NICHOLAS PHILLIPSON
Adam Smith
An Enlightened Life
ALLEN LANE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2010
Copyright © Nicholas Phillipson, 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-14-196356-3
In Memory of
Duncan Forbes
1922–1994
Fellow of Clare College and Reader in History
University of Cambridge
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Maps
Prologue
1. A Kirkcaldy Upbringing
2. Glasgow, Glasgow University and Francis Hutcheson’s Enlightenment
3. Private Study 1740–46: Oxford and David Hume
4. Edinburgh’s Early Enlightenment
5. Smith’s Edinburgh Lectures: a Conjectural History
6. Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 1. 1751–9
7. The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Civilizing Powers of Commerce
8. Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 2. 1759–63
9. Smith and the Duke of Buccleuch in Europe 1764–6
10. London, Kirkcaldy and the Making of the Wealth of Nations 1766–76
11. The Wealth of Nations and Smith’s ‘Very violent attack … upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain’
12. Hume’s Death
13. Last Years in Edinburgh 1778–90
Epilogue
Notes and Sources
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index
List of Illustrations
Plates
1. The Burgh School, Kirkcaldy. (Fife Council Libraries & Museums: Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery)
2–3. Eutropii historiae breviarum ab urbe condita usque ad Valentinianum & Valentem Augustum … In usum scholarum. Editio sexta correctior (Edinburgh, 1725). (Fife Council Libraries & Museums: Kirkcaldy Museum & Art Gallery)
4. The Colledge of Glasgow (early eighteenth century), by or after John Slezer, Theatrum Scotiae (1693). (Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow)
5. Balliol College, Oxford, from D. Loggan, Oxonia Illustrata (1765). (Private collection/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)
6. Robert Simson, engraving by Alexander Baillie (1768) after de Nune. (University of Glasgow; licensor www.scran.ac.uk)
7. Francis Hutcheson, from F. Blackburn, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis Esq. (London, 1780). (Glasgow University Library)
8. Archibald, Earl of Islay and 3rd Duke of Argyll, engraving T. Chambars after A. Ramsay. (Collection, the author)
9. David Hume, frontispiece from his History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (Edinburgh, 1770). (Getty Images)
10. A General View of the City and Castle of Edinburgh, the Capital of Scotland (anon., 1765). (Courtesy Edinburgh City Libraries and Information Services – Edinburgh Room)
11. Henry Home, Lord Kames, portrait by David Martin. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
12. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, engraving by G. Volpato. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)
13. Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, engraving by Augustin de Saint-Aubin (Private collection/ The Bridgeman Art Library)
14. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Gathering Herbs at Ermenonville, June 1778, engraving by Louis Michel Halbou. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
15. View of Fine Art Exhibition in the Court of Old College, Glasgow, after David Allen (1761). (Glasgow City Libraries; licensor www.scran.ac.uk)
16. A View of the Middle Walk in the College Garden (1756), by Robert Paul. (Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow)
17. Henry, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, portrait by Thomas Gainsborough. (The Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund)
18. David Hume, portrait by Louis Carrogis. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
19. Vue de la Ville de Genève prise du Lac from Tableau de la Suisse, où Voyage Pittoresque fait dans les xiii Cantons du Corps Helvétique, by J.-B. de la Borde (c. 1780). (Edinburgh University Library)
20. Portrait of Voltaire from a drawing made on 6th July 1775, engraving by Dominique Vivant Denon. (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)
21. Plan of Paris, engraving by L. Bretez. (Private collection/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Library)
22. Francois Quesnay, engraving by J.-G. Wille. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris/The Bridgeman Art Library)
23. Northumberland House, Charing Cross, by Sir John Dean Paul. (Bonhams, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
24. Elevation of the British Coffee House, by Robert Adam. (Private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)
25. View from the Walk on the top of Calton Hill, by Mary Elton. (Courtesy Edinburgh City Libraries and Information Services – Edinburgh Room)
26. ‘The Philosophers’, by John Kay, from A Series of Original Portraits and Character Etchings (Edinburgh, 1842). (Edinburgh University Library)
27. Margaret Douglas, Mother of Adam Smith, portrait attributed to Conrad Metz. (Collection of Rory Cunningham)
28. ‘Lord Rockville, Dr Adam Smith and Commissioner Brown’, by John Kay, from A Series of Original Portraits and Character Etchings (Edinburgh, 1842). (University of Edinburgh)
29. Adam Smith’s grave, Canongate Graveyard, Edinburgh. (Royal Commision on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland)
Illustrations in the Text
front endpapers: Adam Smith’s bookplate. (Edinburgh University Library)
frontispiece: ‘The Author of the Wealth of Nations’, by John Kay, from A Series of Original Portraits and Character Etchings (Edinburgh 1842). (Edinburgh University Library)
page 91: Notes of Dr. Smith’s Rhetorick Lectures [1762–3]. Lecture 3 ‘Of the origin and progress of language’. (Glasgow University Library MS Gen 95/1,2)
Page 139: Title page from Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). (Edinburgh University Library)
Page 215: Title page from Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth o
f Nations (1776). (Glasgow University Library)
Acknowledgements
This book has had an elephantine period of gestation and has incurred more debts on the way than I can hope to repay here. It was the late Duncan Forbes who introduced me to Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment and intellectual history in a legendary Cambridge special subject which few who were lucky enough to have taken will ever forget. My own students and postgraduates may recognize various themes of this book which were tried out in my own special subjects at Edinburgh and will I hope remember discussions which were always enjoyable, sometimes memorable, and have helped to shape my thinking more than they may have realized. It was from them that I came to learn that for many intelligent students, Smith’s first book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, was more of a living text than the Wealth of Nations, and it was they who helped me to understand why Smith preferred the first book to the second.
In planning this book I wanted to write about Smith’s life and works in a way which would throw light on the development of an extraordinary mind and an extraordinarily approachable philosophy at a remarkable moment in the history of Scotland and of the Enlightenment. I was particularly lucky that the book began to take shape when Susan Manning, Thomas Ahnert and I were directing a research seminar, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on the Science of Man in Scotland. Our discussions and those of our research group were invaluable in keeping my thinking on the move at an important moment in its development. At the same time, my thinking about Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment and much else besides was being refreshed, as it has been for more than twenty years, by John Pocock and Istvan Hont. My debts to them are not easily repaid.
Various sections of this book have been discussed at conferences, colloquia and seminars in Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews, at Oxford, Cambridge, London and Sussex, at Budapest, Fiesole and Munich and at Chapel Hill and Columbia, and I am grateful to all of those who took part for their criticism and encouragement.
Emma Rothschild, Tony LaVopa, Richard Bourke and David Raynor read the text in draft and were more generous with their time, trouble and encouragement than I had any right to expect.
I am particularly grateful to Jane Freel at the Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery, Ann Dulau at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Robert MacLean at the Glasgow University Library and to the staffs of the Research Collections at Edinburgh University Library, the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and the Bridgeman Art Library for their help with illustrations and to Ann Watters for her help in mapping Smith’s Kirkcaldy.
It has been the greatest pleasure working with the staff of that most civilized and professional of publishers, the Penguin Press, Phillip Birch, Richard Duguid, Charlotte Ridings, Penelope Vogler and Sarah Hunt Cooke in particular. And finally my thanks to my agent Bruce Hunter and, above all, to Stuart Proffitt, who commissioned this book, who stuck with it throughout its long period of gestation, who edited it with sympathy and acuity and who has remained a tower of strength and friendship. Without him this book might not have happened.
Nicholas Phillipson
Edinburgh, May 2010
Prologue
‘The character of a man is never very striking nor makes any deep impression: It is a dull and lifeless thing, taken merely by itself. It then only appears in perfection when it is called out into action.’
Adam Smith, Lectures on Rhetoric and
Belles Lettres, 17 January 1763
Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published on 9 March 1776. Although David Hume thought that ‘it requires too much thought’ to reach a wide audience, it immediately acquired a significant readership in political and intellectual circles in Edinburgh, London and Paris.1 Even Smith’s most intelligent critic, the former Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Pownall, admitted that Smith had succeeded where everyone else had failed in creating ‘a system, that might fix some first principles in the most important of sciences, the knowledge of the human community, and its operations. That might become principia to the knowledge of politick operations; as Mathematicks are to Mechanicks, Astronomy, and the other Sciences.’2 The success of the Wealth of Nations transformed Smith’s life. It smoothed his path to a lucrative place on the Board of Customs in Scotland, a semi-sinecure which he characteristically treated seriously, attending as many meetings of the Board as possible and apologizing whenever he was unable to be present. It turned him into the most celebrated of Scotland’s enlightened literati, a man to be visited by cultural tourists on pilgrimage to Edinburgh, a man whose table-talk and eccentricities were to be cherished by locals. But in the 1780s failing health made worse by hypochondria, the death of his mother, with whom he had lived for much of his life, and the erosion of the small, tight-knit circle of lifelong friends among whom this sociable but deeply private man had lived, sapped his morale and intellectual energies and underlined what was becoming increasingly obvious – that the vast intellectual project to which he had devoted his life and of which the Wealth of Nations was only a part, would never be completed. For like Bacon and Hobbes, like the great natural jurists of the previous century, Grotius and Pufendorf, like his two mentors Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, like d’Alembert and the encyclopédistes he greatly admired, Smith believed that it was now possible to develop a genuine Science of Man based on the observation of human nature and human history; a science which would not only explain the principles of social and political organization to be found in different types of society, but would explain the principles of government and legislation that ought to be followed by enlightened rulers who wanted to extend the liberty and happiness of their subjects and the wealth and power of their dominions.
This great project had shaped the whole of Smith’s intellectual career. He had first learned about it from Hutcheson and Hume in the 1730s and 40s as a student at Glasgow University and at Balliol College, Oxford. He had laid the foundations of his own system in the lectures and papers he delivered in Edinburgh in 1748–51 and developed as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (and later of Moral Philosophy) at Glasgow between 1751 and 1764. These writings ranged astonishingly widely, dealing with the principles of language, rhetoric, morals, jurisprudence, government, the fine arts and astronomy, subjects which, his friend and biographer Dugald Stewart noted, he invariably tackled by tracing their origins in human nature. Smith had published the first part of the superstructure of his science of man in 1759 in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, a theory which explained how men and women seek to satisfy their moral needs and learn to live at ease with themselves and the world around them, a theory of sociability as well as a theory of ethics, providing what was in effect an account of the moral economy of a recognizably modern civil society. The Wealth of Nations formed the second part of that superstructure. It offered an account of the political economy of the different types of civil society known to history, and a sharply focused analysis of the problems which modern governments faced in extending the wealth, liberty and happiness of their subjects at a time when the international order was being transformed by the expansion of empire and the growth of commerce. But the two final parts of this project, ‘a sort of Philosophical History of all the different branches of Literature, of Philosophy, Poetry and Eloquence’ and ‘a sort of theory and History of Law and Government’ were never completed. ‘The materials of both are in a great measure collected, and some Part of both is put in tollerable good order’, Smith wrote in 1785. ‘But the indolence of old age, tho’ I struggle violently against it, I feel coming fast upon me, and whether I shall ever be able to finish either is extremely uncertain.’3 He was then sixty-two and felt he had become an old man.
For Smith’s health was failing. Before setting out on his last trip to London in the spring of 1787 he asked his two future executors to visit him. These were old friends, the chemist Joseph Black and the geologist James Hutton, two great scientists who, like him, had glimpses of grander, unfulfilled scientific desi
gns. Smith told them they were to destroy all of his lecture notes, ‘doing with the rest of his manuscripts what they pleased’. Two years later, and a few weeks before his death, he reminded them of what they were to do. Hutton told Dugald Stewart that
They entreated him to make his mind easy, as he might depend upon their fulfilling his desire. He was then satisfied. But some days afterwards, finding his anxiety not entirely removed, he begged one of them to destroy the volumes immediately. This accordingly was done; and his mind was so much relieved, that he was able to receive his friends in the evening with his usual complacency.4
All that was left were seven unpublished essays on philosophical subjects that Smith seems to have tinkered with for most of his professional life. These were published posthumously by his executors and largely forgotten. As Stewart commented, ‘he seems to have wished that no materials should remain for his biographers, but what were furnished by the lasting monuments of his genius, and the exemplary worth of his private life’.5 He died on 17 July 1790, having done as much as was humanly possible to preserve his intellectual privacy.
Stewart blamed this archival bonfire on Smith’s fastidious distaste for unhoned arguments which would inevitably be misunderstood, would retard ‘the progress of truth’ and would tarnish his posthumous reputation.6 Smith certainly had an aesthete’s taste for intellectual elegance; having finished the Wealth of Nations (and polished it in three subsequent editions), he turned again to the Theory of Moral Sentiments to develop and refine the ethical implications of his theory of sociability. On top of this there was a lifelong love of intellectual systems and the esprit systématique he associated with true philosophical thinking and which he had learned to admire as a student at Glasgow studying mathematics, natural science and the Stoics. It was a quality he associated with the French and found lacking in the English. As he put it in one of his two contributions to the Edinburgh Review of 1755–6:
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