Adam Smith

by Francis W. Hirst

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.