Life of Adam Smith Part 7

20. For the third ditto, 1.

21. For the fourth ditto, 15s.

22. For the fifth ditto, 10s.

The articles were asked to be delivered to Mr. Walter Goodall (David Hume's a.s.sistant in the work of librarian), at the Advocates' Library, before the first Monday of December.[87] On the 19th of August the following additional prizes were offered:--

23. To the farmer who plants the greatest number (not under 1000) of timber trees, oak, beech, ash, or elm, in hedgerows before December 1756, 10.

24. Second ditto (not under 500), 5.

25. To the farmer who shall raise the greatest number (not under 2000) of young thorn plants before December 1758, 6.

26. Second ditto (not under 1000), 4.

In the following year the society increased the number of its prizes to 92; in 1757 to 120, in 1758 to 138, and in 1759 to 142; and they were devoted to the encouragement of every variety of likely industry--kid gloves, straw hats, felt hats, soap, cheese, cradles to be made of willow grown in Scotland. One premium was offered to the person who would "cure the greatest number of smoky chimneys to the satisfaction of the society."

The prize for the best essay on taste was won by Professor Gerard of Aberdeen, and the essay was published, and is still well known to students of metaphysics; and the prize for the best dissertation on vegetation and agriculture fell to Dr. Francis Home. The best invention was a piece of linen made like Ma.r.s.eille work but on a loom, and for this 20 were awarded to Peter Brotherton, weaver in Dirleton, East Lothian. Foulis won in 1757 the prize for the best printed book in Roman characters by his _Horace_, and for the best printed book in Greek characters by his _Iliad_; and in 1759 Professor Gerard again won a prize by his dissertation on style.

This society, while it lasted, undoubtedly exercised a most beneficial influence in developing and improving the industrial resources of Scotland. The carpet manufacture alone rose 1000 in the year after the establishment of the prizes, and the rise was believed to be due to the stimulus they imparted. But, useful and active and celebrated as it was, the Select Society died within ten years of its origin. The usual explanation is that it owed its death to the effects of a sarcasm of Charles Townshend's. Townshend was brought to hear one of the wonderful debates, which were thought to reflect a new glory on Edinburgh, and was even elected a member of the society, but he observed when he came out that, while he admitted the eloquence of the orators, he was unable to understand a word they said, inasmuch as they spoke in what was to him a foreign tongue. "Why," he asked, "can you not learn to speak the English language, as you have already learnt to write it?"[88]

This was to touch Scotchmen of that period who made any pretensions to education at one of their most sensitive parts. Scotch--the broad dialect of Burns and Fergusson--was still the common medium of intercourse in polite society, and might be heard even from the pulpit or the bench, though English was flowing rapidly into fas.h.i.+on, and the younger and more ambitious sort of people were trying their best to lose the native dialect. We know the pains taken by great writers like Hume and Robertson to clear their English composition of Scotch idioms, and the greater but less successful pains taken by Wedderburn to cure himself of his Scotch p.r.o.nunciation, to which he reverted after all in his old age. Under these circ.u.mstances Townshend's sarcasm occasioned almost a little movement of lingual reform. Thomas Sheridan, who was about this time full of a method he had invented of imparting to foreigners a proper p.r.o.nunciation of the English language by means of sounds borrowed from their own, and who had just been giving lessons to Wedderburn, and probably practising the new method on him, was brought north in 1761 and delivered a course of sixteen lectures in St. Paul's Chapel, Carrubber's Close, to about 300 gentlemen--"the most eminent," it is reported, "in the country for rank and abilities." Immediately thereafter the Select Society organised a special a.s.sociation for promoting the writing and speaking of the English language in Scotland, and engaged a teacher of correct English p.r.o.nunciation from London. Smith was not one of the directors of this new a.s.sociation, but Robertson, Ferguson, and Blair were, together with a number of peers, baronets, lords of Session, and leaders of the bar. But spite of the imposing auspices under which this simple project of an English elocution master was launched, it proved a signal failure, for it touched the national vanity. It seemed to involve a humiliating confession of inferiority to a rival nation at the very moment when that nation was raging with abuse of the Scotch, when Wilkes was publis.h.i.+ng the _North Briton_, and Churchill was writing his lampoons; and when it was advertised in the Edinburgh newspapers, it provoked such a storm of antipathy and ridicule that even the honourable society which furthered the scheme began to lose favour, its subscriptions and members.h.i.+p declined, and presently the whole organisation fell to pieces. That is the account commonly given of the fall of the Select Society, and the society certainly reached its culminating point in 1762. After that subscribers withdrew their names, or refused to pay their subscriptions, and in 1765 the society had no funds to offer more than six prizes and ceased to exist, its own explanation being that it died of the loss of novelty. "The arrears of subscriptions seem," it says, "to confirm an observation that has sometimes been made, that in Scotland every disinterested plan of public utility is slighted as soon as it loses the charm of novelty."[89]

Another interesting but even more abortive project which Smith took a leading part in promoting at this same period was the publication of a new literary magazine, ent.i.tled the _Edinburgh Review_, of which the first number appeared in July 1755, and the second and last in January 1756. This project also originated, like the Select Society, in a sentiment of Scotch patriotism. It was felt that though Scotland was at the time stirring with an important literary and scientific movement, the productions of the Scotch press were too much ignored by the English literary periodicals, and received inadequate appreciation even in Scotland itself for want of a good critical journal on the spot. "If countries may be said to have their ages with respect to improvement," says the preface to the first number of the new _Review_, "then North Britain may be considered as in a state of early youth, guided and supported by the more mature strength of her kindred country. If in anything her advances have been such as to make a more forward state, it is in science." After remarking that the two obstacles to the literary advancement of Scotland had hitherto been her deficiency in the art of printing and her imperfect command of good English, and that the first of these obstacles had been removed entirely, and the second shown by recent writers to be capable of being surmounted, it proceeds: "The idea therefore was that to show men at this particular stage of the country's progress the gradual advance of science would be a means of inciting them to a more eager pursuit of learning, to distinguish themselves and to do honour to their country." The editor was Alexander Wedderburn, who afterwards became Lord High Chancellor of England and Earl of Rosslyn, but had in 1755 only just pa.s.sed as an advocate at the Scotch bar; and the contributors were Robertson, who wrote eight review articles on new historical publications; Blair, who gave one or two indifferent notices of works in philosophy; Jardine, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who discussed Ebenezer Erskine's sermons, a few theological pamphlets, and Mrs. Cleland's Cookery Book; and Adam Smith, who contributed to the first number a review of Dr. Johnson's _Dictionary_, and to the second a remarkable letter to the editor proposing to widen the scope of the _Review_, and giving a striking survey of the state of contemporary literature in all the countries of Europe. Smith's two contributions are out of sight the ablest and most important articles the _Review_ published.

He gives a warm and most appreciative welcome to Johnson's _Dictionary_, but thinks it would have been improved if the author had in the first place more often censured words not of approved use, and if in the second he had, instead of simply enumerating the several meanings of a word, arranged them into cla.s.ses and distinguished princ.i.p.al from subsidiary meanings. Then to ill.u.s.trate what he wants, Smith himself writes two model articles, one on _Wit_ and the other on _Humour_, both acute and interesting. He counts humour to be always something accidental and fitful, the disease of a disposition, and he considers it much inferior to wit, though it may often be more amusing. "Wit expresses something that is more designed, concerted, regular, and artificial; humour something that is more wild, loose, extravagant, and fantastical; something which comes upon a man by fits which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness. Humour, it has been said, is often more diverting than wit; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of humour as a gentleman is above a buffoon; a buffoon, however, will often divert more than a gentleman."

In his second contribution--a long letter to the editor published in the appendix to the second number--Smith advocates the enlargement of the scope of the _Review_ so as to give some account of works of importance published abroad, even though s.p.a.ce had to be provided for the purpose by neglecting unimportant publications issued from the Scotch press, and, in fact, he considers this subst.i.tution as a necessity for the continued life of the _Review_. For, says he, "you will oblige the public much more by giving them an account of such books as are worthy of their regard than by filling your paper with all the insignificant literary news of the time, of which not an article in a hundred is likely to be thought of a fortnight after the publication of the work that gave occasion to it." He then proceeds to a review of contemporary continental literature, which he says meant at that time the literature of France. Italy had ceased to produce literature, and Germany produced only science. A sentence or two may be quoted from his comparison between French and English literature, because they show that he was not, as he is sometimes accused of being, an unfair depreciator of the great writers of England and a blind admirer of those of France. He will be owned to have had a very just opinion of the specific merits of each.

"Imagination, genius, and invention," he says, "seem to be the talents of the English; taste, judgment, propriety, and order, of the French.

In the old English poets, in Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, there often appears, amidst some irregularities and extravagancies, a strength of imagination so vast, so gigantic and supernatural, as astonishes and confounds the reader into that admiration of their genius which makes him despise as mean and insignificant all criticism upon the inequalities of their writings. In the eminent French writers such sallies of genius are more rarely to be met with, but instead of them a just arrangement, an exact propriety and decorum, joined to an equal and studied elegance of sentiment and diction, which, as it never strikes the heart like those violent and momentary flashes of imagination, so it never revolts the judgment by anything that is absurd or unnatural, nor ever wearies the attention by any gross inequality in the style or want of connection in the method, but entertains the mind with a regular succession of agreeable, interesting, and connected objects."

From poetry he pa.s.ses to philosophy, and finds that the French encyclopedists had left their native Cartesian system for the English system of Bacon and Newton, and were proving more effective expositors of that system than the English themselves. After reviewing the _Encyclopedie_ at considerable length, he gives an account of the recent scientific works of Buffon and Reaumur, and, among books in metaphysics, of Rousseau's famous _Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind_, which was then only a few months out, and in which, Smith says, Rousseau, "by the help of his style, together with a little philosophical chemistry," has made "the principles and ideas of the profligate Mandeville seem to have all the purity and simplicity of the morals of Plato, and to be only the true spirit of a republican carried a little too far." He gives a summary of the book, translates a few specimen pa.s.sages, and concludes by saying, "I shall only add that the dedication to the Republic of Geneva, of which M. Rousseau has the honour of being a citizen, is an agreeable, animated, and I believe, too, a just panegyric."

Sir James Mackintosh, who republished these two numbers of the first _Edinburgh Review_ in 1818 after the second _Edinburgh Review_ had made the name famous, considers it noteworthy, as showing the contributors to have taken up a very decided political position for so early a period, that the preface to the first number speaks boldly in praise of George Buchanan's "undaunted spirit of liberty." But Smith's warm expression of admiration for the Republic of Geneva, to which he reckons it an honour to belong, is equally notable. He seems to have been always theoretically a republican, and he certainly had the true spirit of a republican in his love of all rational liberty. His pupil and lifelong friend, the Earl of Buchan, says: "He approached to republicanism in his political principles, and considered a commonwealth as the platform for the monarchy, hereditary succession in the chief magistrate being necessary only to prevent the commonwealth from being shaken by ambition, or absolute dominion introduced by the consequences of contending factions."[90]

Smith's scheme for the improvement of the _Review_ was never carried out, for with that number the _Review_ itself came to a sudden and premature end. The reason for giving it up is explained by Lord Woodhouselee to have been that the strictures pa.s.sed by it on some fanatical publications of the day had excited such a clamour "that a regard to the public tranquillity and their own determined the reviewers to discontinue their labours."[91] Doubt has been expressed of the probability of this explanation, but Lord Woodhouselee, who was personally acquainted with several of the contributors, is likely to have known of the circ.u.mstances, and his statement is borne out besides by certain corroborative facts. It is true the theological articles of the two numbers appear to us to be singularly inoffensive.

They were entrusted to the only contributor who was not a young man, Dr. Jardine, the wily leader of the Moderate party in the Church, the Dean of the Thistle mentioned in Lord Dreghorn's verses as governing the affairs of the city as well as the Church through his power over his father-in-law--

The old Provost, who danced to the whistle Of that arch politician, the Dean of the Thistle.

The arch politician contrived to make his theological criticism colourless even to the point of vapidity, but that did not save him or his _Review_; it perhaps only exposed them the more to the attacks of zealots. His notice of the sermons of Ebenezer Erskine, the Secession leader, provoked a sharp pamphlet from Erskine's son, in which the reviewers were accused of teaching unsound theological views, of putting the creature before the Creator by allowing the lawfulness of a lie in certain situations, of throwing ridicule on the Bible and the Westminster _Confession of Faith_, and of having David Hume, an atheist, among their number.

This last thrust was a mere controversial guess, and, strangely enough, it guessed wrong. A new literary review is started in Edinburgh by a few of Hume's younger friends, and Hume himself--the only one of them who had yet made any name in literature, and the most distinguished man of letters then in Scotland--is neither asked to contribute to the periodical, nor even admitted to the secret of its origination. When the first number appeared he went about among his acquaintances expressing the greatest surprise that so promising a literary adventure should be started by Edinburgh men of letters without a whisper of it ever reaching his ears. More than that, his very name and writings were strangely and studiously ignored in its pages. His _History of the Stewarts_ was one of the last new books, having been published in the end of 1754, and was unquestionably much the most important work that had recently come from any Scotch pen, yet in a periodical inst.i.tuted for the very purpose of devoting attention to the productions of Scotch authors, this work of his remained absolutely unnoticed.

Why this complete boycott of Hume by his own household? Henry Mackenzie "thinks he has heard" two reasons given for it: first, that Hume was considered too good-natured for a critic, and certain to have insisted on softening remarks his colleagues believed to be called for; and second, that they determined to keep him out of the secret entirely, because he could not keep a secret.[92] But this explanation does not hold together. If Hume was so good-natured, he would be less difficult rather than more difficult to manage; and as for not being able to keep a secret, that, as Mr. Burton observes, is a very singular judgment to pa.s.s on one who had been Secretary of Legation already and was soon to be Secretary of Legation again, and Under Secretary of State, without having been once under the shadow of such an accusation. Besides, neither of these reasons will explain the ignoring of his writings.

A more credible explanation must be looked for, and it can only be discovered in the intense _odium theologic.u.m_ which the name of Hume excited at the moment, and which made it imperative, if the new _Review_ was to get justice, that it should be severed from all a.s.sociation with his detested name. Scotland happened to be at that very hour in an exceptional ferment about his theological heresies, and one of the strangest of proposals had come before the previous General a.s.sembly of the Kirk, backed by a number of the most respected country clergy. It was no other than to summon the great sceptic to their bar, to visit his _Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals_ with censure, and to p.r.o.nounce against the author the major ban of excommunication.

The wise heads who rule the Scotch Church courts of course threw out this inconvenient proposal by the favourite ecclesiastical device of pa.s.sing an abstract resolution expressive of concern at the growing evils of the day, without committing the Church to any embarra.s.sing practical action; and Hume himself was, as Wedderburn told them he likely would be, hardened enough to laugh at the very idea of their anathema. But the originators of the agitation only returned to the battle, and prepared for a victory in the next a.s.sembly in May 1756.

Between the two a.s.semblies Hume wrote his friend Allan Ramsay, the painter, who was in Rome: "You may tell that reverend gentleman the Pope that there are men here who rail at him, and yet would be much greater persecutors had they equal power. The last a.s.sembly sat on me.

They did not propose to burn me, because they cannot, but they intended to give me over to Satan, which they think they have the power of doing. My friends, however, prevailed, and my d.a.m.nation is postponed for a twelvemonth, but next a.s.sembly will surely be upon me."[93] And so in truth it was. An overture came up calling for action regarding "one person calling himself David Hume, Esq., who hath arrived at such a degree of boldness as publicly to avow himself the author of books containing the most rude and open attacks upon the glorious Gospel of Christ," and a motion was made for the appointment of a committee "to inquire into the writings of this author, to call him before them, and prepare the matter for the next General a.s.sembly." This motion was again defeated, and the heresy-hunters pa.s.sed on to turn their attention to Lord Kames, and to summon the printers and publishers of his _Essays_ before the Edinburgh Presbytery to give up the author's name (the book having been published anonymously), "that he and they may be censured according to the law of the Gospel and the practice of this and all other well-governed churches."

It is open to us to believe that Hume's friends contemplated no more than a temporary exclusion of him from their counsels until this storm should pa.s.s by; but at any rate, as they launched their frail bark in the very thick of the storm, it would have meant instant swamping at that juncture to have taken the Jonah who caused all the commotion and made him one of their crew. For the same reason, when they found that, for all their precautions, the clamour overtook them notwithstanding, they simply put back into port and never risked so unreasoning and raging an element again.

It may indeed be thought that they declined Hume's co-operation, because they expressly hoisted the flag of religion in their preface, and professed one of their objects to be to resist the current attacks of infidelity. But there would have been no inconsistency in engaging the co-operation of an unbeliever on secular subjects, so long as they retained the rudder in their own hands, and men who were already Hume's intimate personal friends were not likely to be troubled with such unnecessary scruples about their consistency. The true reason both of Hume's exclusion from their secret and of their own abandonment of their undertaking is undoubtedly the reason given by Lord Woodhouselee, that they wanted to live and work in peace. They did not like, to use a phrase of Hamilton of Bangour, to have "zeal clanking her iron bands" about their ears. Hume, on the other hand, rather took pleasure in the din he provoked, and had he been a contributor the rest would have had difficulty--and may have felt so--in restraining him from gratifying that taste when any favourable opportunities offered.

While these things were going on in Edinburgh a book had made its appearance from the London press, which is often stated to have been written for the express purpose of converting Adam Smith to a belief in the miraculous evidences of Christianity. That book is the _Criterion of Miracles Examined_, by Smith's Oxford friend Bishop Douglas, then a country rector in Shrops.h.i.+re. It is written in the form of a letter to an anonymous correspondent, who had, in spite of his "good sense, candour, and learning," and on grounds "many of them peculiar to himself and not borrowed from books," "reasoned himself into an unfavourable opinion of the evidences of Christianity"; and this anonymous correspondent is said in Chalmers's _Biographical Dictionary_ to have been "since known to be Adam Smith." From Chalmers's _Dictionary_ the same statement has been repeated in the same words in subsequent biographical dictionaries and elsewhere, but neither Chalmers nor his successors reveal who it was to whom this was known, or how he came to know it; and on the other hand, Macdonald, the son-in-law and biographer of Douglas, makes no mention of Smith's name in connection with this work at all, and explicitly states that the book was written for the satisfaction of more than one of the author's friends, who had been influenced by the objections of Hume and others to the reality of the Gospel miracles.[94] This leaves the point somewhat undetermined.

Smith was certainly a Theist, his writings leave no doubt of that, but he most probably discarded the Christian miracles; and if Douglas's book is addressed to his particular position, discarded them on the ground that there is no possible criterion for distinguis.h.i.+ng true miracles from false, and enabling you to accept those of Christianity if you reject those of profane history. The Earl of Buchan, apostrophising Smith, asks, "Oh, venerable and worthy man, why was you not a Christian?" and tries to let his old professor down as gently as possible by suggesting that the reason lay in the warmth of his heart, which always made him express strongly the opinions of his friends, and carried him in this instance into sympathy with those of David Hume. That is obviously a lame conclusion, because Smith's friends.h.i.+p for Hume never made him a Tory, nor even on the point of religion were his opinions identical with those of Hume; but Lord Buchan's words may be quoted as an observation by an acute man of a feature in Smith's character not without biographical interest. "Had he (Smith) been a friend of the worthy ingenious Horrox," says his lords.h.i.+p, "he would have believed that the moon sometimes disappeared in a clear sky without the interposition of a cloud, or of another truly honest and respectable man, that a professor of mathematics at Upsala had a tail of six inches long to his rump."[95]

In 1756 the literary circle in Edinburgh was much excited by the performance of John Home's tragedy of _Douglas_. Smith was not present at that performance; but he is stated by Henry Mackenzie, in his _Life of John Home_, to have been present at some of the previous rehearsals of the play, and at any rate he was deeply interested in it; and Hume, as soon as he hears of the continued success of the play in London, hastens to communicate the welcome news to his friend in Glasgow, with whom he was in correspondence about his own historical plans. Smith seems to have been advising him, instead of following up his _History of the Stewarts_ by the history of succeeding periods, to go back and write the history of the period before the Stewarts.

After mentioning John Home, Hume proceeds: "I can now give you the satisfaction of hearing that the play, though not near so well acted in Covent Garden as in this place, is likely to be very successful.

Its great intrinsic merit breaks through all obstacles. When it shall be printed (which shall be soon) I am persuaded it will be esteemed the best, and by French critics the only tragedy of our language!...

"Did you ever hear of such madness and folly as our clergy have lately fallen into? For my part, I expect that the next a.s.sembly will very solemnly p.r.o.nounce the sentence of excommunication against me, but I do not apprehend it to be a matter of any consequence; what do you think?

"I am somewhat idle at present and somewhat indifferent as to my next undertaking. Shall I go backwards or forwards in my History? I think you used to tell me that you approved more of my going backwards. The other would be the more popular subject, but I am afraid I shall not find materials sufficient to ascertain the truth, at least without settling in London, which I own I have some reluctance to. I am settled here very much to my mind, and would not wish at my years to change the place of my abode.

"I have just now received a copy of _Douglas_ from London. It will instantly be put in the press. I hope to be able to send you a copy in the same parcel with the dedication."[96]

Hume was now very anxious to have his friend nearer him, and thought in 1758 an opportunity could be contrived of translating Smith to a chair in the University of Edinburgh. There was at that time some probability of Professor Abercromby resigning the chair of Public Law (then styled the chair of the Law of Nature and Nations), and as Smith, though not a lawyer, was yet a distinguished professor of jurisprudence, his friends in Edinburgh immediately suggested his candidature, especially as they believed such a change would not be unacceptable to himself. The chair of the Law of Nature and Nations was one of the best endowed in the College, having a revenue of 150 a year independently of fees, but it had been founded as a job, and continued ever since to be treated as a sinecure. Not a single lecture had ever been delivered by any of its inc.u.mbents, in spite of repeated remonstrances on the part of the Faculty of Advocates, and Hume believed that if the Town Council, as administrators of the College, could be got to press for the delivery of the statutory lectures, the present professor would prefer the alternative of resignation. In that event the vacant office might easily, in Hume's opinion, be obtained by Smith, inasmuch as the patronage was in the hands of the Crown, and Crown patronage in Scotland at the time was virtually exercised through Lord Justice-Clerk Milton (a nephew of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, the patriot), who had been, ever since the death of Lord President Forbes, the chief confidential adviser of the Duke of Argyle, the Minister for Scotland, and was personally acquainted with Smith through his daughter Mrs. Wedderburn of Gosford, the friend of Robertson and John Home.

Others of Smith's Edinburgh friends zealously joined Hume in his representations, especially the faithful Johnstone (afterwards Sir W.

Pulteney), who actually wrote Smith a letter on the subject along with Hume's. Hume's letter is as follows:--

DEAR SMITH--I sit down to write to you along with Johnstone, and as we have been talking over the matter, it is probable we shall employ the same arguments. As he is the younger lawyer, I leave him to open the case, and suppose that you have read his letter first. We are certain that the settlement of you here and of Ferguson at Glasgow would be perfectly easy by Lord Milton's Interest. The Prospect of prevailing with Abercrombie is also very good. For the same statesman by his influence over the Town Council could oblige him either to attend, which he never would do, or dispose of the office for the money which he gave for it.

The only real difficulty is then with you. Pray then consider that this is perhaps the only opportunity we shall ever have of getting you to town. I dare swear that you think the difference of Place is worth paying something for, and yet it will really cost you nothing. You made above a hundred pound a year by your cla.s.s when in this Place, though you had not the character of Professor. We cannot suppose that it will be less than a hundred and thirty after you are settled. John Stevenson[97]--and it is John Stevenson--makes near a hundred and fifty, as we were informed upon Enquiry. Here is a hundred pounds a year for eight years' Purchase, which is a cheap purchase, even considered in the way of a Bargain. We flatter ourselves that you rate our company at something, and the Prospect of settling Ferguson will be an additional inducement. For though we think of making him take up the Project if you refuse it, yet it is uncertain whether he will consent; and it is attended in his case with many very obvious objections. I beseech you therefore to weigh all these motives over again. The alteration of these circ.u.mstances merit that you should put the matter again in deliberation.

I had a letter from Miss Hepburn, where she regrets very much that you are settled at Glasgow, and that we had the chance of seeing you so seldom.--I am, dear Smith, yours sincerely,

DAVID HUME.

_8th June 1758._

_P.S._--Lord Milton can with his finger stop the foul mouths of all the Roarers against heresy.[98]

The postscript shows what we have already indicated, that Smith had not escaped the general hue and cry against heresy which was now for some years abroad in the country.

The Miss Hepburn who regrets so much the remoteness of Smith's residence is doubtless Miss Hepburn of Monkrig, near Haddington, one of those gifted literary ladies who were then not infrequently to be found in the country houses of Scotland. It was to Miss Hepburn and her sisters that John Home is said to have been indebted for the first idea of Douglas, and Robertson submitted to her the ma.n.u.script of his _History of Scotland_ piece by piece as he wrote it. When it was finished the historian sent her a presentation copy with a letter, in which he said: "Queen Mary has grown up to her present form under your eye; you have seen her in many different shapes, and you have now a right to her. Were I a _galante_ writer now, what a fine contrast might I make between you and Queen Mary? What a pretty string of ant.i.theses between your virtues and her vices. I am glad, however, she did not resemble you. If she had, Rizzio would have only played first fiddle at her consort (_sic_), with a pension of a thousand merks and two benefits in a winter; Darnley would have been a colonel in the Guards; Bothwell would, on account of his valour, have been Warden of the Middle Marches, but would have been forbid to appear at court because of his profligacy. But if all that had been done, what would have become of my History?"[99]

Smith seems to have declined, for whatever reason, to take up the suggestion of Hume about this chair of Law, for we find Hume presently trying hard to secure the place for Ferguson. The difficulty may have been about the price, for though Hume speaks of 800, it seems Abercromby wanted more than 1000, and Ferguson too had no mind to begin life with such a debt on his shoulders. But the world is probably no loser by the difficulty, whatever it was, which kept Smith five years longer among the merchants and commercial problems of Glasgow.

Smith was one of the founders, or at least the original members, of the Edinburgh Poker Club in 1762. Every one has heard of that famous club, but most persons probably think of it as if it were merely a social or convivial society; and Mr. Burton lends some countenance to that mistake by declaring that he has never been able to discover any other object it existed for except the drinking of claret. But the Poker Club was really a committee for political agitation, like the Anti-Corn-Law League or the Home Rule Union; only, after the more genial manners of those times, the first thing the committee thought requisite for the proper performance of their work was to lay in a stock of sound Burgundy that could be drawn from the wood at eighteenpence or two s.h.i.+llings a quart, to engage a room in a tavern for the exclusive use of the members, and establish a weekly or bi-weekly dinner at a moderate figure, to keep the _poker_ of agitation in active exercise. The club got its name from the practical purpose it was inst.i.tuted to serve; it was to be an instrument for _stirring_ opinion, especially in high quarters, on a public question which was exciting the people of Scotland greatly at the moment, the question of the establishment of a national Scotch militia. Some of the members thought that when that question was settled, the club should go on and take up others. George Dempster of Dunnichen, for example, an old and respected parliamentary hand of that time, wrote Dr. Carlyle in 1762 that when they got their militia, they ought to agitate for parliamentary reform, "so as to let the industrious farmer and manufacturer share at last in a privilege now engrossed by the great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener baillie."[100] But they never got the length of considering other reforms, for the militia question was not settled in that generation. It outlived the Poker Club, and it outlived the Younger Poker Club which was enrolled to take up the cause in 1786, and it was not finally settled till 1793.

The Scotch had been roused to the defenceless condition of their country by the alarming appearance of Thurot in Scotch waters in 1759, and had instantly with one voice raised a cry for the establishment of a national militia. The whole country seemed to have set its mind on this measure with a singular unanimity, and a bill for its enactment was accordingly introduced into the House of Commons in 1760 by two of the princ.i.p.al Scotch members, both former ministers of the Crown--James Oswald and Gilbert Elliot; but it was rejected by a large majority, because within only fifteen years of the Rebellion the English members were unwilling to entrust the Scotch people with arms.

The rejection of the bill provoked a deep feeling of national indignation, the slur it cast on the loyalty of Scotland being resented even more than the indifference it showed to her perils. It was under the influence of this wave of national sentiment that the Poker Club was founded in 1762, to procure for the Scotch at once equality of rights with the English and adequate defences for their country.