The Poker Club and a Scottish Militia

Smith was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Poker Club in 1762.

Most people think of it as merely a social society.

• Mr. Burton says that its purpose was to drink claret.

But it was really a committee for political agitation, like the Anti-Corn-Law League or the Home Rule Union.

The club:

• had a stock of sound Burgundy at 18 pence or 2 shillings a quart
• had a room in a tavern for the exclusive use of the members, and
• established a weekly or bi-weekly dinner at a moderate cost, to keep the poker of agitation active.

The club got its purpose of stirring opinion, especially in high quarters, on the question of establishing a national Scotch militia.

It was a public question which was exciting the people of Scotland greatly.

Some of the members thought that when that question was settled, the club should go on and take up others. For example, George Dempster of Dunnichen was an old and respected parliamentary hand of that time.

He wrote Dr. Carlyle in 1762 that when they got their militia, they should agitate for parliamentary reform.

It would “let the industrious farmer and manufacturer finally share in a privilege now engrossed by the great lord, drunken laird, and drunkener baillie.”[100] But they never got to consider other reforms.

For the militia question was not settled in that generation.

It outlived the Poker Club and the Younger Poker Club which took up the cause in 1786. It was not finally settled until 1793.

The Scotch had been roused to the defenceless condition of their country by the alarming appearance of Thurot in Scotch waters in 1759.

They had instantly with one voice raised a cry for a national militia.

The whole country seemed to have set its mind [Pg 136]on this measure with a singular unanimity.

A bill for its enactment was accordingly introduced into the House of Commons in 1760 by two of the principal Scotch members—James Oswald and Gilbert Elliot; They were former ministers of the Crown But it was rejected by a large majority.

Because within only 15 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.

The membership of the club included many of the foremost men in the land=

• great noblemen,
• advocates,
• men of letters,
• spirited county gentlemen on both sides of politics

They cried that they=

• had their own militia before the Union, and
• must their own militia again.

Dr. Carlyle says most of the members of the Select Society belonged to it.

he exceptions consisting of a few who disapproved of the militia scheme, and of others, like the judges, who scrupled, on account of their official position, to take any part in a political movement. Carlyle gives a list of the members in 1774=

• the Duke of Buccleugh,
• Lords Haddington, Glasgow, Glencairn, Elibank, and Mountstuart;
• Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate;
• Baron Mure,
• Hume,
• Adam Smith,
• Robertson,
• Black,
• Adam Ferguson,
• John Home,
• Dr. Blair, Sir James Steuart the economist, Dempster, Islay Campbell, afterwards Lord President; and
• John Clerk of Eldin.

The first secretary of the club was William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney). David Hume was jocularly appointed to a sinecure office created for him, the office of assassin. Lest Hume’s good-nature should unfit him for the duties, Andrew Crosbie, advocate (the original of Scott’s “Pleydell”), was made his assistant. The club met at first in Tom Nicholson’s tavern, the Diversorium, at the Cross.

It subsequently moved to more fashionable quarters at the famous Fortune’s in the Stamp Office Close. It was where=

• the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly held his levees, and
• the members dined every Friday at 2pm and sat until 6pm.

However the club may have pulled wires in private, their public activity seems to have been very little; so far at least as literary advocacy of their cause went, nothing proceeded from it except a pamphlet by Dr. Carlyle, and a much-overlauded squib by Adam Ferguson, entitled “A History of the Proceedings in the Case of Margaret, commonly called Sister Peg.”

Smith was one of the original members of the club. From Carlyle’s list, he was a member till 1774. But he was not a member of the Younger Poker Club, established in 1786. In the interval, he had expressed in the Wealth of Nations a strong preference for a standing army over a national militia, after very carefully examining the whole subject.

I do not know:

• whether his views had changed since 1762, or
• whether he joined in the agitation for a militia merely as=
• a measure of justice to Scotland or
• as an expedient of temporary necessity, without committing himself to any abstract admiration for the institution in general.

But we can hardly think he ever shared that kind of belief in the principle of a militia which animated men like Ferguson and Carlyle, and which, according to them, animated the other members of the club also at its birth.

Ferguson says the club was founded on=

• “the principle of zeal for a militia and
• a conviction that these islands’ lasting security for its freedom and independence [Pg 138] was in the valour and patriotism of an armed people”;[102]

During his travels in Switzerland in 1775, Ferguson saw for the first time a real militia. It was the object of his dreams.

It actually moved before him in the flesh. Going through their drill, his heart came to his mouth, and he wrote Carlyle: “As they were the only body of men I ever saw under arms on the true principle for which arms should be carried, I felt much secret emotion, and could have shed tears.”[103] He was deeply disappointed a year later with Smith’s apostasy or opposition on this question.

After reading the Wealth of Nations, he wrote Smith on April 18, 1776: “You have provoked the Church, universities, and the merchants. Against all of them, I am willing to take your part. But you have also provoked the militia. There I must be against you.

The gentlemen and peasants of this country do not need the authority of philosophers to make them negligent of every resource they might have in themselves in the case of certain extremities, of which the pressure may be near. But of this more at Philippi.”

But many besides Smith found their zeal for a militia reduced. When Lord Mountstuart introduced his new Scotch Militia Bill in 1776, it received little support from Scotch members. Its rejection did not excite the feeling roused by the rejection of its predecessor in 1760.

Although by now, it came with the galling aggravation that what was refused to the Scotch but was granted to the Irish.

The Irish were then the less disliked and distrusted nation of the two. Opinions had grown divided. Old Fletcher of Saltoun’s idea of a citizen army with universal compulsory service was still much discussed. But many now objected to the compulsion.

Others like Lord Kames, wanted the universality of the compulsion, rallying to the idea of Fencibles—i.e. regiments to be raised compulsorily by the landed proprietors. Each should furnish men proportional to their valued rent.[105]

Smith said a militia formed in this way, like the old Highland militia, was the best of all militias. But he held that:

• the day was past for militias with one hand on the sword and the other on the plough, and
• only the division of labour could now answer the art of war, “the noblest of all arts,”.

The division of labour answered best for the arts of peace.

A standing army answers it by exclusive occupation.

Divided counsels and reduced zeal, along with other causes, led to the Poker Club’s decay. Dr. Carlyle was an active member of the club. He says it began to decline when it transferred itself to more elegant quarters at Fortune’s. Because its dinners became too expensive for the members.

Lord Campbell attributes its dissolution definitely to the new taxes imposed on French wines to pay for the American War: “To punish the Government they agreed to=

• dissolve the ‘Poker,’ and
• form another society which should exist without consumption of any excisable commodity.”

But he gives no authority for the statement. They could not think of punishing the Government by what was after all only an excellent way of punishing themselves.

The wine duty was a real grievance.

It was raised five or six times during the club’s existence. People who drank a quart of Burgundy when the duty was less than half-a-crown a gallon, could not do so when the duty rose to 7 shillings.

The Poker Club was revived as the Younger Poker Club in 1786, when the duty on Burgundy was reduced again by the new Commercial Treaty with France.