[698] ‘Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advance in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expense. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours.’ … ‘I go farther, and observe, that where an open communication is preserved among nations, it is impossible but the domestic industry of every one must receive an increase from the improvements of the others.’ Essay on the Jealousy of Trade, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 368, 369.
[699] This letter, which I have referred to in my first volume, p. 229, was published, for, I believe, the first time, in 1846, in Burton's Life and Correspondence of Hume, vol. ii. p. 486. It is, however, very difficult to determine what Adam Smith's opinion really was upon this subject, and how far he was aware that rent did not enter into price. In one passage in the Wealth of Nations (book i. chap. vi. p. 21) he says of wages, profit, and rent, ‘in every society, the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter, more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.’ But in book i. chap. xi. p. 61, he says, ‘High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.’ This latter opinion we now know to be the true one; it is, however, incompatible with that expressed in the first passage. For, if rent is the effect of price, it cannot be a component of it.
[700] Hence, when the Wealth of Nations appeared, one of our wise men gravely said that ‘Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject, any more than a lawyer upon physic.’ See Boswell's Life of Johnson, edit. Croker, 1848, p. 478, where this remark is ascribed to Sir John Pringle.
[701] ‘He was sent to a mercantile house at Bristol in 1734; but he found the drudgery of this employment intolerable, and he retired to Rheims.’ Brougham's Life of Hume, Glasgow, 1856, p. 169. See also Ritchie's Life of Hume, p. 6. In Roberts' Memoirs of Hannah More, 2d ed. 1834, vol. i. p. 16, it is said that ‘two years of his life were spent in a merchant's counting-house in Bristol, whence he was dismissed on account of the promptitude of his pen in the correction of the letters intrusted to him to copy.’ The latter part of this story is improbable; the former part is certainly incorrect; since Hume himself says, ‘In 1734, I went to Bristol, with some recommendations to eminent merchants, but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat.’ Own Life, p. v.
[702] What Sir James Mackintosh says of him is only a faint echo of the general voice of his contemporaries. ‘His temper was calm, not to say cold; but though none of his feelings were ardent, all were engaged on the side of virtue. He was free from the slightest tincture of malignity or meanness; his conduct was uniformly excellent.’ Mackintosh's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 162. A greater than Mackintosh, and a man who knew Hume intimately, expresses himself in much warmer terms. ‘Upon the whole,’ writes Adam Smith,—‘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.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. xxv. Some notices of Hume will be found in an interesting work just published. Autobiography of Alexander Carlyle, Edinburgh, 1860, pp. 272–278. But Carlyle, though a man of considerable practical skill, was incapable of large views, and was, therefore, unable, I will not say to measure, but even to conceive, the size of such an understanding as that possessed by David Hume. Of his want of speculative power, a decisive instance appears in his remarks on Adam Smith. He gravely says (Autobiography, p. 281), ‘Smith's fine writing is chiefly displayed in his book on Moral Sentiments, which is the pleasantest and most eloquent book on the subject. His Wealth of Nations, from which he was judged to be an inventive genius of the first order, is tedious and full of repetition. His separate essays in the second volume have the air of being occasional pamphlets, without much force or determination. On political subjects, his opinions were not very sound.’ It is rather too much when a village-preacher writes in this strain of the greatest man his country has ever produced.
[703] He speaks of him in the following extraordinary terms. ‘If we consider the variety of talents displayed by this man; as a public speaker, a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, an author, a philosopher; he is justly the object of great admiration. If we consider him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in which we view him at present, though very estimable, he was yet inferior to his contemporary Galileo, perhaps even to Kepler.’ … ‘The national spirit which prevails among the English, and which forms their great happiness, is the cause why they bestow on all their eminent writers, and on Bacon among the rest, such praises and acclamations as may often appear partial and excessive.’ Hume's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 194, 195, London, 1789.
[704] See the note in vol. i. p. 250, of Buckle's History of Civilization.
[705] Thus, for instance, in his remarkable Essay on the Balance of Trade, he says (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 349), ‘Every man who has ever reasoned on this subject, has always proved his theory, whatever it was, by facts and calculations, and by an enumeration of all the commodities sent to all foreign kingdoms;’ therefore (p. 350), ‘It may here be proper to form a general argument to prove the impossibility of this event, so long as we preserve our people and our industry.’
[706] ‘I have no great faith in political arithmetic.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. v. p. 218.
[707] Indeed, the only possible objection to them is that the language of their collectors is sometimes ambiguous; so that, by the same return, one statistician may mean one thing, and another statistician may mean something quite different. This is well exemplified in medical statistics; whence several writers, unacquainted with the philosophy of scientific proof, have supposed that medicine is incapable of mathematical treatment. In point of fact, however, the only real impediment is the shameful state of clinical and pathological terminology, which is in such confusion as to throw doubt upon all extensive numerical statements respecting disease.