The Select Society

The Select Society was more than a debating club.

It aimed to promote the arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture in Scotland.

After 10 months, it established a well-devised and extensive scheme of prizes for meritorious work, supported by voluntary subscriptions.

The society followed the example of foreign academies in proposing:

• two subjects for competition every year
  • 1 was from polite letters
  • 1 was from the sciences
• some public mark of distinction on the winner in respect to his taste and learning.

However, the reward was not monetary because its principle was for rewards of merit:

• in the finer arts be honorary
• but in the more useful arts, where the merit was of a less elevated character, they were to be lucrative.

On the same principle, in the arts the highest place was allowed to be due to genius.

Therefore, a reward for a discovery or invention was set at the very top.

But it was still of a purely honorary character.

A monetary recognition was thought apparently unsuitable to the dignity of that kind of service.

It set to give an honorary reward to the best printed and most correct book.

But paper manufacture needed encouragement in Scotland.

Back then, the Scotch imported their paper “from countries which use not half the linen consumed here.

“to remove this defect, to render people more attentive to their own interest and that of their country, to show them the consequence of attention to matters which may seem trivial, it was resolved that for the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth parcels of linen rags gathered within a limited time a reward be assigned in proportion to the quantity and goodness of each parcel.”

In other cases, manufactures were already well established in the country.

The thing that still needed to be encouraged by prizes was improvement in the workmanship.

For example, “manufactures of cotton and linen prints are already established in different places in Scotland.

It was resolved that for the best piece of printed linen or cotton cloth made within a certain period a premium should be allotted, in order:

• to promote an attention to the elegance of the pattern and
• to the goodness of the cloth’s colouring and strength.

The art of drawing was “closely connected with this art and serviceable to most others.

It was resolved that for the best drawings by boys or girls under 16 years old, certain premiums be assigned.”

Then there was a considerable annual importation into Scotland of worked ruffles and of bone lace and edging. The Select Society thought these might be as well produced at home, under proper encouragement.

It was therefore resolved to give both honorary and lucrative rewards for superior merit in such work, the honorary for “women of fashion” who might compete, and the lucrative for those “whose laudable industry contributes to their own support.”

Scotch stockings had then a great reputation for the excellence of their workmanship.

But Scotch worsted, to make them with, was not so good.

Consequently a premium was offered for the best woollen yarn.

There was a great demand then for English blankets.

There was no reason why the Scotch should not make quite as good blankets out of their own wool.

So a premium was proposed for the best imitation of English blankets.

Carpet-making was begun in several places in the country.

A prize for the best-wrought and best-patterned carpet would encourage the manufacturers to vie with each other. Whisky-distilling, too, was established at different places.

Scotch strong ale had even acquired a great and just reputation both at home and abroad.

But the whisky was “still capable of great improvement in the quality and taste,” the ale trade “might be carried to a much greater height,” these ends might be severally promoted by prizes for the best tun of whisky and the best hogshead of strong ale.

The practical execution of this scheme was committed to nine of its members who were to be chosen annually.

They were to meet with the society once a month to report progress or receive instructions.

But to keep this new task quite distinct from the old, The society resolved, like certain mercantile firms when they adopt a new branch [Pg 115]of business, to carry it on under a new firm name.

Thus, the Select Society of Edinburgh became “The Edinburgh Society for encouraging arts, sciences, manufactures, and agriculture in Scotland”.

The executive committee of nine were termed the “ordinary managers of the Edinburgh Society,” who were assisted by other nine “extraordinary managers.”

However, The Edinburgh Society was not a separate institution.

It was really only a special committee of the Select Society.

It met once a month at a separate time from the usual weekly meeting of the parent society.

The business of this monthly meeting came, from the predominant interest of the members.

They were so largely composed of the nobility and gentry, to be engrossed almost wholly with agricultural discussions.

To render these discussions more effective and profitable, a resolution was passed in 1756 to admit a certain number of practical farmers to the membership.

This extension of the scope of the society’s work was not approved by its founder, Allan Ramsay. He thought it beneath the dignity of such an institution to take an interest in the making of ruffles or the brewing of strong ale. He feared that it would introduce very unintellectual members, to the serious prejudice of the society’s debates. An essay on taste was very well. When it came out he would ask Millar, the bookseller, to send it out to him in Rome, but a prize for the biggest bundle of linen rags! Ramsay writes Hume= “I could have wished that some other way had been fallen upon by which porter might have been made thick and the nation rich without our understanding being at all the poorer for it. Is not truth more than meat, and wisdom than raiment?”[86] But however Ramsay might look down on the project, his coadjutor in the founding of the society, Adam Smith, entertained a very different idea of its importance. A stimulus to the development of her [Pg 116]industries was the very thing Scotland most needed at the moment. He entered heartily into the new scheme, and took a prominent part in carrying it out. He was not one of the nine managers to whom the practical execution of the idea was at first entrusted. But when a few months afterwards the work was divided among four separate committees or sections of five members each, all chosen by another committee of five, nominated expressly for that purpose, Smith is one of this nominating committee, and is by it appointed likewise a member of one of the four executive committees. The other four members of the nominating committee were Alexander Monro Primus, the anatomist. Gilbert Elliot, M.P. for Selkirkshire the Rev. William Wilkie, author of the Epigoniad; and the Rev. Robert Wallace, the predecessor and at least in part the stimulator of Malthus in his speculations on the population question. The five members of this committee were directed by the society to put their own names on one or other of the four executive committees, and they placed the name of Smith, together with that of Hume, on the committee for Belles-Lettres and Criticism. As yet he was evidently best known as literary critic, though the questions propounded by him in this society, and the subjects treated by him in the Literary Society of Glasgow, show that his tastes were already leading him into other directions.

Sufficient contributions soon flowed in. Hume in his letter to Ramsay speaks of £100 being already in hand, and of several large subscriptions besides being promised from various noblemen, whom he names.

Accordingly, an advertisement was published in the newspapers on April 10, 1755, offering the following prizes:

I. Honorary premiums, being gold medals with suitable devices and inscriptions:

1. For the best discovery in science.
2. For the best essay on taste.
3. For the best dissertation on vegetation and the principles of agriculture.

II. Honorary premiums, being silver medals with proper devices and inscriptions:

4. For the best printed and most correct book of at least 10 sheets.
5. For the best printed cotton or linen cloth, not under 28 yards.
6. For the best imitation of English blankets, not under six.
7. For the next best ditto, not under six.
8. For the best hogshead of strong ale.
9. For the best hogshead of porter.

III. Lucrative premiums:

10. For the most useful invention in arts, £21.
11. For the best carpet as to work, pattern, and colours, of at least 48 yards,.£5= 5s.
12. For the next best ditto, also 48 yards, £4= 4s.
13. For the best drawings of fruits, flowers, and foliages by boys or girls under sixteen years of age, £5= 5s.
14. For the second best, £3= 3s.
15. For the third best, £2= 2s.
16. For the best imitation of Dresden work in a pair of man’s ruffles, £5= 5s.
17. For the best bone lace, not under 20 yards, £5= 5s.
18. For the greatest quantity of white linen rags, £1= 10s.
19. For the second ditto, £1= 5s.
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 assistant in the work of librarian), at the Advocates’ Library, before the first Monday of December.[87].

On August 19, 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.

The prizes were increased:

They encouraged 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.”

This society exercised a most beneficial influence in developing and improving Scotland’s industrial resources.

The carpet manufacture alone rose £1000 in the year after the establishment of the prizes.

The rise was believed to be due to the stimulus they imparted.