Literary Club, which had been formed many years before, and of which Smith had been previously a member, were among those with whom he associated at this time; but neither history nor tradition has handed down to us any of those sallies of colloquial wit and eloquence for which many of his contemporaries, far less distinguished than himself in the higher walks of philosophy and learning, have become celebrated with posterity. That he was not distinguished by the flow or force of his mind in conversation is quite evident; and he is reported to have said of himself, that he was so much in the habit of husbanding his resources for his works in the closet, that he made it a rule never to talk in society upon any subject which he understood. This story, however, we should be inclined to disbelieve. Such voluntary and deliberate abstinence from the pleasures of social converse, even if it were allowed to be a virtue, would evidently be one very difficult in practice; and instead of allowing him the credit of so rare a species of self-denial, we are more disposed, in accounting for his habitual reserve, to class Dr. Smith with some other very eminent men (Addison and Dryden are amongst them), whom Johnson has so admirably described in the following passage: "There are men whose powers operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and cannot be recalled."* The light in which the characteristic quality of his mind was regarded by his friends may be partly gathered, amongst other testimonies, from the allusion to him in the verses which Dr. Barnard addressed to the members of the club, not long after the publication of the "Wealth of Nations." The stanza is as follows: If I have thoughts, and can't express 'em, Jones teach me modesty and Greek, And Beauclerc to converse. ship of the Duke of Buccleugh, and in, some measure, we may trust, as a reward for his invaluable labours, Dr Smith was appointed one of the Com missioners of the Customs in Scotland; an office which occasioned him to fix his residence in Edinburgh, where he continued to the end of his life. If we should consider this appointment only in the light of an acknowledgement, of a recompense too rarely bestowed by men in power, for labours purely philosophical, and having nothing to recommend them but their intrinsic truth and beauty, few things can be more gratifying than the contemplation, to every lover of science and of virtue. Even the rewards which have been occasionally bestowed upon men of genius, by princes and their ministers, have too often been conferred for its prostitution to the mere purposes of power; the price of its past or future service, or the bribe for its silence when that alone was to be bought. In the instance before us, it is gratifying to know, that the reward, if it was so meant, was equally honourable to the giver and the receiver. The works which Smith had published for the instruction of the world, had nothing to do with the possessors of power in his day, but to enlighten and direct its exercise. The parties and factions belonging to the period when he wrote could derive no particular or personal advantage from his writings; but mankind, in every age, will find in them the best corrective to faction and to party, by contemplating those eternal political truths with which party has rarely had anything to do, but which are equally salutary at all times, and under every form of government, for rulers and their people. But if we should consider that the appointment which was bestowed upon Smith, however gratifying in other respects, was the cause, as there is reason to fear, of an interruption to his studies, and of the loss to the world of those speculations to which he had alluded in the closing passage of his Moral Sentiments, and the completion of which he is known never to have entirely abandoned but with his life; we shall be disposed to lament, perhaps ungratefully to lament, that he who had already done so much for the advance In the year 1778, owing to the friend- ment of moral and political science, was * Life of Dryden. not permitted to do more, by the fulfilment of his engagement to give to { his country a theory of jurisprudence, and in this manner to finish the structure which he had designed in his earlier days, and to fill up the measure of his fame. There is the greater reason to lament this, because the office imposed upon this enlightened man was one of no dignity or importance; but a duty of mere routine, the discharge of which must have been irksome to a mind like his, accustomed during his life to so different an application of his faculties. He might have been called, like Turgot, to the administration of his country, have enjoyed the melancholy satisfaction of endeavouring to enforce the maxims he had taught, and have found, perhaps, like him in the end, that the intrigues of the cabinet, the favour of the court, and the prejudices of the people, are equally adverse to the temper and the triumph of philosophy. It was about this period that his friend and early patron, Lord Kames, in preparing a new edition of his work on the "Principles of Morality and Natural Religion," was induced to call in question the theory of Dr. Smith, and he therefore sent him a copy of the strictures he intended to introduce upon his work, before he proceeded to publication. To this Smith replied in the following letter, which we hesitate not to subjoin,-first, because, as we have before remarked, there are so few of his letters extant, and secondly, as it serves to shew the courtesy with which philosophic controversy was carried on in those days, and would generally be carried on, if the love of truth, and truth only, inspired it. "November 16th, 1778. "MY DEAR LORD, "I am much obliged to you for the kind communication of the objections you propose to make in your new edition, to my system. Nothing can be more perfectly friendly and polite than the terms in which you express yourself with regard to me; and I should be extremely peevish and ill-tempered if I could make the slightest opposition to their publication. I am, no doubt, extremely sorry to find myself of a different opinion both from so able a judge of the subject, and of so old and good a friend;-but differences of this kind are unavoidable, and besides-Partium contentionibus respublica crescit. should have been waiting on your Lordship before this time, but the remains of I a cold have, for these four or five days past, made it inconvenient for me to go out in the evening. Remember me to Mrs. Drummond, and believe me to be, my dear Lord, your most obliged, "And most humble servant, The greatest good conferred upon Dr. Smith by his official appointment, the greatest, indeed, that could be conferred by any additional wealth, was the power of extending the range of his benevolence, which is known to have been at all times exerted in acts of charity, far beyond what might have been expected of him, even after this moderate increase of his income. His excellent biographer has alluded to some remarkable instances of this nature in the life of Smith, which have been communicated to him by one of his confidential friends, where the assistance was on a scale as liberal as the manner of rendering it was delicate and affecting. Next to this was the satisfaction he derived from the privilege of spending the latter period of his life in the society of his oldest and dearest friends-free from those anxious cares with which the want of mere worldly competence has sometimes darkened the declining years of genius and of virtue. In the society of his mother, and of his cousin, Miss Douglas, who now formed part of his household, he enjoyed for some years every comfort and consolation that can be felt by one who is a stranger to the more endearing ties which bind a husband and a father. A simple, but hospitable table was always open to his friends. In 1784 he lost his mother, and four years after, his cousin; and their death was felt by him as a severe and irreparable loss; little to be soothed by any worldly honour or applause; it being the effect, perhaps, of age and of all true wisdom, to render the mind as insensible to such vanities, as it is to dispose it to the influence of the social and domestic affections. Were it otherwise, the affliction under which he suffered might have been somewhat alleviated by one of the most gratifying circumstances There is a letter of Dr. Reid's extant, addressed to Lord Kames, in which he says that "after all, the system of sympathy is only a refinement of the selfish system," a criticism very like to saying that white is only a refinement on the colour of blackthings, in which the plain sense of the world has discovered, some how or other, a pretty clear and durable distinction; notwithstanding the painter may blend them with his brush, or a logician, like Dr. Reid, confound them by his cavils. of his life, which occurred about this period. In the year 1787 the University of Glasgow elected him rector of that learned body; and that he felt this compliment very sensibly, is manifest from the letter which he addressed to the principal of the college in acknowledgment of this flattering distinction-an honour, however, be it remarked, which could scarcely have been rendered where it would have reflected back so much credit upon those who had bestowed it, and which, we may venture to say, would not have been lessened in the estimation of Dr. Smith, had he lived to see it conferred upon some illustrious names who have shared it in our own times. "No preferment," says he, "could have given me so much real satisfaction. No man can owe 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." The life of this illustrious man was now fast drawing to a close. For a considerable period previous to his death his health had gradually declined, and his mind reverted in his last moments with renewed regret to what he had left undone of the works he had so long designed. His death was approaching far too rapidly to leave the slightest hope of doing more; and his anxiety about the fate of his manuscripts became excessive. It was so great, that during his last illness, after reiterating the most earnest entreaties for their destruction after his death, he was yet not satisfied, and desired that the whole of his papers, except the few fragments which he bequeathed to the care of Dr. Hutton, might be destroyed immediately. His mind seemed greatly relieved, when he was assured that this was done. A very few days before he died, he had two or three of his select friends to sup with him, as was his custom; but finding his strength fail him, he retired to bed, and as he went away, he took leave of them by saying, "I believe, Gentlemen, we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." In the previous winter he had prepared a new edition of his "Moral Sentiments," and in the advertisement which he prefixed to it, he had still allowed himself to express a last and faint hope that it might yet be permitted to him to complete his long-projected work on jurisprudence. Even then, the ardour of his mind would not suffer him altogether to relinquish a hope which, it was but too evident, could never be fulfilled. He died only a few days after the meeting to which we have referred, on the 17th July, 1790, bequeathing the valuable library which he had collected to his nephew, Mr. D. Douglas; appointing his friends, Dr. Hutton and Dr. Black, the executors of his will; and entrusting to them the charge of publishing the few unfinished sketches which had been allowed to survive him. SECTION 7.-On the general Character and Writings of Smith. THE character of Dr. Smith, like that of all men whose lives have been devoted to the pursuits of philosophy and science, may be best traced in his writings. It has perhaps been the fortune of few men so eminent to have engaged so little in the commerce and bustle of active life, and of few, it has been said, to have been so little fitted for it yet the intellectual and moral capacities of this illustrious man were evidently of an order to have filled, and adorned, the highest station in society; and, notwithstanding the abstraction in which he lived, for the most part, from the business of the world, and some peculiar and characteristic traits which occasionally marked his habits and his opinions, it is clear that, with an understanding of the loftiest range, he was free, in many respects, from that exclusiveness and pedantry which have been sometimes ascribed to philosophers of great name, and which have given currency, we suppose, "to the opinion, so industriously propagated (says Mr. Hume) by the dunces in every age, that a man of genius is unfit for business." In the establishment of his most enlightened theories, and those least of all subject to be dis puted in their ultimate and general tendency, he did not lose sight of that modification which they may occasionally require in practice, for the accomplishment of an immediate and beneficial purpose; and if the evidence of many striking passages in his works may be trusted, he did not incur as a philosopher, and would not have incurred as a statesman, the censure of rashly and unfeelingly adhering to an abstract principle in disdain of the interests which might be prejudiced, or even the prejudices which might have been shocked, by its application. Nothing is more obvious, and nothing contributes so much to the beauty and value of his writing, as that in all his speculations he carried human life along, with him; he never forgot that it was the chief praise and glory of philosophy to teach men how to act and to live; and he breathes through every page the admirable sentiment of a noble author -"That whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance-nothing more * " This is eminently displayed in that valuable chapter to which we have referred, in the fifth book of the "Wealth of Nations," on the "Institutions for the Education of Youth"one of the most profound and powerful disquisitions in any language. Neither the abstractions of philosophy, nor the pride of learning, nor the habits of the professor, could render him insensible to the purpose to which they ought all to be subservient, namely, the real interest of those who are to be taught. But the spirit of monopoly in such institutions he shews to be as inimical to those interests as it is in every other case. The endowment of schools and colleges," he says, "have been opposed to this interest; they have not only corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but they have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones. Were there no endowed institutions for education, no system, no science could be taught for which there was not some demand. A private teacher could never find his account in teaching either an exploded and antiquated system of science acknowledged to be useful, or a science universally be 66 * Lord Bolingbroke-On the Study of History, lieved to be a mere useless and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense. Such systems, such sciences, can subsist no where but in those incorporated societies for education whose prosperity and revenue are, in great measure, independent of their reputation, and altogether independent of their industry. Were there no such institutions, a gentleman, after going through, with application and abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world completely ignorant of everything which is the common subject of conversation among gentlemen and men of the world.". -"The discipline of colleges and universities," says he, in another passage, "is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or, more properly speaking, for the ease, of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master; and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students, in all cases, to behave to him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other. Where the masters, however, really perform their duty, there are no examples, I believe, that the greater part of the students ever neglect theirs. Such is the generosity of the greater part of young men, that so far from being disposed to neglect or despise the instructions of their master, provided he shews some serious intention of being of use to them, they are generally inclined to pardon a great deal of incorrectness in the performance of his duty, and sometimes even to conceal from the public a good deal of gross negligence." Such are the manly and liberal doctrines which he has put forth on this allimportant topic. How unlike to the contracted and monkish sentiments entertained by many men, a great portion of whose lives has been passed within the walls of an university; and that too in the capacity of public teachers! He was an ardent lover of freedom, but his devotions were not paid to her as to an unknown goddess, of whose attributes he was ignorant, and to whom his offerings were but an idle and a gaudy worship. If he loved freedom, he understood, better than the lovers of freedom have always done, in what it consisted: by what institutions it might be rendered most permanent, and its substantial blessings be more widely and equally diffused. The scorn of oppression and injustice was in him an active and discerning sentiment; and, in his ardour for the interests and happiness of mankind, he felt alike, whether the means by which they were inflicted were legal or illegal. The poor and the weak, the humble and the unprotected, he knew had, in every age, endured more of evil from the operation of unjust laws than they have ever done from the mere violation of law. It was their condition, that is, the condition of the great mass of society, which he studied and wrote to ameliorate; and his language never assumes a loftier or more ardent tone than when he advocates their interests, -the interests of mankind at large, against some crying wrong, sanctioned, as it may happen to be, by law or charter. We might refer in proof of this to his observations on the laws against the combination of workmen, where he vindicates the poor against the power of the rich-on the law of settlement, the law of entails, and the severe and contemptuous tone in which he censures the spirit of commercial monopoly under every form. Nor did he fail to visit with equal severity the sentiments in which such impolitic and unjust regulations have their origin. Witness the indignant manner in which he replies to the miserable complaints of those who, disposed to view every improvement in the condition of the labouring classes of society as an encroachment upon their superiors, censure every increasing comfort they enjoy as a luxury to which they have no right. As he reprobates the injustice and impolicy of any attempt to retard their advancement, if such were possible; so has he treated with still greater contempt the monstrous and cruel paradox which has been sometimes maintained, that a liberal rate of wages relaxes the industry of the labourer, and that. he never works so well as when he is ill requited for his labour. every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious. In cheap years, it is pretended they are generally more idle, and in dear ones more industrious than ordinary. A plentiful subsistence, therefore, it has been concluded, relaxes, and a scanty one quickens their industry. That a little more plenty than ordinary may render some men idle cannot be doubted; but that it should have this effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they generally are in good health, seems not very probable." "Our merchants and master-manufacturers too (he says, in another part of his work) complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."-Wealth of Nations, Book I. ch. 8-9. Yet his zeal in the best of causes never made him lose sight of the end of all law-the preservation of the peace of society. He takes care to shew that it is not the province of a good or a wise man to seek the establishment of his principles by violence or undue pertinacity, and in disdain of the prejudices and institutions of the community which he seeks to influence. "The man, whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence (he says, in one of the finest passages of his writings) will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force; but will religiously observe what by Cicero is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country, no more |