Twenty-three years afterwards there is an entry in the diary of Samuel Rogers: “Adam Smith said Turgot was an honest, well-meaning man, but unacquainted with the world and human nature; that it was his maxim (he mentioned it to Hume, but never to Smith) that whatever is right may be done.” This is certainly not Adam Smith’s whole mind about Turgot, for whom he entertained a lively admiration. But undoubtedly he considered that his own obligations to the French School of Political Economy began and ended with Quesnai, and we know that he intended at one time to dedicate his book to the author of the Economic Table. Turgot, Morellet, Rivière, and the rest were interpreters of Quesnai—disciples, not masters.
Quesnai was the inventor of a new system, the founder of a sect, and the wielder of whatever influence that sect exerted on the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s intercourse with Quesnai and the physiocrats, as well as a careful study of their writings, accounts for some important developments of theory which distinguish his book from his lectures, and particularly the attention he there pays to the problem of distribution, as well as a distinct though moderated bias towards agriculture as the most productive of pursuits. He was not a physiocrat. Indeed his criticism of the distinctive doctrine of the school, that all wealth comes from the soil, was felt to be convincing and final. But he went a long way with them, and some of his most important practical conclusions coincided with theirs. No reader of the ninth chapter of Smith’s fourth book could doubt that Smith knew Quesnai as well as Quesnai’s Table, which had been published in 1758 and was regarded with an almost superstitious veneration by the whole sect. If the doubt existed, it would be dispelled by a curious piece of evidence. Of the half-dozen letters he wrote from France that have been preserved, the longest, dated Compiègne, August 26, 1766, is to Charles Townshend, and describes some anxious moments in which he had called in the aid of the king’s physician. The Duke of Buccleuch had been to Compiègne to see the camp and to hunt with the King and the Court, and after hunting had eaten too heartily of a cold supper with a vast quantity of salad and some cold punch. Sickness and fever followed. The faithful tutor begged him to send for a doctor:—
“He refused a long time, but at last, upon seeing me uneasy, consented. I sent for Quenay, first ordinary physician to the King. He sent me word he was ill. I then sent for Senac; he was ill likewise. I went to Quenay myself to beg that, notwithstanding his illness, which was not dangerous, he would come to see the Duke. He told me he was an old infirm man, whose attendance could not be depended on, and advised me as his friend to depend upon De la Saone, first physician to the Queen. I went to De la Saone. He was gone out, and was not expected home that night. I returned to Quenay, who followed me immediately to the Duke. It was by this time seven at night. The Duke was in the same profuse sweat which he had been in all day and all the preceding night. In this situation Quenay declared that it was improper to do anything till the sweat should be over. He only ordered him some cooling ptisane drink. Quenay’s illness made it impossible for him to return next day (Monday), and De la Saone has waited on the Duke ever since, to my entire satisfaction.”
In reading this we are reminded of a passage in the Wealth of Nations where Quesnai is described as “a physician, and a very speculative physician,” who thought the health of the human body could be preserved only by a certain precise regimen of diet and exercise, the slightest violation of which necessarily occasioned some degree of disease or disorder. The letter to Townshend continues:—
“Depend upon hearing from me by every post till his perfect recovery; if any threatening symptom should appear I shall immediately despatch an express to you; so keep your mind as easy as possible. There is not the least probability that any such symptom ever will appear. I never stir from his room from eight in the morning till ten at night, and watch for the smallest change that happens to him. I should sit by him all night too if the ridiculous, impertinent jealousy of Cook, who thinks my assiduity an encroachment upon his duty, would not be so much alarmed, as it gave some disturbance even to his master in his present illness.”
The visit was now drawing to an end, but our account of it would be incomplete if we omitted Smith’s part in one of the most furious squabbles of the century. Rousseau had arrived in Paris almost simultaneously with our travellers, tempted by Hume’s generous promise to find him a refuge in England from his persecutors. The advent of the author of the Social Contract and Émile threw Paris into a tumult of excitement. “People may talk of ancient Greece as they please,” wrote Hume, full of affection and enthusiasm for his protégé, “but no nation was ever so proud of genius as this, and no person ever so much engaged their attention as Rousseau. Voltaire and everybody else are quite eclipsed by him.” The philosophers of Paris predicted a quarrel before they got to Calais, but for some time Hume contrived to manage this wayward, suspicious genius admirably well, procuring him a pension and a comfortable establishment in Derbyshire. At last, in June, Rousseau suddenly lost his head, mastered by the haunting fears of treachery, and wrote to Hume that his horrible designs were at last found out. For once in his life Hume lost his temper, and discretion departed from him. He determined to punish Rousseau’s ingratitude and put himself right in the eyes of the world. But before taking this step he wrote to consult his friends in Paris, and Smith sent the following reply:—
“Paris, 6th July 1766.
“My dear Friend,—I am thoroughly convinced that Rousseau is as great a rascal as you and as every man here believes him to be. Yet let me beg of you not to think of publishing anything to the world upon the very great impertinence which he has been guilty of to you. By refusing the pension which you had the goodness to solicit for him with his own consent, he may have thrown, by the baseness of his proceedings, a little ridicule upon you in the eyes of the court and the ministry. Stand this ridicule; expose his brutal letter, but without giving it out of your own hand, so that it may never be printed; and, if you can, laugh at yourself; and I shall pawn my life that before three weeks are at an end this little affair which at present gives you so much uneasiness shall be understood to do you as much honour as anything that has ever happened to you. By endeavouring to unmask before the public this hypocritical pedant, you run the risk of disturbing the tranquillity of your whole life. By letting him alone he cannot give you a fortnight’s uneasiness. To write against him is, you may depend upon it, the very thing he wishes you to do. He is in danger of falling into obscurity in England, and he hopes to make himself considerable by provoking an illustrious adversary. He will have a great party, the Church, the Whigs, the Jacobites, the whole wise English nation, who will love to mortify a Scotchman, and to applaud a man who has refused a pension from the King. It is not unlikely, too, that they may pay him very well for having refused it, and that even he may have had in view this compensation. Your whole friends here wish you not to write,—the Baron, D’Alembert, Madame Riccoboni, Mademoiselle Riancourt, M. Turgot, etc. etc. M. Turgot, a friend every way worthy of you, desired me to recommend this advice to you in a particular manner as his most earnest entreaty and opinion. He and I are both afraid that you are surrounded with evil counsellors, and that the advice of your English literati, who are themselves accustomed to publishing all their little gossiping stories in newspapers, may have too much influence upon you. Remember me to Mr. Walpole, and believe me to be with the most sincere affection, ever yours,
Adam Smith.”
Within six months Hume was sorry that he had not taken this sage advice, and blamed himself for the “Succinct Exposure,” which had been followed of course by a cloud of pamphlets. We must be careful not to suppose from this letter that Smith really had a mean opinion of Rousseau. He had reviewed with warm but discerning praise the second discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Mankind; and in later days he spoke with reverential emotion of the author of the Social Contract.
Smith was now anxious to return home. To Millar, his publisher, he wrote early in the autumn:—“Though I am very happy here, I long passionately to rejoin my old friends, and if I had once got fairly to your side of the water, I think I should never cross it again. Recommend the same sober way of thinking to Hume. He is light-hearted, tell him, when he talks of coming to spend the remainder of his days here or in France.”
Their return was precipitated by a tragedy. Hew Scott, the Duke’s younger brother, a lad of nineteen, was assassinated in the streets of Paris on October 19th. Smith and the Duke almost immediately left Paris, and were in London at the beginning of November. “We returned,” wrote the Duke to Dugald Stewart, “after having spent near three years together without the slightest disagreement or coolness, and on my part with every advantage that could be expected from the society of such a man. We continued to live in friendship till the hour of his death.” Besides the substantial advantages of independence, Smith, as we learn from many of his contemporaries, had gained vastly in manner, address, and knowledge of the world. Much of his awkwardness had disappeared. In the bustle of travel and society, he almost forgot how to be absent-minded.