Life of Adam Smith Part 6

Among Smith's chief Edinburgh friends at this period was one of his former pupils, William Johnstone--son of Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, and nephew of Lord Elibank--who was then practising as an advocate at the Scotch bar, but ultimately went into Parliament, married the greatest heiress of the time, Miss Pulteney, niece of the Earl of Bath, and long filled an honoured and influential place in public life as Sir William Pulteney. He was, as even Wraxall admits, a man of "masculine sense" and "independent as well as upright"

character, and he devoted special attention to all economic and financial questions. It was Pulteney who in his speech on the suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England in 1797--in which he proposed the establishment of another bank--quoted from some unknown source the memorable saying which is generally repeated as if it were his own, that Smith "would persuade the present generation and govern the next." He quoted the words as something that had been "well said." Between him and Smith there prevailed a warm and affectionate friendship for more than forty years, and we shall have occasion again to mention his name. But I allude to him at present because a letter still exists which was given him by Smith at this period to introduce him, during a short stay he made in London, to James Oswald, then newly appointed to office at the Board of Trade. This is the only letter that happens to be preserved of all the correspondence carried on by Smith with Oswald, and while both the occasion of it and its substance reveal the footing of personal intimacy on which they stood, its ceremonious opening and ending indicate something of the reverence and grat.i.tude of the client to the patron:--

SIR--This 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 proofs. 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 a.s.sure you, exaggerate knowingly, but could p.a.w.n my honour upon the truth of every article.

You will find him, I imagine, a young gentleman of solid, substantial (not flashy) abilities and worth. Private business obliges him to spend some time in London. He would beg to be allowed the privilege of waiting on you sometimes, to receive your advice how he may employ his time there in the manner that will tend most to his real and lasting improvement.

I am sensible how much I presume upon your indulgence in giving you this trouble; but as it is to serve and comply with a person for whom I have the most entire friendship, I know you will excuse me though guilty of an indiscretion; at least if you do not, you will not judge others as you would desire to be judged yourself; for I am very sure a like motive would carry you to be guilty of a greater.

I would have waited on you when you was last in Scotland had the College allowed me three days' vacation; and it gave me real uneasiness that I should be in the same country with you, and not have the pleasure of seeing you. Believe it, no man can more rejoice at your late success,[76] or at whatever else tends to your honour and prosperity, than does, Sir, your ever obliged and very humble servant,

ADAM SMITH.

Glasgow, _19th January 1752_, N.S.[77]

Pulteney abandoned the law in which Smith prophesied eminence for him, but he was happily not cured entirely of his sincerity by his subsequent experience, for it was greatly from that quality that he derived the weight he enjoyed in the House of Commons. His contemporary in Parliament, Sir John Sinclair, says Pulteney's influence arose from the fact that he was known to be a man who never gave a vote he did not in his heart believe to be right. Having no taste for display, he lived when he had 20,000 a year about as simply as he did when he had only 200, and on that account he is sometimes accused of avarice, though he was constantly doing acts of signal liberality.

Smith's chief friend in Edinburgh was David Hume. Though their first relations were begun apparently in 1739, they could not have met much personally before Smith's settlement in Glasgow. For when Smith came to Edinburgh in 1748 Hume was abroad as secretary to General St. Clair in the Emba.s.sy at Vienna and Turin, and though he left this post in 1749, he remained for the next two years at Ninewells, his father's place in Berwickshire, and only settled in Edinburgh again just as Smith was removing to Glasgow. He would no doubt visit town occasionally, however, and before Smith was a year in Glasgow he had already entered on that correspondence with the elder philosopher which, beginning with the respectful "dear sir," grew shortly into the warmer style of "my dearest friend" as their memorable and Roman friendship ripened. Hume never paid Smith a visit in Glasgow, though he had often promised to do so, but Smith in his runs to Edinburgh spent always more and more of his time with Hume, and latterly at any rate made Hume's house his regular Edinburgh home.

In 1752 Hume had already taken Smith as one of his literary counsellors, and consulted him about the new edition of his _Essays, Moral and Political_, and his historical projects, and I may be permitted here and afterwards to quote parts of Hume's letters which throw any light on Smith's opinions or movements.

On the 24th of September 1752 he writes--

DEAR SIR--I confess I was once of the same opinion with you, and thought that the best period to begin an English History was about Henry the Seventh, but you will please to observe that the change which then happened in public affairs was very insensible, and did not display its influence for many years afterwards.... I am just now diverted for the moment by correcting my _Essays, Moral and Political_ for a new edition. If anything occur to you to be inserted or retrenched, I shall be obliged if you offer the hint. In case you should not have the last edition by you I shall send you a copy of it.... I had almost lost your letter by its being wrong directed. I received it late, which was the reason you got not sooner a copy of _Joannes Magnus_.[78]

On the 17th of December 1754 Hume gives Smith an account of his quarrel with the Faculty of Advocates, and his resolution to stay as librarian after all, for the sake of the use of the books, which he cannot do without, but to give Blacklock, the blind poet, a bond of annuity for the salary. Three weeks later he writes again, and as the letter mentions Smith's views on some historical subjects, it may be quoted:--

EDINBURGH, _9th January 1755_.

DEAR SIR--I beg you to make my compliments to the Society, and to take the fault on yourself if I have not executed my duty, and sent them this time my anniversary paper. Had I got a week's warning I should have been able to have supplied them. I should willingly have sent some sheets of the History of the Commonwealth or Protectorship, but they are all of them out of my hand at present, and I have not been able to recall them.[79] I think you are extremely in the right that the Parliament's bigotry has nothing in common with Hiero's generosity. They were themselves violent persecutors at home to the utmost of their power. Besides, the Huguenots in France were not persecuted; they were really seditious, turbulent people, whom their king was not able to reduce to obedience. The French persecutions did not begin till sixty years after.

Your objection to the Irish ma.s.sacre is just, but falls not on the execution but the subject. Had I been to describe the ma.s.sacre of Paris I should not have fallen into that fault, but in the Irish ma.s.sacre no single eminent man fell, or by a remarkable death. If the elocution of the whole chapter be blamable, it is because my conceptions laboured most to start an idea of my subject, which is there the most important, but that misfortune is not unusual.--I am, etc.[80]

In 1752 Smith was chosen a member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, which, after an interregnum caused by the rebellion, was revived in that year, with David Hume for Secretary, and which was eventually merged in the Royal Society in 1784. But we know of no part he took, if he took any, in its proceedings. Of the Rankenian Society, again--the famous old club in Ranken's Coffee-house, to which Colin Maclaurin and other eminent men belonged, and some of whose members carried on a philosophical controversy with Berkeley, and, if we can believe Ramsay of Ochtertyre, were pressed by the good bishop to accompany him in his Utopian mission to Bermuda--Smith was never even a member, though it survived till 1774. But he took a princ.i.p.al part in founding a third society in 1754, which far eclipsed either of these--at least for a time--in _eclat_, and has left a more celebrated name, the Select Society.

The Select Society was established in imitation of the academies which were then common in the larger towns of France, and was partly a debating society for the discussion of topics of the day, and partly a patriotic society for the promotion of the arts, sciences, and manufactures of Scotland. The idea was first mooted by Allan Ramsay, the painter, who had travelled in France as long ago as 1739, with James Oswald, M.P., and was struck with some of the French inst.i.tutions. Smith was one of the first of Ramsay's friends to be consulted about the suggestion, and threw himself so heartily into it that when the painter announced his first formal meeting for the purpose on the 23rd of May 1754, Smith was not only one of the fifteen persons present, but was entrusted with the duty of explaining the object of the meeting and the nature of the proposed inst.i.tution. Dr.

A. Carlyle, who was present, says this was the only occasion he ever heard Smith make anything in the nature of a speech, and he was but little impressed with Smith's powers as a public speaker. His voice was harsh, and his enunciation thick, approaching even to stammering.[81] Of course many excellent speakers often stutter much in making a simple business explanation which they are composing as they go along, and Smith always stuttered and hesitated a deal for the first quarter of an hour, even in his cla.s.s lectures, though his elocution grew free and animated, and often powerful, as he warmed to his task.

The Society was established and met with the most rapid and remarkable success. The fifteen original members soon grew to a hundred and thirty, and men of the highest rank as well as literary name flocked to join it. Kames and Monboddo, Robertson and Ferguson and Hume, Carlyle and John Home, Blair and Wilkie and Wallace, the statistician; Islay Campbell and Thomas Miller, the future heads of the Court of Session; the Earls of Sutherland, Hopetoun, Marchmont, Morton, Rosebery, Erroll, Aboyne, Ca.s.silis, Selkirk, Glasgow, and Lauderdale; Lords Elibank, Garlies, Gray, Auchinleck, and Hailes; John Adam, the architect; Dr. Cullen, John Coutts, the banker and member for the city; Charles Townshend, the witty statesman; and a throng of all that was distinguished in the country, were enrolled as members, and, what is more, frequented its meetings. It met every Friday evening from six to nine, at first in a room in the Advocates' Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Mason Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers--men like Wedderburn and Robertson--took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland as intellectual displays to which neither the General a.s.sembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival. Hume wrote in 1755 to Allan Ramsay, who had by that time gone to settle in Rome, that the Select Society "has grown to be a national concern. Young and old, n.o.ble and ign.o.ble, 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." He goes on to say that "our young friend Wedderburn has acquired a great character by the appearance he has made," and that Wilkie, the minister, "has turned up from obscurity and become a very fashionable man, as he is indeed a very singular one. Monboddo's oddities divert, Sir David's (Lord Hailes) zeal entertains, Jack Dalrymple's (Sir John of the _Memoirs_) rhetoric interests. The long drawling speakers have found out their want of talents and rise seldomer. In short, the House of Commons is less the object of general curiosity to London than the Select Society is to Edinburgh. The 'Robin Hood,' the 'Devil,' and all other speaking societies are ign.o.ble in comparison."[82]

At the second regular meeting, which was held on the 19th of June 1754, Mr. Adam Smith was Praeses, and gave out the subjects for debate on the following meeting night: (1) Whether a general naturalisation of foreign Protestantism would be advantageous to Britain; and (2) whether bounties on the exportation of corn be advantageous to trade and manufactures as well as to agriculture.[83] Lord Campbell in mentioning this circ.u.mstance makes it appear as if Smith chose the latter subject of his own motion, in accordance with a rule of the society whereby the chairman of one meeting selected the subject for debate at the next meeting; and it would have been a not uninteresting circ.u.mstance if it were true, for it would show the line his ideas were taking at that early period of his career; but as a matter of fact the rule in question was not adopted for some time after the second meeting, and it is distinctly mentioned in the minutes that on this particular occasion the Praeses "declared before he left the chair the questions that were agreed upon by the majority of the meeting to be the subject of next night's debate."[84] It is quite possible, of course, that the subjects may have been of Smith's suggestion, but that can now only be matter of conjecture. Indeed, whether it be due to his influence or whether it arose merely from a general current of interest moving in that direction at the time, the subjects, discussed by this society were very largely economic; so much so that in a selection of them published by the _Scots Magazine_ in 1757 every one partakes of that character. "What are the advantages to the public and the State from grazing? what from corn lands? and what ought to be most encouraged in this country? Whether great or small farms are most advantageous to the country? What are the most proper measures for a gentleman to promote industry on his own estate? What are the advantages and disadvantages of gentlemen of estate being farmers?

What is the best and most proper duration of leases of land in Scotland? What prestations beside the proper tack-duty tenants ought to be obliged to pay with respect to carriages and other services, planting and preserving trees, maintaining enclosures and houses, working freestone, limestone, coal, or minerals, making enclosures, straightening marches, carrying off superfluous water to other grounds, and forming drains? and what restrictions they should be put under with respect to cottars, live stock on the farm, winter herding, ploughing the ground, selling manure, straw, hay, or corn, thirlage to mills, smiths or tradesmen employed on business extrinsic to the farm, subsetting land, granting a.s.signations of leases, and removals at the expiration of leases? What proportion of the produce of lands should be paid as rent to the master? In what circ.u.mstances the rents of lands should be paid in money? in what in kind? and in what time they should be paid? Whether corn should be sold by measure or by weight?

What is the best method of getting public highways made and repaired, whether by a turnpike law, as in many places in Great Britain, by county or parish work, by a tax, or by what other method? What is the best and most equal way of hiring and contracting servants? and what is the most proper method to abolish the practice of giving of vails?"[85] The society had what may be termed a special agricultural branch, to which I shall presently refer, and which met once a month and discussed chiefly questions of husbandry and land management; and the above list of subjects looks, from its almost exclusively agrarian character, as if it had been rather the business of this branch of the society merely than of the society as a whole. Still the same causes that made rural economy predominate in the monthly work of the branch would give it a large place in the weekly discussions of the parent a.s.sociation. The members were largely connected with the landed interest, and agricultural improvement was then on the order of the day.

In this society accordingly, which Smith attended very frequently, though he does not appear to have spoken in the debates, he had with respect to agrarian problems precisely what he had in the economic club of Glasgow with respect to commercial problems, the best opportunities of hearing them discussed at first hand by those who were practically most conversant with the subjects in all their details. Of course the society sometimes discussed questions of literature or art, or familiar old historical controversies, such as whether Brutus did well in killing Caesar? Indeed, no subject was expressly tabooed except such as might stir up the Deistic or Jacobite strife--in the words of the rules, "such as regard revealed religion, or which may give occasion to vent any principles of Jacobitism." But the great majority of the questions debated were of an economic or political character,--questions about outdoor relief, entail, banking, linen export bounties, whisky duties, foundling hospitals, whether the inst.i.tution of slavery be advantageous to the free? and whether a union with Ireland would be advantageous to Great Britain? Sometimes more than one subject would be got through in a night, sometimes the debate on a single subject would be adjourned from week to week till it was thought to be thrashed out; and every member might speak three times in the course of a debate if he chose, once for fifteen minutes, and the other twice for ten.

The Select Society was, however, as I have said, more than a debating club; it aimed besides at doing something practical for the promotion of the arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture, in the land of its birth, and accordingly, when it was about ten months in existence, it established a well-devised and extensive scheme of prizes for meritorious work in every department of human labour, to be supported by voluntary subscriptions. In the prospectus the society issued it says that, after the example of foreign academies, it had resolved to propose two subjects for compet.i.tion every year, chosen one from polite letters and the other from the sciences, and to confer on the winner some public mark of distinction in respect to his taste and learning. The reward, however, was not in this case to be of a pecuniary nature, for the principle of the society was that rewards of merit were in the finer arts to be honorary, but in the more useful arts, where the merit was of a less elevated character, they were to be lucrative. On the same principle, in the arts the highest place was allowed to be due to genius, and therefore a reward for a discovery or invention was set at the very top of the tree, but still it was of a purely honorary character, a pecuniary recognition being thought apparently unsuitable to the dignity of that kind of service. "The art of printing," the prospectus goes on to say--with a glance of satisfaction cast doubtless at the Foulis Press--"the art of printing in this country needs no encouragement, yet as to pa.s.s it by unnoticed were slighting the merit of those by whose means alone it has attained that eminence, it was resolved that the best printed and most correct book which shall be produced within a limited time be distinguished by an honorary reward." On the other hand, the manufacture of paper was a thing that required encouragement in Scotland, because the Scotch at that time imported their paper from abroad, "from countries," says the prospectus, "which use not half the linen that is here consumed"; and "to remove this defect, to render people more attentive to their own interest as well as to the interest of their country, to show them the consequence of attention to matters which may seem trivial, it was resolved that for the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth parcels of linen rags gathered within a limited time a reward be a.s.signed in proportion to the quant.i.ty and goodness of each parcel." In other cases manufactures were already well established in the country, and the thing that still needed to be encouraged by prizes was improvement in the workmanship. For example, "manufactures of cotton and linen prints are already established in different places of this country; in order to promote an attention to the elegance of the pattern and to the goodness of the colouring, as well as to the strength of the cloth, it was resolved that for the best piece of printed linen or cotton cloth made within a certain period a premium should be allotted." The art of drawing, again, "being closely connected with this art and serviceable to most others, it was resolved that for the best drawings by boys or girls under sixteen years of age certain premiums be a.s.signed." Then there was a considerable annual importation into Scotland of worked ruffles and of bone lace and edging which the Select Society thought might, under proper encouragement, be quite as well produced at home; and it was therefore resolved to give both honorary and lucrative rewards for superior merit in such work, the honorary for "women of fashion" who might compete, and the lucrative for those "whose laudable industry contributes to their own support." Scotch stockings had then a great reputation for the excellence of their workmanship, but Scotch worsted, to make them with, was not so good, and consequently a premium was to be offered for the best woollen yarn. There was a great demand at the time for English blankets, and no reason why the Scotch should not make quite as good blankets themselves out of their own wool, so a premium was proposed for the best imitation of English blankets. Carpet-making was begun in several places in the country, and a prize for the best-wrought and best-patterned carpet would encourage the manufacturers to vie with each other. Whisky-distilling, too, was established at different places, and Scotch strong ale had even acquired a great and just reputation both at home and abroad; but the whisky was "still capable of great improvement in the quality and taste," and the ale trade "might be carried to a much greater height,"

and these ends might be severally promoted by prizes for the best tun of whisky and the best hogshead of strong ale.

The practical execution of this scheme was committed to nine members of the society, who were to be chosen annually, and were to meet with the society once a month to report progress or receive instructions; but to keep this new task quite distinct from the old, the society resolved, like certain mercantile firms when they adopt a new branch of business, to carry it on under a new firm name, and for this purpose the Select Society of Edinburgh became "The Edinburgh Society for encouraging arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture in Scotland"; and the executive committee of nine were termed the "ordinary managers of the Edinburgh Society," who were a.s.sisted by other nine "extraordinary managers." The Edinburgh Society was not, however, a separate inst.i.tution; it was really only a special committee of the Select Society. It met once a month at a separate time from the usual weekly meeting of the parent society, and the business of this monthly meeting came, from the predominant interest of the members, who were so largely composed of the n.o.bility and gentry, to be engrossed almost wholly with agricultural discussions.

To render these discussions more effective and profitable, a resolution was pa.s.sed in 1756 to admit a certain number of practical farmers to the membership.

This extension of the scope of the society's work was not approved by its founder, Allan Ramsay, who thought it beneath the dignity of such an inst.i.tution to take an interest in the making of ruffles or the brewing of strong ale, and feared besides that it would introduce a new set of very unintellectual members, to the serious prejudice of the society's debates. An essay on taste was very well, and when it came out he would ask Millar, the bookseller, to send it out to him in Rome, but a prize for the biggest bundle of linen rags! "I could have wished," he writes Hume, "that some other way had been fallen upon by which porter might have been made thick and the nation rich without our understanding being at all the poorer for it. Is not truth more than meat, and wisdom than raiment?"[86] But however Ramsay might look down on the project, his coadjutor in the founding of the society, Adam Smith, entertained a very different idea of its importance. A stimulus to the development of her industries was the very thing Scotland most needed at the moment, and he entered heartily into the new scheme, and took a prominent part in carrying it out. He was not one of the nine managers to whom the practical execution of the idea was at first entrusted, but when a few months afterwards the work was divided among four separate committees or sections of five members each, all chosen by another committee of five, nominated expressly for that purpose, Smith is one of this nominating committee, and is by it appointed likewise a member of one of the four executive committees.

The other four members of the nominating committee were Alexander Monro _Primus_, the anatomist; Gilbert Elliot, M.P. for Selkirkshire; the Rev. William Wilkie, author of the _Epigoniad_; and the Rev.

Robert Wallace, the predecessor and at least in part the stimulator of Malthus in his speculations on the population question. The five members of this committee were directed by the society to put their own names on one or other of the four executive committees, and they placed the name of Smith, together with that of Hume, on the committee for Belles-Lettres and Criticism. As yet he was evidently best known as literary critic, though the questions propounded by him in this society, and the subjects treated by him in the Literary Society of Glasgow, show that his tastes were already leading him into other directions.

Sufficient contributions soon flowed in; Hume in his letter to Ramsay speaks of 100 being already in hand, and of several large subscriptions besides being promised from various n.o.blemen, whom he names; and accordingly an advertis.e.m.e.nt was published in the newspapers on the 10th of April 1755, offering the following prizes:--

I. Honorary premiums, being gold medals with suitable devices and inscriptions:--

1. For the best discovery in science.

2. For the best essay on taste.

3. For the best dissertation on vegetation and the principles of agriculture.

II. Honorary premiums, being silver medals with proper devices and inscriptions:--

4. For the best printed and most correct book of at least 10 sheets.

5. For the best printed cotton or linen cloth, not under 28 yards.

6. For the best imitation of English blankets, not under six.

7. For the next best ditto, not under six.

8. For the best hogshead of strong ale.

9. For the best hogshead of porter.

III. Lucrative premiums:--

10. For the most useful invention in arts, 21.

11. For the best carpet as to work, pattern, and colours, of at least 48 yards,.5:5s.

12. For the next best ditto, also 48 yards, 4:4s.

13. For the best drawings of fruits, flowers, and foliages by boys or girls under sixteen years of age, 5:5s.

14. For the second best, 3:3s.

15. For the third best, 2:2s.

16. For the best imitation of Dresden work in a pair of man's ruffles, 5:5s.

17. For the best bone lace, not under 20 yards, 5:5s.

18. For the greatest quant.i.ty of white linen rags, 1:10s.

19. For the second ditto, 1:5s.