One of the first of our writers to study, perhaps the first to weigh and measure the importance of the Encyclopædia, was Adam Smith. He seems to have read it from the outset. In his letter to the Edinburgh Review he called it the most complete work of the kind ever attempted in any language. He there noticed that D’Alembert’s preliminary discourse upon the genealogy and filiation of arts and sciences was nearly the same as that of Lord Bacon, that the separate articles were not dry abstracts of what is commonly known by a superficial student, but “a compleat, reasoned, and even critical examination of each subject.” Its pages bore testimony to the triumphant progress of English philosophy and science in France. The ideas of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton were explained with that order, perspicuity, and judgment which distinguished all the eminent writers of France. “As since the Union we are apt to regard ourselves in some measure as the countrymen of those great men, it flattered my vanity as a Briton to observe the superiority of the English philosophy thus acknowledged by their rival nation.” It seems, Smith added, “to be the peculiar talent of the French nation to arrange every subject in that natural and simple order which carries the attention without any effort along with it.”
Smith was himself by nature and habit an Encyclopædist, not inferior even to Diderot in his grasp of the whole field of science. Wanting the laborious industry of the compiler, he was the equal perhaps of his French contemporaries in the power of correlating knowledge and combining truth. But he yielded to none in admiration of the Encyclopædia, and commended it to English readers by translating the magnificent eulogy bestowed on it by Voltaire in the conclusion of his account of the artists who lived in the time of Louis the Fourteenth:—
“The last age has put the present in a condition to assemble into one body and to transmit to posterity, to be by them delivered down to remoter ages, the sacred repository of all the arts and all the sciences, all of them pushed as far as human industry can go. This is what a society of learned men, fraught with genius and knowledge, are now labouring upon, an immense and immortal work which accuses the shortness of human life.”
The Encyclopædists’ doctrine of the perfectibility of man was the rational basis of Smith’s incurable optimism, but he did not share the opinion of the French School that an absolute monarchy is the most hopeful if not the only vehicle of human progress. Quesnai and his disciples never dreamed that people could govern themselves; they conjured up an ideal monarch who would let his people live in a state of natural liberty. Adam Smith had faith in men as well as in philosophy, and therefore his politics were not for his own age only but for the time to come. A Whig in practice and a Republican in theory, he was not likely to sympathise with the idea that natural liberty is to be enjoyed under a despot.
One critic expresses surprise that so close an observer had not the sagacity to anticipate the downfall of the French Monarchy. But Turgot’s dismissal, which first made Voltaire despair of a peaceful reformation, occurred two months after the publication of the Wealth of Nations, and ten years after its author’s return to England. Nay, at the time when the finishing touches were being given to that work, it might have been a fair question whether Turgot’s reforms were less likely to save France than Lord North’s policy to enslave England. In any case, it was not for a foreigner to play Cassandra to the Bourbons. But it will be shown that the author of the Wealth of Nations was under no illusions as to the wretched state of the French peasant, the misgovernment of the kingdom, and its fiscal disorganisation.
The tutor and his pupil arrived in Paris on February 13, 1764, and, after ten days with Hume, they proceeded to Toulouse, which still preserved the dignity of a provincial capital, with a parliament, a university, and an archbishopric. The nobility and notables of Languedoc spent the winter there, and it was also a favourite resort of English visitors, probably because it combined a good climate with agreeable society. Its advocates vied with those of Paris. As a social and intellectual centre it might be denominated the Edinburgh of France. Its political importance is marked in the Wealth of Nations, where Adam Smith describes the parliament of Toulouse as being “in rank and dignity the second parliament of the kingdom.” Fortunately for the two Scots, a cousin of Hume, the Abbé Seignelay Colbert, was at that time Vicar-General of the diocese. Colbert was of the same family as the great minister, and doubtless owed his success in the Gallican Church to that connection. Hume’s personal popularity in Paris was enormous, and his letters of introduction, which he wrote or procured, were everywhere of service to the travellers. The Abbé, immediately on their arrival, promised Hume he would do all that he could to make their stay agreeable. After a month he was full of enthusiasm for his new friends:—“Mr. Smith is a sublime man. His heart and his mind are equally admirable.... The Duke, his pupil, is a very amiable spirit, and does his exercises well, and is making progress in French.”
The Abbé was a man of liberal ideas. Promoted to the bishopric of Rodez, he tried to assist the agriculture and manufactures of his diocese, and even had a momentary popularity in Paris in the year of the Revolution (1789), when as a member of the States-General he proposed the union of the clergy with the Third Estate. The Archbishop of Toulouse at this time was the famous Loménie de Brienne, an old friend of Turgot and Morellet, and so far a disciple of their economic principles that he persuaded the States of Languedoc to adopt free trade in corn. But, as Mr. Rae observes, he could not have been very friendly to Smith; for afterwards, when Cardinal and Minister of France, he refused Morellet a hundred louis to defray the cost of printing his translation of the Wealth of Nations. In spite of Colbert’s kindness, the early months at Toulouse dragged heavily, and the Duke proved at first an exacting companion. On July 5th, Smith sent a rather lugubrious and petulant letter to Hume:—
“I should be much obliged to you if you could send us recommendations to the Duke of Richelieu, the Marquis de Lorges, and the Intendant of the Province. Mr. Townshend assured me that the Duc de Choiseul was to recommend us to all the people of fashion here and everywhere else in France. We have heard nothing, however, of these recommendations, and have had our way to make as well as we could by the help of the Abbé, who is a stranger here almost as much as we. The progress indeed we have made is not very great. The Duke is acquainted with no Frenchman whatever. I cannot cultivate the acquaintance of the few with whom I am acquainted, as I cannot bring them to our house, and am not always at liberty to go to theirs. The life which I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable dissipated life in comparison of that which I lead here at Present. I have begun to write a book in order to pass away the time.”
The world has no reason to regret this want of gaiety, for the book which Smith had begun in order to “pass away the time” was no other than the Wealth of Nations. At Bordeaux, Adam Smith, his pupil and the Abbé met Colonel Barré who wrote from that town to Hume on September the 4th:—
“I thank you for your last letter from Paris, which I received just as Smith and his élève and l’Abbé Colbert were sitting down to dine with me at Bordeaux. The latter is a very honest fellow, and deserves to be a bishop; make him one if you can.... Smith agrees with me in thinking that you are turned soft by the délices of the French Court, and that you don’t write in that nervous manner you was remarkable for in the more northern climates.”