore confusion
by neglecting utterly her invitation to be seated, and walking round and
round the circle, stopping ever and anon to steal a lump from the sugar
basin, which the venerable spinster was at length constrained to place
on her own knee, as the only method of securing it from his uneconomical
depredations. His appearance mumping the eternal sugar was something
indescribable.” Sir Walter was a schoolfellow of young David Douglas;
and the incident no doubt took place in Panmure House, where Miss
Douglas would naturally preside at the tea-table.
Scott had a vivid recollection of Black and Hutton. The former used the
English pronunciation, and spoke with punctilious accuracy of
expression. He wore the formal full-dress habit then imposed on members
of the medical faculty. Dr. Hutton’s dress had the simplicity of a
Quaker’s, and he used a broad Scotch accent which often heightened his
humour. Sir Walter told an amusing anecdote which may, perhaps, explain
why the dining society, founded by the three philosophers, was called
the Oyster Club. It so chanced that Black and Hutton had held some
discourse together upon the folly of abstaining from feeding on the
crustaceous creatures of the land, when those of the sea were considered
as delicacies. Snails were known to be nutritious and wholesome, even
“sanative” in some cases. The epicures of ancient Rome enumerated the
snails of Lucca among the richest and rarest delicacies, and the modern
Italians still held them in esteem. So a gastronomic experiment was
resolved on. The snails were procured, dieted for a time, then stewed.
“A huge dish of snails was placed before them; but philosophers are
but men after all; and the stomachs of both doctors began to revolt
against the proposed experiment. Nevertheless if they looked with
disgust on the snails, they retained their awe for each other; so that
each, conceiving the symptoms of internal revolt peculiar to himself,
began with infinite exertion to swallow, in very small quantities, the
mess which he loathed. Dr. Black at length ‘showed the white feather,’
but in a very delicate manner, as if to sound the opinion of his
messmate. ‘Doctor,’ he said in his precise and quiet style, ‘Doctor,
do you not think that they taste a little—a very little green?’ ‘D——d
green, d——d green indeed!—tak’ them awa’, tak’ them awa’!’ vociferated
Dr. Hutton, starting up from table and giving full vent to his
feelings.”
One of Smith’s younger friends was John Sinclair, a Scotch laird of much
ability and immense industry, whose _History of the Public Revenue_ is
still a standard work. It owed much to the _Wealth of Nations_; for when
Smith saw how competent Sinclair was, he helped him in every possible
way. In 1777 he dissuaded the young man from printing a pamphlet against
the Puritanical observance of the Sabbath, saying, “Your work is very
ably written, but I advise you not to publish it; for rest assured that
the Sabbath as a political institution is of inestimable value
independently of its claim to divine authority.” Late in the following
year, when Sinclair brought him the news of Saratoga, and declared that
the nation must be ruined, Smith answered coolly, “Be assured, my young
friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” About the same
time he let Sinclair have the use (so long as he did not take it out of
Edinburgh) of his own much-prized copy of the _Mémoires concernant les
Impositions_, a contemporary survey of European systems of taxation,
which he had obtained “by the particular favour of Mr. Turgot, the late
Comptroller-General of the Finances.” In one of his letters to Sinclair
he expressed his dislike of “all taxes that may affect the necessary
expenses of the poor.”
“They, according to different circumstances, either oppress the people
immediately subject to them, or are repaid with great interest by the
rich, _i.e._ by their employers in the advanced wages of their labour.
Taxes on the _luxuries_ of the poor, upon their beer and other
spirituous liquors, for example, as long as they are so moderate as
not to give much temptation to smuggling, I am so far from
disapproving, that I look upon them as the best of sumptuary
laws.”[43]
Sinclair, who had entered Parliament in 1780, discussed foreign policy
with Smith in the autumn of 1782, soon after the surrender at Yorktown,
when the fortunes of Great Britain had sunk to their lowest ebb. The
American colonies were lost; Ireland was almost in revolt; Gibraltar was
besieged by the Spanish and French fleets; and the Northern powers were
arrayed in an unfriendly armed neutrality. Sinclair had drafted a tract
suggesting that we should seek to draw the Northern powers into an
alliance against the House of Bourbon by offering them a share in our
colonial monopoly. Again Smith advised his young friend not to go into
print. The proposal, he thought, would not find favour with the
neutrals, and there seemed to be a moral 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 those rights?”
In the following year peace was concluded with America and France; and
the Prime Minister boasted to Morellet that all the treaties of that
year were inspired by “the great principle of free trade.”
The necessity for resuming commercial intercourse with the United States
raised in an acute form the problem of the colonial monopoly. Should the
States be allowed to trade with Canada on the same terms as with Great
Britain? William Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) was afraid of
abandoning the differential principle, and in his perplexity wrote to
Smith, who replied that if the Americans really meant to subject the
goods of all nations to the same import duties, they would “set an
example of good sense which all other nations ought to imitate.” He had
little anxiety—and his confidence was completely justified by the
event—about the loss of the American monopoly. “By an equality of
treatment of all nations, we might soon open a commerce with the
neighbouring nations of Europe infinitely more advantageous than that of
so distant a country as America.” As he hopes to see Eden in a few
weeks’ time, he will not write a tedious dissertation, but contents
himself with saying 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.” He ends with warm praise of the East India Bill, and of the
decisive judgment and resolution with which it had been introduced and
triumphantly carried through the House of Commons by Fox.[44]
It is worth while here to note Smith’s steady devotion to Fox and Burke,
who represented the Rockingham branch of the Whig party. He was faithful
found among innumerable false, for he approved alike of Fox’s
resignation in 1782 rather than serve under Shelburne, and of his fatal
coalition with Lord North in the following year.[45] It may seem strange
to those who think of Adam Smith only as the founder of free trade that
he should have been a Foxite, and especially that he should have
remained one in the last decade of his life, when commercial questions
were uppermost, and when Shelburne first, and then Pitt, set themselves
to translate the _Wealth of Nations_ into laws and treaties. But, as we
have tried to show, he never allowed economical considerations to weigh
in the scale with political liberty; and the clue to his distrust of
Shelburne and Pitt is his dislike of the King as a corrupter of
politics, and of the Court as a corrupter of morals. Shelburne and Pitt
exalting the King and the executive would have depressed the House of
Commons. Rockingham, Fox, and Burke sought manfully, and not
unsuccessfully, so to maintain and glorify constitutional usages as to
check and limit the power of the King. This single consideration was
enough to determine the allegiance of a truly republican heart.
Burke, moreover, was in every way a sympathetic figure. His measure of
economical reform had docked the resources of patronage, and sensibly
relieved the burdens of the taxpayer. And his views about commercial
liberty coincided with Smith’s own. About this time a happy chance
brought the two friends together. In the autumn of 1783 Burke was
elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and early in the
following April, during the general election which overwhelmed the
Whigs, Burke, having saved his own seat at Malton, paid a visit to
Scotland. He stayed a few days in Edinburgh, and then, accompanied by
Adam Smith, Lord Maitland,[46] and others, went on to Glasgow to be
installed in his new office. On the day of their arrival (Friday, April
9) they supped with that stalwart Whig, John Millar, the Professor of
Law. On Sunday, Smith and Maitland took Burke to see Loch Lomond, and
made their way back by Carron to Edinburgh, which they reached on the
following Wednesday. Next day Burke, with a company of Smith’s Edinburgh
friends, dined at Panmure House. On Friday the great orator returned to
England extremely pleased by his reception in Scotland, and leaving
behind him many friends and admirers. One of these has preserved some
particulars of the visit. “Smith, Dugald, and I,” wrote Dalzel, “had
more of his company than anybody in this country, and we got a vast deal
of political anecdote from him and fine pictures of political characters
both dead and living.” Burke advised Lord Maitland, if he had ambition
and wanted office, to abandon the Whig party. “Shake us off: give us
up.” Smith said cheerfully that “in two years things would come about
again.” “Why,” cried Burke, “I have already been in a minority nineteen
years, and your two years, Mr. Smith, will make me twenty-one years, and
it will surely be high time for me then to be in my majority!”
Before the end of May a dark cloud came over Smith’s life, for his
mother passed away in her ninetieth year. Four years later her death was
followed by that of his cousin, Miss Douglas. Their loss was
irreparable. “They had been the objects of his affection for more than
sixty years, and in their society he had enjoyed from his infancy all
that he ever knew of the endearments of a family.”[47]
Late in the autumn of 1784 Faujas de Saint-Fond, the geologist, visited
Edinburgh after some adventurous discoveries in the Hebrides. During his
fortnight’s stay “that venerable philosopher Adam Smith” was one of
those whom he visited most frequently. “He received me on every occasion
in the kindest manner, and studied to procure for me every kind of
information and amusement that the town afforded.” Smith’s library, he
says, bore evidence of his tour in France and his stay in Paris. “All
our best French authors occupied prominent places on his shelves. He was
very fond of our language.”
On one occasion when Saint-Fond was at tea in Panmure House, Smith spoke
of Rousseau “with a kind of religious respect,” and compared him with
Voltaire. “The latter,” he said, “sought to correct the vices and
follies of mankind by laughing at them, and sometimes by treating them
with severity; but Rousseau catches his reader in the net of reason by
the attraction of sentiment and the force of conviction. His _Social
Contract_ may well avenge him one day for all his persecutions.” Smith’s
features became very animated when he spoke of Voltaire, “whom he had
known and greatly loved.”
One day Adam Smith asked his visitor if he liked music, and said, on
hearing that he did: “I am very glad of it; I shall put you to a proof
which will be very interesting for me, for I shall take you to hear a
sort of music of which it is impossible you can have formed any idea,
and I shall be delighted to find how it strikes you.” The annual bagpipe
competition was to take place next day, and Smith came to Saint-Fond’s
lodgings next morning at nine o’clock, and conducted him to a spacious
concert-room full of people; but neither musicians, nor orchestra, nor
instruments were to be seen. A large space was reserved in the middle of
the room and occupied by gentlemen only, who, said his guide, were
Highlanders come to judge of the performances. The prize was for the
best executed piece of Highland music, and the same air was to be played
successively by all the competitors. After some delay a door opened and
a kilted Highlander advanced into the hall:—
“He walked up and down the vacant space with rapid steps and a martial
air, blowing his bagpipes. The tune was a kind of sonata divided into
three parts. Smith requested me to pay my whole attention to the
music, and to explain to him afterwards the impression it made upon
me. But I confess that at first I could not distinguish either air or
design in the music. I was only struck with a piper marching backward
and forward with great rapidity, and still presenting the same warlike
countenance. He made incredible efforts with his body and his fingers
to bring into play the different reeds of his instrument, which
emitted sounds that were to me almost insupportable. He received much
applause from all parts of the hall.”
Then came a second piper, who seemed to excel the first, judging from
the clapping and cheers. Having heard eight in succession, the Professor
began to discover that the first part represented a warlike march, the
second a battle, and the last part the wailing over the slain—which drew
tears from the eyes of many fair ladies in the audience. The _séance_
ended with a “lively and animated dance, accompanied by suitable airs,
though the union of so many bagpipes produced a most hideous noise.” The
Frenchman’s verdict was highly unfavourable. He concluded that the
pleasure given by the music was due to historical associations. Though
he admired the impartiality of the audience and judges, who showed no
special favour even to a laird’s son unless he played well, he could not
himself admire the artists. “To me they were all equally disagreeable.
The music and the instrument alike reminded me of a bear’s dance.”[48]
Burke revisited Glasgow in August 1785. Windham was with him. They
stopped on their way in Edinburgh and dined with Smith—Robertson, Henry
Erskine, and Dr. Cullen being among the guests. On September 13th, when
they returned to Edinburgh, Windham makes this entry in his diary:
“After dinner walked to Adam Smith’s. Felt strongly the impression of a
family completely Scotch. House magnificent and place fine.” They stayed
one more day in Edinburgh, and dined at Panmure House. Burke found time
to visit John Logan, the author of the lovely _Ode to the Cuckoo_. Dr.
Carlyle says that Smith was “a great patron” of this persecuted poet;
and when Logan was hounded out of the ministry, and went to London to
seek a living by his pen, he took a letter of introduction from Smith to
Andrew Strahan the publisher, who was about to issue a fourth edition of
the _Wealth of Nations_.[49]
In the following year (1786) Smith was suffering much from ill-health,
but his mind and pen were busy. T. Christie, Nichols’s Edinburgh
correspondent, informed his friend in August that Dr. Smith was writing
“the history of Moral Philosophy.” This may only mean that he was
engaged in preparing the enlarged (6th edition) of the _Moral
Sentiments_; for in a letter to the Duke of Rochefoucauld that recently
came to light, dated November 1, 1785, he speaks of an edition of the
_Theory_ “which I hope to execute before the end of the ensuing winter.”
But it may refer to one of two much larger and more ambitious schemes
which he goes on to mention in the same letter: “I have likewise two
other great works upon the anvil; the one is a sort of philosophical
history of all the different branches of literature, of philosophy,
poetry, and eloquence; the other is a sort of theory and history of law
and government. The materials of both are in a great measure collected,
and some part of both is put into tolerable good order. But the
indolence of old age, though I struggle violently against it, I feel
coming fast upon me, and whether I shall ever be able to finish either
is extremely uncertain.” At the same time he was in correspondence with
William Eden, whom he was helping to refute Dr. Price’s alarmist
theories about the decrease of the population.
In the spring of 1787 he went to London, partly to consult John Hunter,
Sir William’s younger brother, partly perhaps from curiosity to see the
boy Premier, who was so rapidly and skilfully carrying out his fiscal
policy. Pitt had just carried Smith’s favourite project of a commercial
treaty with France, and was now engaged in the far more laborious task
of simplifying the chaos of customs and excise rates in a gigantic
Consolidation Bill. The economist had many conferences with the
statesman. It is said that he was much with the ministry; and that the
clerks of the public offices had orders to furnish him with all papers,
and to employ if necessary additional hands to copy for him. One
incident has been preserved that is worth recording. At a dinner given
by Dundas, Smith came in late, and the company rose to receive him. He
begged them to be seated. “No,” said Pitt, “we will stand till you are
seated, for we are all your scholars.” On another occasion, finding
himself next to Addington, he exclaimed: “What an extraordinary man Pitt
is; he understands my ideas better than I do myself!” He stayed several
months in London, and though his disorders did not admit of cure, the
physicians operated with success, and pronounced in July that he “might
do some time longer.”
At the end of this month Thomas Raikes had a talk with him about the
Sunday-school movement, and was much delighted by the old man’s
enthusiastic approval: “No plan has promised to effect a change of
manners with equal ease and simplicity since the days of the Apostles.”
But towards another philanthropic scheme, for planting fishing-villages
along the Highland coast, he displayed, wrote Wilberforce, “a certain
characteristic coolness,” observing 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.” Mr.
Rae, who has traced the scheme down to 1893 when it was finally wound
up, shows that the shareholders lost half their original capital of
£35,000, and wasted besides £100,000 of taxpayers’ money, which a
foolish Government improvidently provided for one of their ill-conceived
projects. After all, philanthropy cannot afford to neglect the cool
precepts of political economy, nor is moral fervour the worse for a
pinch of common sense. In November, having returned to Edinburgh, he
heard with “heartfelt joy” the news that he had been elected Rector of
his old University, and he was installed in the following month. “No
preferment,” he wrote in a graceful letter of thanks, “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.”
A year later, the death of his cousin, Miss Jane Douglas, left him, says
Stewart, “alone and helpless,” and though he bore his loss bravely, and
regained apparently his former cheerfulness, yet his health and strength
gradually declined, until in the summer of 1790 he passed away. A few
particulars have been preserved of these last two years by those who
enjoyed his friendship and hospitality; but of his correspondence there
is only a short letter thanking Gibbon, with whom he had long been on
very affectionate terms, for the last three volumes of the _Decline and
Fall_. “I cannot,” he writes, “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.”[50] In July
1789, Samuel Rogers, then a young man of twenty-three, came to Edinburgh
with an introduction to Adam Smith from Price. On the morning after the
storming of the Bastille he called on the economist, and found him
breakfasting, with a dish of strawberries before him. Smith said they
were a northern fruit, at their best in Orkney and Sweden. The
conversation passed to Edinburgh, its high houses, dirt, and
overcrowding. Smith spoke slightingly of the old town, and said he would
like to remove to George Square. Then he talked of the scenery, soil,
and climate of Scotland, and of the corn trade, which led him to
denounce Pitt’s Government for refusing to supply France with a quantity
of corn so small that it would not have fed Edinburgh for one day.
He invited Rogers to dine with him next day at the Oyster Club; but a
tedious laird (brother of the Thibetan traveller) monopolised the
conversation. “_That_ Bogle,” said Smith afterwards, apologetically, “I
was sorry he talked so much. He spoiled our evening.” Next Sunday Smith
took an airing in his sedan chair, while his young friend went to hear
Robertson and Blair preach. At nine o’clock, Blair having concluded,
Rogers supped at Panmure House, and found the Oyster Club _minus_ Bogle
and _plus_ a gentleman from Göttingen. The conversation was personal,
and perhaps the only item now worth recalling is Smith’s reason for
identifying Junius with “Single Speech Hamilton.” Hamilton once told the
Duke of Richmond at Goodwood—the story came to Smith from Gibbon—of “a
devilish keen letter” from Junius in that day’s _Public Advertiser_. But
when the Duke got the paper he found not the letter, but an apology for
its non-appearance; after this Hamilton was suspected of the authorship,
and no more Junius was published. The inference Smith drew was that so
long as suspicion pointed to the wrong man the letters continued to
appear, and only stopped when the true author was named. Next day Rogers
again dined with Smith, and Henry Mackenzie told them stories of
second-sight. Hutton came in to tea, and then they went on to a meeting
of the Royal Society to hear a paper by Dr. James Anderson on “Debtors
and the Revision of the Laws that respect them.” Rogers says it was
portentously long and dull. “Mr. Commissioner Smith fell asleep, and
Mackenzie touched my elbow and smiled.” Altogether Rogers gives us a
very pleasing picture of a serene and bright old age. “He is a very
friendly, agreeable man, and I should have dined and supped with him
every day if I had accepted all his invitations.” He did not notice any
trace of absentmindedness, but thought that, compared with Robertson,
Smith was a man of the world.
In the same summer William Adam, a nephew of the architect, conversed
with Smith upon Bentham’s letters on usury. The economist is reported to
have said that “the _Defence of Usury_ was the work of a very superior
man, and that though he had given him some hard knocks, it was done in
so handsome a way that he could not complain.”[51] It is quite possible
that had Smith lived to see another edition of the _Wealth of Nations_
through the press, he would have responded to Bentham’s invitation by
admitting the futility of fixing interest by law. But at this time he
was still busy with the sixth edition of the _Moral Sentiments_, which
at last appeared early in the following year. In the preface he referred
to the promise he had made in 1759 of a treatise on Jurisprudence. That
promise had been partially fulfilled in the _Wealth of Nations_; but
what remained, the theory of Jurisprudence, he had hitherto failed to
execute. “Though my very advanced age leaves me,” he acknowledged, “very
little expectation of ever being able to execute this great work to my
own satisfaction, yet, as I have not altogether abandoned the design,
and as I wish still to continue under the obligation of doing what I
can, I have allowed the paragraph to remain as it was published more
than thirty years ago, when I entertained no doubt of being able to
execute everything which it announced.”
These words were probably written late in the year 1789. In February
1790 he told Lord Buchan, “You will never see your old friend any more.
I find that the machine is breaking down.” From this time he rapidly
wasted away, and in June his friends knew, as well as he did, that there
was no hope of recovery. His intellect remained perfectly clear, and he
bore his sufferings with the utmost fortitude and resignation.
But he could not be easy about his papers. In 1773, when he consigned
their care to Hume, he had instructed him to destroy without examination
all his loose manuscript, together with about eighteen thin paper folio
books containing his lectures. When he went to London in 1787 he had
given similar instructions to Black and Hutton. Now that he had become
very weak, and felt that his days were numbered, he spoke again to them
on the same subject. They entreated him to make his mind easy, as he
might depend upon their fulfilling his desire. He was satisfied for a
time. But some days afterwards—this is Hutton’s account—finding his
anxiety not entirely removed, he begged one of them to destroy the
volumes immediately. This accordingly was done; and his mind was so much
relieved that he was able to receive his friends in the evening with his
usual cheerfulness. They had been used to sup with him every Sunday, and
that evening there was a pretty numerous company of them. The old man
not finding himself able to sit up with them as usual, retired to bed
before supper; and as he went away took leave of his friends by saying,
“I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place.” He died a
very few days afterwards, on July the 17th, 1790, and was buried in the
Canongate Churchyard, in an obscure spot which must have been overlooked
by some of the windows of Panmure House.
In his will he had made his cousin, David Douglas (the youngest son of
Colonel Douglas of Strathendry), his heir, with instructions to dispose
of his manuscripts in accordance with the advice of Black and Hutton.
A small but choice library of four or five thousand volumes, and a
simple table, to which his friends were always welcome without the
formality of an invitation, were, says Dugald Stewart, “the only
expenses that could be considered his own.” His acts of private
generosity, though sedulously concealed, were on a scale “much beyond
what might have been expected from his fortune,” and those who knew only
of his frugality were surprised to find how small, in comparison with
the income he had long enjoyed, was the property he left behind him.
His friends were indignant that the death of so great a thinker made but
little stir. They might have been consoled had they been able to look
forward twenty years, and read a letter which a German student,
Alexander von der Marwitz, wrote to a friend on reading the _Wealth of
Nations_. It was on the eve of Jena, and the form of Napoleon stood out
a gigantic menace to all that the young patriot held dear. Yet he did
not hesitate to compare the victorious author with the conqueror of
Europe. “Next to Napoleon he is now the mightiest monarch in Europe.”
In the emancipation of thought and dispersion of knowledge which mark
the century that divides the English from the French Revolution, Adam
Smith takes his place in the order of time after Locke, Montesquieu,
Newton, and Voltaire, with Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot, and Burke.
With all of them he agreed in abhorring religious intolerance; with each
of them he had some special affinity. Like the first and the last, he
had a truly English reverence for law and order. A Newtonian in his
patient and tranquil research for the hidden secrets of Nature, he had
Voltaire’s love of Justice, while he resembled Rousseau, the only
democrat of the French school, in a new sentiment for popular
government, and in what may be called either the Social or Republican
instinct. He vied with Diderot in an universal curiosity and an
encyclopædic grasp of all the sciences, but surpassed him in originality
and creative power. He combined in an extraordinary degree the faculties
of observation, meditation, and abstraction. His achievements are not
accidents. If the architect’s plans are compared with history, they will
be found to have been executed in large part by the builders of the
nineteenth century. Of the great Frenchmen who synchronised with him and
moved along parallel lines of thought, it cannot be said that any one,
or that all together, destroyed the Church or the government, or even
the social system of France. It may even be questioned whether they
swayed the fortunes of France with an influence so potent as Smith’s
sceptre has wielded over the destinies of Europe. The criticisms of
Voltaire had mighty consequences, no doubt, but those consequences were
not deliberately planned, or even descried. Hume’s scepticism went far
deeper than Voltaire’s, tore up by the roots whole systems of debased
philosophy, and roused Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. But Hume and
Voltaire had little to sow on the land they ploughed and harrowed. In
all their anxiety to humble and ridicule religion, they would retain the
Church as a useful instrument of the State. In all their appeals to
public opinion, they never thought of resting government on a broad
basis of popular right. Their view of society was conventional; they
were rather satirists than reformers. It has been a commonplace of
criticism to compare Adam Smith with Locke. He is supposed to have done
for a particular branch of politics what Locke did for the whole
science. But Locke’s main achievement, after all, was to find
philosophic sanction for a revolution accomplished by others, and to
establish in the minds of the Whig aristocracy an unlimited respect for
a limited constitution. Smith was the single-handed contriver and sole
author of a revolution in thought which has modified the governing
policy and prodigiously increased the welfare of the whole civilised
world.
Of his contemporaries, the nearest perhaps in spirit are Turgot and the
younger Burke, the Burke of the American Revolution and of Free Trade
and Economical Reform. But Burke and even Turgot were in a certain sense
men of the past. Though their radiance can never fade, their influence
wanes. But Smith has issued from the seclusion of a professorship of
morals, from the drudgery of a commissionership of customs, to sit in
the council-chamber of princes. His word has rung through the study to
the platform. It has been proclaimed by the agitator, conned by the
statesman, and printed in a thousand statutes.
FOOTNOTES
[1]Dugald Stewart wrongly describes him as a Writer to the Signet,
confusing him with a contemporary of the same name.
[2]See W. R. Scott’s _Hutcheson_ (1900).
[3]Even in 1763 there was but one stage-coach in Scotland “which set out
[from Edinburgh] once a month for London, and was from twelve to
fourteen days on the journey.”—George Robertson’s _Rural
Recollections_, p. 4.
[4]See the _Wealth of Nations_, Book V. ch. i. art. 2.
[5]See the _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. ii.
[6]The advertisement goes on to say: “It is long since he found it
necessary to abandon that plan as far too extensive; and these parts
of it lay beside him neglected till he was dead.”
[7]First, Dugald Stewart declares that the _History of Astronomy_ “was
one of Mr. Smith’s earliest compositions.” Second, in a letter
constituting Hume his literary executor, Smith describes it as a
fragment of an intended juvenile work. Thirdly, Stewart heard him
say more than once “that he had projected in the earlier part of his
life a history of the other sciences on the same plan.” Fourthly,
the work exactly fits in with all that we hear of his youthful bent
for the Greek geometry and natural philosophy. Fifthly, it must have
been written long before 1758, for he mentions a prediction that a
certain comet will appear in that year.
[8]“The author at the end of his essay,” says the advertisement, “left
some notes and memorandums from which it appears he considered this
last part of his _History of Astronomy_ as imperfect and needing
several additions.” It consists of 135 pages, and the imperfections
are not obvious to the reader.
[9]_Moral Sentiments_, Part III. chap. ii. p. 210 of the second, third,
and fourth editions; chap. iii. of the sixth edition.
[10]Mr. Rae, usually the most accurate of authorities, states that the
first edition appeared “in two volumes 8vo.”
[11]The crude theory that sympathy is the foundation of altruism was
noticed by Hutcheson. In his _System of Moral Philosophy_ (B. I. ch.
iii.) he writes: “Others say that we regard the good of others, or
of societies ... as the means of some subtiler pleasures of our own
by sympathy with others in their happiness.” But this sympathy, he
adds, “can never account for all kind affections, tho’ it is no
doubt a natural principle and a beautiful part of our constitution.”
[12]Mr. Rae’s _Life of Adam Smith_, pp. 148-9. Mr. Rae also says that it
contained none of the alterations or additions that Hume expected,
and expresses surprise that the additions, etc., which had been
placed in the printer’s hands in 1760 were not incorporated in the
text until the publication of the sixth edition thirty years
afterwards. On the other hand, he says that the _Dissertation on the
Origin of Languages_ was added. But the _Dissertation_ was first
appended in the third edition (1767).
[13]See _Moral Sentiments_, 1st edition, p. 464.
[14]_Origine de l’inégalité. Partie première_, pp. 376, 377. _Édition
d’Amsterdam des œuvres diverses de J. J. Rousseau._ The reference is
from _Moral Sentiments_, 3rd ed. p. 440.
[15]Millar adds: “The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the
Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton.”
[16]Cp. _Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. iii.
[17]And even Hume, as Smith warned his class, had not quite emancipated
himself from mercantilist misconceptions.
[18]_Lectures_, p. 241: “Excise raises the price of commodities and
makes fewer people able to carry on business. If a man purchase
£1000 worth of tobacco he has a hundred pounds of tax to pay, and
therefore cannot deal to such an extent as he would otherwise do.
Thus, as it requires greater stock to carry on trade, the dealers
must be fewer, and the rich have, as it were, a monopoly against the
poor.”
[19]Uztariz, _Theory and Practice of Commerce and Maritime Affairs_,
translated by John Kippax, 1751, vol. ii. p. 52. The allusion has
been discovered by Mr. Edwin Cannan. See _Lectures_, p. 246.
[20]_Wealth of Nations_ (1776), Book V. chap. i. art. 2.
[21]Tytler’s _Kames_, i. p. 278.
[22]See Faujas Saint-Fond, _Travels in England and Scotland_, vol. ii.
p. 241.
[23]See _Garrick Correspondence_, vol. ii. pp. 549, 550.
[24]See letter from Adam Smith to T. Cadell printed in the _Economic
Journal_ for September 1898. It appears that the last two books he
had ordered were Postlethwait’s _Dictionary of Trade_ and Anderson’s
_Deduction of the Origin of Commerce_. Neither appears in Mr.
Bonar’s catalogue of his library.
[25]At Kirkcaldy George Drysdale, for some time Provost of the town and
afterwards Collector of Customs, was a “steady and much esteemed
friend.” His more distinguished brother, Dr. John Drysdale the
minister, had been at school with Smith, and “among all his numerous
friends and acquaintances,” says Dalzel, there was none “whom he
loved with greater affection or spoke of with greater tenderness.”
They often met in Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh. The death of James
Oswald, who represented Kirkcaldy, early in 1769, was a serious loss
to the little society, and particularly to Smith.
[26]Steuart’s _Political Economy_, 1767.
[27]The most important of these (in Book IV. chap, vii.) appear for the
first time in the third edition (1784).
[28]Letter to Cullen, London, 20th September 1774.
[29]Mr. Macpherson’s recent abridgment is the only tolerable one I know
of, and that solely because it carefully retains many of the finest
chapters, and leaves the flesh on the bones.
[30]A public pawnshop.
[31]Charles Butler, the learned Catholic lawyer, once mentioned to Fox
that he had never read the _Wealth of Nations_. “To tell you the
truth,” said Fox, “nor I either. There is something in all these
subjects which passes my comprehension; something so wide that I
could never embrace them myself or find any one who did.”
[32]See Book IV. chap. vii.
[33]See Skarzinski’s _Adam Smith_ (1878), quoted by Oncken, _Economic
Journal_, vol. vii. p. 445.
[34]See Ruskin’s _Fors Clavigera_, letters 62 and 72.
[35]Smith avoids the error so commonly committed in modern doctrines of
international trade, of regarding a nation as a trading unit.
[36]The second case is simple and uncontroversial. If there is an excise
duty upon a home product, it seems reasonable, says Smith, that an
equal tax should be imposed in the shape of an import duty upon the
same product imported from abroad.
[37]The author of _Douglas_.
[38]Written from Kirkcaldy, November 9, 1776.
[39]In the Budget of 1778 North adopted two more important
recommendations: the inhabited house duty, which is still with us,
and the malt tax, which was commuted for the beer duty by Mr.
Gladstone in 1880. The house tax proved very productive, as taxes
went in those days, its yield rising from £26,000 in 1779 to
£108,000 in 1782.
[40]Sir Gray Cooper was Secretary to the Treasury.
[41]Rae’s _Life of Adam Smith_, p. 326.
[42]See the _Life of Smith_ by William Smellie, a contemporary.
[43]See Sinclair’s _Life of Sir John Sinclair_, vol. i. p. 39.
[44]Edinburgh, 15th December 1783. The letter is printed in the
_Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland_, vol. i. p. 64.
[45]Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote from Edinburgh, July 25, 1782, to his
wife:—“I have found one just man in Gomorrah, Adam Smith, author of
the _Wealth of Nations_. He was the Duke of Buccleuch’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.”—_Life of Lord Minto_, vol. i. p. 84.
[46]Afterwards Lord Lauderdale, a finished economist, who passed some
ingenious criticisms on the _Wealth of Nations_.
[47]See Dugald Stewart’s _Memoir_, section V.
[48]Mr. Rae, the only one of Smith’s biographers, I think, who has
noticed Saint-Fond’s visit, dates it wrongly (in 1782), and says the
account was published in 1783. The journey took place in 1784, and
the account was published in 1797. An English translation appeared
two years later.
[49]This appeared in 1786 with a prefatory note expressing the author’s
grateful obligations to Mr. Henry Hope of Amsterdam, for his
information concerning the great Dutch Bank.
[50]In his first will Gibbon left a legacy of £100 to Adam Smith.
[51]In his _Defence of Usury_, “Letter XIII. to Dr. Smith,” Bentham had
written: “Instead therefore of pretending to owe you nothing, I
shall begin with acknowledging that, as far as your trade coincides
with mine, I should come much nearer the truth were I to say I owed
you everything.” Mr. Rae (_Life of Adam Smith_, p. 424) quotes a
letter from George Wilson to Bentham, in the Bentham MSS., British
Museum. I may add to this the following note which I find in
Bentham’s _Rationale of Reward_ (1825), p. 332, in chapter xvi. of
Book IV., on Rates of Interest. “Adam Smith, after having read the
letter upon _Projects_, which was addressed to him, and printed at
the end of the first edition of the _Defence of Usury_, declared to
a gentleman, the common friend of the two authors, that he had been
deceived. With the tidings of his death Mr. Bentham received a copy
of his works, which had been sent to him as a token of esteem.”
INDEX
A
Alembert, 132, 139.
American colonies, 163, 176-9.
Aristotle, 6, 24-6, 37, 53, 74, 194.
Armaments, 172-4.
_Astronomy, History of_, 16-18.
B
Bacon, 5, 74 _n._, 118-19.
Bagehot (quoted), 204.
Balliol College, 9-12.
Banks (in Scotland), 101.
Beauclerk, 160-1.
_Bee, The_, 21.
Bentham, Jeremy, 12, 184, 216;
his _Defence of Usury_, 231-2.
Black, Joseph, 83, 96-7, 99, 208, 231, 233.
Bordeaux, 123, 141.
Boswell, James, 19, 161, 164.
Brougham, Lord, 14.
Buccleuch, Duke of, 111-14, 131, 135, 150, 153, 157, 163, 213.
Buchan, Lord, 21, 99.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 63, 64.
Burke, Edmund, 20, 30, 47, 49, 67, 75, 112, 160-2, 171, 174,
221-3, 226, 235-6.
Butler, Bishop, 12, 51, 54.
C
Calas, Jean, the case of, 124-5.
Cannan, Edwin, 71, 78-9, 90 _n._, 169;
the _Lectures_, 182.
Carlyle, Dr. Alexander, 101, 104, 105, 151, 226.
Clubs—the Poker, 107-9;
the Literary, 160, 161, 212, 216;
the Oyster, 216-18, 230.
Cobden, Richard, 78, 175, 184, 189-91.
Cochrane, Andrew, 101-2.
Colbert, Abbé, 121-3.
Colliers, 76-7.
Colonies, 145-9, 175-80.
Condorcet, 133.
Cullen, Dr., 26-7, 157, 226.
Customs, 88 _sqq._, 196 _sqq._, 213-15.
D
Dalkeith House, 150-1.
Dalrymple, Sir John, 21, 95, 99, 101, 104-5, 216.
Degrees, medical, 157-60.
Descartes, 17, 55.
Douglas, David, 213, 234.
—— Jane, 213, 223, 229.
—— John, Bishop of Salisbury, 9, 160.
Drysdale, John, 3.
Dundas, Henry, 201, 228.
Dunlop, Alexander, 4.
E
Eden, William, 199, 201-20, 227, 237
Edinburgh, 4, 78, 100, 103, 105 _sqq._, 153, 206, 213 _sqq._
_Encyclopædia_, the, 118-20.
England, wealth of, 139-42.
Enville, Duchess of, 128, 131.
Epictetus, 55, 56.
Excise, 88-91, 191 _n._
Exports, theory of, 86 _sqq._, 190 _sqq._
F
Ferguson, Adam, 128, 216.
Ferney, 127-8.
Foulis, Robert, printer, 21, 95, 97-9.
Fox, Charles James, 174, 212, 221-2.
France, 86-7, 118 _sqq._, 188, 235.
Franklin, Benjamin, 108, 161-2.
Free Trade, 88, 142, 176, 188 _sqq._; (chapter x.), 220.
G
Garrick, David, 130, 160, 212.
Geneva, 126-8.
Gibbon, 12, 13, 131, 157, 160, 164, 212, 216, 229-31.
Gladstone, W. E., 165, 193.
Glasgow, 4-9, 11, 23, 27, 78, 95 _sqq._, 100-3, 222.
—— University of, 3-9, 94 _sqq._, 229.
Glassford, John, 101.
Grotius, 5, 71, 73, 92.
H
Hamilton of Bangour, 21.
Helvétius, 132.
Hobbes, Thomas, 36, 51, 71.
Holland, 90, 139, 172, 192.
Home, Henry (see Kames).
—— John, 103, 105.
Hume, David, 6, 11, 17, 20, 22, 26, 30, 36, 38, 43, 46 _sqq._, 51,
60 _sqq._, 73, 95, 96, 103, 106, 110-11, 113, 129, 130,
136-8, 150 _sqq._, 163-4, 181, 194, 205-11, 233, 235.
Hunter, Sir William, 157.
—— John, 227.
Hutcheson, Francis, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 30, 31, 36-8, 51, 57 _n._, 62,
64, 73, 97, 181, 229.
Hutton, Dr., 216, 217, 233.
I
_Imitative Arts_, 16, 17, 19-20, 33, 67.
Imports, theory of, 86 _sqq._, 192 _sqq._, 220.
Ireland, 200-3.
J
Jardine, George, 30-31.
Johnson, Samuel, 19, 109-10, 165.
Johnstone, William (see Pulteney).
Jurisprudence, 69-72, 78.
Justice, 68 _sqq._
K
Kames, Lord, 18, 19, 77, 103.
Kant, 40, 58.
Kirkcaldy, 1-3, 16, 76, 150-6, 205 _sqq._
Kraus, Christian Jakob, 185.
L
Labour, division of, 81, 194-5.
Languedoc, 124-6.
Law, international, 71, 92-3.
List, Friedrich, 185-6, 189, 196.
Locke, John, 5, 25, 73, 235-6.
Logan, John, 226.
Logic, chair of, 23, 30-3.
_Logic and Metaphysics, History of_, 18, 23-8, 31-3.
London, 78, 156 _sqq._, 227-8.
Lowe, Robert, 187.
M
Mackintosh, Sir James, 50, 132.
Malebranche, 25.
Malesherbes, 184.
Manchester School, 189-91.
Mandeville, 36-7, 53-4, 62.
Mathematics, 7, 8.
_Maxims_ of Rochefoucauld, 54.
Mercantile system, 85-8, 197-8.
Metaphysics, 26, 32-3; see Logic.
Mill, John Stuart, 165, 186-7, 196.
Millar, Andrew (the publisher), 46-8, 138, 144.
—— John, 31, 33, 37, 68, 74, 99, 222.
Milton, 21, 36, 67, 184.
Mollien, Count, 143, 184-5.
Monopoly, 159, 220.
Montesquieu, 68, 73, 76, 215, 235.
Morals, Chair of, 26 _sqq._, 116-17.
_Moral Sentiments, Theory of_, 31, 37-9, 46 _sqq._, 232.
Morellet, 132, 142, 220.
N
Navigation Act, 4, 190-1.
Necker, 131-2.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 8, 17, 36, 235.
North, Lord, 199, 200, 212, 213.
O
Oswald, James, of Dunnikier, 3, 18, 22, 104.
Oxford, 9.
—— University of, 11-15.
P
Panmure House, 213-14.
Paris, 129 _sqq._, 136-9.
Peel, Sir Robert, 193.
_Physics, History of Ancient_, 18.
Pitt, the younger, 184, 188, 200, 222, 227.
Plato, 24-5, 37, 194.
Police, lectures on, 68-72, 78.
Pope, 13, 19, 56.
Population, 76.
Price, Dr. Richard, 161, 230.
Protection (see Free Trade).
Pulteney, Sir William, 19, 104, 154-5.
Q
Quesnai, 68, 71, 134-5, 142, 169.
R
Rae, John (quoted), 14, 28, 94, 101, 106, 111, 114, 129, 211, 212,
226 _n._, 228.
Raikes, Thomas, 228.
Ramsay, Allan, 105, 110.
—— John, of Ochtertyre, 38, 44, 96.
Religion, 183.
_Review, Edinburgh_, 109.
Revenue of France, 141-2.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 160.
Riccoboni, Madame, 130.
Richelieu, Duke of, 123, 127.
Rochefoucauld, 129, 131, 133.
Rockingham Ministry, 146-7.
Rogers, Dr. Charles (quoted), 155.
—— Samuel, 9, 127, 133, 230-1.
Rousseau, J. J., 65, 136-8, 150, 224, 235.
Ruskin, 183.
S
Saint-Fond, Faujas de, 127, 223-6.
Schmoller, Professor, 180.
Schools (public) in England, 12.
Scotland, 9-10, 139-41.
Scott, Sir Walter (quoted), 217.
Shaftesbury, 31, 36, 51.
Shelburne, Lord, 144, 148, 184, 188.
Simson, Robert, 4, 8, 96.
Smith, Adam (the elder), 2.
—— Margaret, 2, 8.
Snell Exhibition, 9, 10, 15.
Society, the Select, 105-7.
Spectator, Impartial, 56-60, 182.
Spain, 86, 87, 145, 175.
Stamp Act, 146, 147.
Stewart, Dugald (quoted), 2, 5, 13, 14, 21, 68, 102, 105, 131,
132, 139, 151, 214, 234.
—— Matthew, 7, 8.
Strahan, William, 61, 144, 164, 206 _sqq._, 226.
Strathendry, 2.
Sympathy, doctrine of, 57 _sqq._
T
_Taille_, 142.
Tax, Land, 89, 142;
the French, 142.
Taxation, 88 _sqq._, 170-2, 176 _sqq._
Theology, Natural, 7, 37.
Tocqueville, 125.
Tooke, Horne, 124.
Toulouse, 124-5, 144.
Townshend, Charles, 48-9, 104, 111-15, 135, 147-8.
Treaties, Commercial (with France), 200, 220, 227.
Turgot, 68, 71, 125, 126, 129, 132-4, 142, 184, 219, 235-6.
U
Union, Act of, 4, 36.
Uztariz (quoted), 90.
V
_Vingtième_, 142.
Voltaire, 20, 44, 48, 120, 125, 127, 128, 139, 224, 235.
W
Wages, 140.
Wakefield, E. G., 165-6.
Walpole, Sir Robert, 91.
War, 172-4.
Watt, James, 83, 96-7.
_Wealth of Nations_, 2, 12, 15, 22, 32, 33, 63, 69, 81 _sqq._,
139, 144, 156, 158, 161-2; (chapter ix.), 163 _sqq._, 213.
Wedderburn, Alexander, 19, 47, 109.
Wilberforce, William, 228-9.
Windham, William, 226.
Wordsworth, 20, 21.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
Transcriber’s Notes
—Silently corrected a few typos.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.