The Wealth of Nations is the greatest and most enduring monument to the intellectual culture of the Scottish Enlightenment. It contains a theory about the behaviour of human beings when they are seen through the lens of Scottish politeness, about agents who are deeply committed to the improvement of mind, manners and property, and are able to believe that in following what seems to be the path of nature they are acting in a way that will serve the public good. But it is also one of the supreme achievements of a remarkable intelligentsia that was engaged in the project for distilling a theory of sociability out of a popular culture of politeness, a theory whose founding fathers were Smith’s two great mentors, Hutcheson and Hume. Hume had provided the philosophical resources Smith needed to develop a theory to explain how the experience of common life teaches human beings how to become social animals, capable of surviving, prospering and living virtuously in society. It was Hume who had shown him how to develop an account of the progress of civilization which paid as much attention to the material, moral and intellectual progress of humanity as to the lamentable story of the follies of so many of its rulers. Smith’s contribution to this enterprise had arisen from an absorbing interest in the exchange and circulation of goods, services and sentiments, and in the creation of those cultures on which the survival of human society and the progress of civilization depends. It was an interest fostered by vast erudition, by that remarkable esprit de système which characterized all his work, and by a profound seriousness of purpose. For in the last resort, the Wealth of Nations, like the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the lectures on which it drew, was a call to his contemporaries to take moral, political and intellectual control of their lives and the lives of those for whom they were responsible. It is in such contexts that the Wealth of Nations needs to be read by historians. The rest can be left to his disciples and critics.
12
Hume’s Death
Predictably the first reactions to the Wealth of Nations came from Smith’s Scottish friends, who had no hesitation in tempering praise with criticism. Hugh Blair, who recalled the occasion on which Smith had read him sections of the book in draft, told him that he had expected much, ‘yet I Confess you have exceeded my expectations. One writer after another on these Subjects did nothing but puzzle me. I despaired of ever arriving at clear Ideas. You have given me full and Compleat Satisfaction and my Faith is fixed.’ The attack on ‘all that interested Sophistry of Merchants’ and the ‘good Sense and Truth in your doctrine about Universities’ was particularly effective, although Smith’s comments about the civilizing tendencies of Scottish Presbyterianism were far too optimistic; it ‘gives too much aid to that Austere System you Speak of, which is never favourable to the great improvements of mankind’, an intriguing remark from a Presbyterian minister, albeit a moderate one. But Blair’s greatest regret was Smith’s discussion of the American question, which was ‘too much like a publication for the moment’, a comment which suggests that Blair had not realized how deeply Smith’s treatment of the American question was embedded in the entire analysis. He hoped that in future editions Smith would include an index and a ‘Syllabus of the whole; expressed in short independent Propositions, like the Syllabus’s we are in use to give of our College Lectures’.1 Smith was to adopt the first suggestion but not the second. The Wealth of Nations was a book for statesmen, not students.
Other members of Smith’s Scottish circle followed much the same line. Like Blair, William Robertson admitted that Smith had exceeded his expectations and thought that he might even succeed in liberalizing the vulgar Whiggery of the day.
You have formed into a regular and consistent system one of the most intricate and important parts of political science, and if the English be capable of extending their ideas beyond the narrow and illiberal arrangements introduced by the mercantile supporters of Revolution principles, and countenanced by Locke and some of their favourite writers, I should think your Book will occasion a total change in several important articles both in police and finance.2
Adam Ferguson, characteristically relishing the prospect of controversy, looked forward to the outrage the book would cause in Scotland in the Church, the universities and the merchant communities, although as an ardent libertarian defender of militias he warned Smith that he himself would have things to say about Smith’s criticisms of militias. ‘The gentlemen and peasants of this country do not need the authority of philosophers to make them supine and negligent of every resource they might have in themselves, in the case of certain extremities, of which the pressure, God knows, may be at no great distance. But more of this at Philippi.’3 These were marginal criticisms and it is clear that more substantial points were being reserved for future dinner-table discussion. John Millar told Hume that he had problems with Smith’s ‘great leading principle concerning the unbounded freedom of trade’, and wondered how far it should be carried; was it really true that the interests of manufacturers and merchants were necessarily opposed to those of the public?4 But Hume’s opinions must have been the ones Smith most wanted to hear. He had reservations about Smith’s style, which have not survived, although Millar thought them too severe, but these were kept to himself. But his letter of congratulation was notable for tempering generous praise with intimations of serious doubts about Smith’s theory of price.
Edinburgh, 1 Apr. 1776
Euge! Belle! Dear Mr Smith: I am much pleas’d with your Performance, and the Perusal of it has taken me from a State of great Anxiety. It was a Work of so much Expectation, by yourself, by your Friends, and by the Public, that I trembled for its Appearance; but am now much relieved. Not but that the Reading of it necessarily requires so much Attention, and the Public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular: But it has Depth and Solidity and Acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious Facts, that it must at last take the public Attention. It is probably much improved by your last Abode in London. If you were here at my Fireside, I shoud dispute some of your Principles. I cannot think, that the Rent of Farms makes any part of the Price of the Produce, but that the Price is determined altogether by the Quantity and the Demand. It appears to me impossible, that the King of France can take a Seignorage of 8 per cent upon the Coinage …………. But these and a hundred other Points are fit only to be discussed in Conversation; which, till you tell me the contrary, I shall still flatter myself with soon. I hope it will be soon: For I am in a very bad State of Health and cannot afford a long Delay.5
This letter opened what was to be the last chapter in a long, close and fruitful friendship. Hume had not been well for some time and was losing weight; he told Smith in February 1776 that he had lost five stones since 1773 and that if he delayed his return to Scotland much longer ‘I shall probably disappear altogether’.6 In April, Joseph Black diagnosed what sounds like a form of cancer and urged Smith to return to Scotland as soon as possible, ‘that he may have the Comfort of your Company so much the sooner’.7 Hume was resigned to the fact that he was dying, having told Black that his mother had died of the same condition, but he agreed to make the uncomfortable journey to London to consult his old friend Sir John Pringle, and to take the waters at Bath. He travelled south in May 1776, crossing Smith’s journey north at Morpeth, where they discussed Hume’s will and Smith’s duties as his literary executor. Hume was deeply preoccupied with the future of his philosophical and historical works, and later correspondence suggests that their discussions revolved around the disposal of his unpublished papers and the publication of the new edition of his works, on which he had been working for several years. Much of the business was straightforward. Smith would see the posthumous edition through the press and would make suitable arrangements for publishing the short autobiography, My Own Life, Hume had just completed. He would ensure that anything not written in the last five years would remain unpublished and would be destroyed ‘at your leisure’. There was one exception, however, the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Hume had written in 1750–51 for circulation among his closest friends in the belief that they were too sceptical for public consumption. Hume wanted Smith to publish them posthumously and this Smith absolutely refused to do. It was a disagreement that was to cast a shadow over their relationship in the last weeks of Hume’s life.
Nothing mattered more to Hume than the publication of the Dialogues for they had come to occupy an essential place in the architecture of a carefully constructed literary and philosophical legacy. In My Own Life he had written a brief and memorably cogent Plutarchian account of his life and character, in which he consigned himself to history in exactly the same way that he had signed off the rulers of England at the end of their reigns in his History of England. He had written of himself as a philosopher whose Treatise of Human Nature had fallen ‘dead born’ from the press, whose subsequent career as an essayist had got off to a slow start, and whose reputation had only begun to rise with the publication of the Political Discourses of 1752 and the increasingly popular History of England. Nature had given him a sanguine and equable temper; belated literary fame had brought him a small fortune and had exposed him at every turn to the obloquy of the clergy and the party-political ideologues. The new edition of his works, on which he had spent his last years, and whose proofs he was correcting on his deathbed, was designed to eradicate unnecessary signs of iconoclasm in order to preserve the reputation for ‘impartiality’ he had always striven to achieve. It was to include a new political essay, ‘Of the Origins of Government’, which distilled his thinking about the principles of government and political obligation. By publishing the Dialogues he would be leaving the essence of his thinking about natural religion. With their publication his legacy would be complete.
Smith’s objections to the publication of the Dialogues were anything but straightforward. At one level they were prudential. As he told William Strahan, Hume’s publisher, after his death, publication would provoke outrage, it would affect the sales of the new edition, and it would put Smith, as the man charged with their publication, in an invidious and embarrassing personal position.8 Indeed, as Hume proposed to leave him £200 in recognition of his work as literary executor, some would even think Smith had published the Dialogues for his own profit.9 Hume would have none of it. He doubted whether they would really cause outrage, and thought that Smith’s fears about the consequences of being associated with the publication of an outrageous document largely specious. He proposed a compromise. While the decision on whether or not to publish posthumously would be ‘entirely to your Discretion’, Hume’s opinion was
that, if upon my Death, you determine never to publish these papers, you shoud leave them, seal’d up with my Brother and Family, with some Inscription, that you reserve to Yourself the Power of reclaiming them, whenever you think proper. If I live a few Years longer, I shall publish them myself. I consider an Observation of Rochefoucault, that a Wind, though it extinguishes a Candle, blows up a fire.10
Smith replied that he would take ‘every possible measure which may prevent anything from being lost which you wish should be preserved’ and would ensure that the Dialogues were returned to Hume’s nephew after his own death. But Hume was still troubled. A week before his death on 25 August, he ordered new copies of the Dialogues to be made for his nephew, his publisher and Smith: ‘It will bind you to nothing, but will serve as a Security.’ His last letter to ‘My Dearest Friend’, written two days before his death, told Smith that he had left the property of the Dialogues to his nephew ‘in case by any accident it should not be published within three years after my decease’. The letter ends ‘Adieu My dearest Friend.’11
Two weeks later Smith gave Strahan his own account of the affair:
I once had persuaded him to leave it entirely to my discretion either to publish them at what time I thought proper or not to publish them at all. Had he continued of this mind the manuscript should have been most carefully preserved and upon my decease restored to his family; but it never should have been published in my lifetime. When you have read it you will, perhaps, think it not unreasonable to consult some prudent friend about what you ought to do.
I propose to add to his life a very well authenticated account of his behaviour during his last Illness. I must, however, beg that his life and those dialogues may not be published together; as I am resolved, for many reasons, to have no concern in the publication of those dialogues.12
Smith’s behaviour in the last weeks of his closest friend’s life is not easy to fathom. It certainly had nothing to do with his own views about religion, which he kept to himself but show every sign of being substantially the same as Hume’s – Smith was as deeply committed to Hume’s sceptical theory of human nature as Hume himself. Nor did he think the Dialogues were in any way unworthy of their author – he admitted to Strahan that they were indeed ‘finely written’. And his admiration for Hume’s manner of dying was unreserved and Humean in its contempt of traditional Christian morality. He told a mutual friend, ‘Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great chearfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any Whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.’13 But experience of orthodox polemic at Glasgow, Oxford and Edinburgh must have given Smith a horror of violent religious controversy and of the sort of arguments which were impervious to his or anyone else’s philosophy. Indeed one wonders whether it was Voltaire’s fearlessness in attacking l’infame in a way that was beyond him that had made Smith a lifelong admirer. At all events, by 1776 he was prepared to admit to Strahan that the prospect of being associated with the publication of the Dialogues had disturbed his peace of mind.14
But Smith was to make substantial amends for his timidity with his supplement to My Own Life. As he had told Hume, it would give ‘some account, in my own name, of your behaviour in this illness, if, contrary to my own hopes, it should prove your last’.15 The tribute took the form of a letter to William Strahan, which was published as a supplement to My Own Life in 1777. It is a meticulously recorded, moving account of Hume’s last months and a portrait of an unashamed pagan who had faced death cheerfully and with ‘the most perfect complacency and resignation’. It ends with Smith’s final tribute to his closest friend, a character sketch which has probably done more than any other to shape the portrait of an iconic philosopher and man of letters:
Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or contemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind, or the steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good-nature and good-humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who were the objects of it. To his friends, who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable qualities, which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always consid
ered 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.16
But even this last tribute was tempered with caution and a determination not to arouse the fury of the zealots. It was built around a recent conversation about one of Hume’s favourite books, Lucian’s Dialogues. Smith reported the conversation to a mutual friend in London, on 14 August, a few days before Hume’s death. Hume had remembered Lucian’s amusing account of the reasons different ghosts had given the boatman Charon for delaying their departure to the underworld.
[He] represents one Ghost as pleading for a short delay till he should marry a young daughter, another till he should finish a house he had begun, a third till he had provided a portion for two or three young Children, I began to think of what Excuse I could alledge to Charon in order to procure a short delay, and as I have now done everything that I ever intended to do, I acknowledge that for some time no tolerable one occurred to me; at last I thought I might say, Good Charon, I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of people; have a little patience only till I have the pleasure of seeing the churches shut up, and the Clergy sent about their business; but Charon would reply, O you loitering rogue; that wont happen these two hundred years; do you fancy I will give you a lease for so long a time? Get into the boat this instant.17
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