The Select Society

by Rae

7 minutes • 1343 words

In September 1759, on the death of Mr. Townshend’s brother, Smith wrote him the following letter:

Sir—

It gives me great concern that the first letter I ever have done myself the honour to write to you should be upon so melancholy an occasion. As your Brother was generally known here, he is universally regretted, Your friends are sorry that, amidst the public rejoicings and prosperity, your family should have occasion to be in mourning. Everybody here remembers you with the greatest admiration and affection. Nothing that concerns you is indifferent to them. There are more people who sympathise with you than you are aware of. It would be the greatest pedantry to offer any topics of consolation to you who are naturally so firm and so manly. As your Brother dyed in the service of his country, you have the best and the noblest consolation: That since it has pleased God to deprive you of the satisfaction you might have expected from the continuance of his life, it has at least been so ordered that ye manner of his death does you honour.

You left Scotland so much sooner than you proposed, when I had the pleasure of seeing you at Glasgow, that I had not an opportunity of making you a visit at Dalkieth (sic), as I intended, before you should return to London.

I sent about a fortnight ago the books which you ordered for the Duke of Buccleugh to Mr. Campbell at Edinburgh.[117] I paid for them, according to your orders, as soon as they were ready. I send you enclosed a list of them, with the prices discharged on the back. You will compare with the books when they arrive. Mr. Campbell will further them to London. I should have wrote to you of this a fortnight ago, but my natural dilatoriness prevented me.— I ever am, with the greatest esteem and regard, your most obliged and most obedient humble servant, Adam Smith.

College of Glasgow,

September 17, 1759.

Hume immediately anticipated the second edition of the Theory in 1759. But it did not appear until 1761. It contained none of the alterations or additions he expected. But the Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was for the first time published along with it. It is difficult to know why there was an omission of the other additions. for the author prepared [Pg 149]them and gone the length of placing them in the printer’s hands in 1760, as appears from the following letter. They did not appear in the 3rd edition in 1767, or the 4th in 1774, or the 5th in 1781; nor until the 6th. The 6th was published with considerable additions and corrections immediately before Smith’s death in 1790. The earlier editions were published at 6s., and the 1790 edition at 12s. This was the last edition published in Smith’s lifetime. It has been many times republished in subsequent century. This is the letter just referred to: —

Dear Strahan—

I sent up to Mr. Millar four or five Posts ago the same additions which I had formerly sent to you, with a good many corrections and improvements which occurred to me since.

If there are any typographical errors in the last edition, I hope you will correct them. In other respects, I could wish it was printed pretty exactly according to the copy which I delivered to you. The Spanish proverb says that a man had better be a cuckold and know nothing of the matter, than not be a cuckold and believe himself to be one. In the same way I say that an author had sometimes better be in the wrong and believe himself in the right, than be in the right and suspect himself to be in the wrong. I am afraid of giving you too much trouble in asking you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you want me to make on a sheet of paper and send it to me. However, if you could take this trouble, you would oblige me greatly. I know how much I shall be benefitted. At the same time, I shall preserve the pretious right of private judgment, for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infallible than the Pope. But as I am a Protestant, my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.

Apropos to the Pope and the Pretender, have you read Hook’s Memoirs?[118] I have been ill these 10 days. Otherwise, I should have written to you sooner. But I sat up the day before yesterday in my bed and read them through with infinite satisfaction, though they are by no [Pg 150]means well written. The substance of what is in them I knew before, though not in such detail. I am afraid they are published at an unlucky time, and may throw a damp upon our militia. However, nothing appears to me more excusable than the disaffection of Scotland at that time. The Union was a measure from which infinite good has been derived to this country. However, the Prospect of that good must then have appeared very remote and very uncertain. Its immediate effect was to hurt the interest of everyone in the country. The dignity of the nobility was undone by it. The greater part of the gentry who had been accustomed to represent their own country in its own Parliament were cut out for ever from all hopes of representing it in a British Parliament. Even the merchants seemed to suffer at first. The trade to the Plantations was opened to them. But that was a trade which they knew nothing about. The trade that they knew, that to France, Holland, and the Baltic, was laid under new embarrassments. They almost totally annihilated the two first and most important branches of it. The Clergy, too, who were then far from insignificant, were alarmed about the Church. No wonder if at that time all orders of men conspired in cursing a measure so hurtful to their immediate interest. The views of their Posterity are now very different. But those views could be seen by but few of our forefathers, by those few in but a confused and imperfect manner.

It will give me the greatest satisfaction to hear from you. I pray you write to me soon. Remember me to the Franklins. I hope I shall have the grace to write to the youngest by next post to thank him, in the name both of the College and of myself, for his very agreeable present. Remember me likewise to Mr. Griffiths. I am greatly obliged to him for the very handsome character he gave of my book in his review.— I ever am, dear Strahan, most faithfully and sincerely yours, Adam Smith.

Glasgow, April 4, 1760.[119]

The Franklins in this letter are Benjamin Franklin and his son. They spent six weeks in Scotland in the spring of the previous year. Franklin says “six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life.” We know from Dr. Carlyle that during this visit, Franklin met Smith one evening at supper at[Pg 151] Robertson’s in Edinburgh. But it seems from this letter highly probable that he had gone through to Glasgow, and possibly stayed with Smith at the College. Why otherwise should the younger, or, as Smith says, youngest, Franklin have thought of making a presentation to Glasgow College, or Smith of thanking him not merely in the name of the College, but in his own?

Strahan was one of Franklin’s most intimate private friends. They took a pride in one another as old compositors who had risen in the world. Smith had no doubt heard of, and perhaps from, the Franklins in some of Strahan’s previous letters. The Mr. Griffiths in this letter was the editor of the Monthly Review, in which a favourable notice of his book had appeared in the preceding July.