Nicholas Phillipson

by Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life

  The visit seems to have got off to an unpromising start. The archbishop was in Paris and seems to have stayed there for the period of Smith and Buccleuch’s visit. Worse still, as Smith told Hume in July 1764,

  Mr Townshend assured me that the Duke de Choiseul was to recommend us to all the people of fashion here and everywhere else in France. We have heard nothing, however, of these recommendations and have had our way to make as well as we could by the help of the Abbé [Colbert] who is a Stranger here almost as much as we. The Progress, indeed, we have made is not very great. The Duke is acquainted with no french man whatever. I cannot cultivate the acquaintance of the few with whom I am acquainted, as I cannot bring them to our house and am not always at liberty to go to theirs. The Life which I led at Glasgow was a pleasurable, dissipated life in comparison of that which I lead here at Present. I have begun to write a book in order to pass away the time.17

  Whether or not that book was the Wealth of Nations remains a matter of controversy and speculation. What Smith’s comment does suggest, however, is that he had decided that it was time to pull together some of the thinking about jurisprudence, police and political economy he looked forward to discussing with François Quesnay and his circle of économistes in Paris.

  As far as the Duke was concerned, all of this meant a life of hard work and, initially at any rate, relative social isolation. As Fitzmaurice had discovered at Glasgow, the cardinal principle of Smith’s teaching was ‘inspection and controul’, and an educational regime which Smith confessed had been designed ‘rather to oppress him with business for this first winter; it keeps him constantly employed and leaves no time for idleness.’ In Buccleuch’s case, this probably meant private reading supplemented by intensive discussion based on Smith’s Glasgow moral philosophy and jurisprudence courses, and regular ‘exercises’ in riding and fencing with local tutors. In his second year, Smith had introduced Fitzmaurice to law and politics and he clearly followed the same practice with Buccleuch, introducing him to Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois and to Hume’s History of England for the light they shed on the constitutions of France and Britain, on the increasing militarization of modern Europe and on the extraordinary collapse of French power in the Seven Years War. As an expert on public finance, Townshend was delighted with Buccleuch’s essay on the French constitution and seems to have encouraged him to pay particular attention to the tax system. What Buccleuch did not mention, and what Smith must have discussed with him, were Montesquieu’s controversial views about the importance of the French aristocracy to the future of the French monarchy. It was out of discussions like these that the Duke must have begun to develop a more modest, less party-political conception of his future role as a great territorial magnate, one which was based on an appreciation of the economic and moral importance of the territorial nobility and their role as agents of improvement. This was to be part of the bedrock on which his long and enduring friendship with Smith was to be based.

  For all that, Toulouse was initially a lonely place for the Duke. With Hume’s help Smith set out to lighten the load by persuading Buccleuch’s brother Campbell Scott and an old Eton friend, Sir James Macdonald of Sleat, to join them in the autumn. By then things had begun to settle down. Smith and Buccleuch had begun to make their way in Toulousian political society and there were trips to Bordeaux and to Montpellier to attend debates in the local parlements. In April 1765 Townshend gave Buccleuch permission to move to Paris, provided ‘the same Study & the same exercises’ were continued. By then Smith was able to report ‘a great change upon the Duke. He begins now to familiarize himself to French company and I flatter myself I shall spend the rest of the Time we are to live together, not only in Peace and contentment but in gayety and amusement.’18 After a short summer tour of the south of France and the Pyrenees with Scott and Macdonald, the two set out for a two months’ visit to Geneva before arriving in Paris in December 1765.

  The choice of Geneva as an appropriate if somewhat unusual city for a two-month visit suggests that Smith also had a hand in the planning of the tour. The father of one of his former pupils, François-Louis Tronchin, was a leading citizen, an important member of the local literati and a royal physician to the French Court; Geneva was also, of course, the city of Rousseau and of Voltaire. Once again, the city presented Smith and Buccleuch with an interesting political situation on which to reflect. The city-state’s constitution was essentially aristocratic and was currently being challenged by citizens who wished to broaden its political base; again, there was much to consider about the role of aristocracies in the management of modern states. Théodore Tronchin gave Smith and Buccleuch easy access to Genevan literary and academic society at a time when the Calvinist intelligentsia were taking a particular interest in Scottish philosophy, history and medicine.19 Within the space of a few weeks, Smith had been introduced to leading members of Geneva’s government and to professors like George Le Sage, who was interested in Joseph Black’s theory of latent heat, and Charles Bonnet, both of whom were intrigued by Smith’s friendship with a notorious sceptic like Hume. More importantly, Tronchin was able to introduce Smith to the literary circle of his patient, the Duchesse d’Enville, the mother of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, another young aristocrat who took to Smith, planned an abortive translation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and remained in regular contact with him for the rest of his life. Mme d’Enville was an important contact. A highly intelligent woman, she was a close friend of Turgot and was to be valuable in preparing the ground for Smith’s hugely successful introduction to French salon society and to the économistes. Rousseau was not in Geneva at the time and, indeed, Smith never seems to have met him. Voltaire was, however, and at one of their meetings he and Smith discussed the volatile relationships that were developing between the Court and the provincial parlements and Estates.20 Smith, who owned a fine bust of the great man, admired Voltaire unreservedly and was reported as making the deeply Humean observation that ‘the ridicule and the sarcasm which he so plentifully bestowed upon fanatics and heretics of all sects have enabled the understanding of men to bear the light of truth, and prepared them for those inquiries to which every intelligent mind ought to aspire. He has done much more for the benefit of mankind than those grave philosophers whose books are read by a few only. The writings of Voltaire are made for all and read by all.’21 It is a reminder that the Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Wealth of Nations, and indeed Smith’s entire project for a modern science of man were built on the foundations of the Enlightenment’s quintessential assault on religion.

  Smith and Buccleuch left Geneva in the late autumn of 1765 and arrived in Paris at Christmas for the most important stage of the Duke’s educational tour. They took up residence in the Hôtel du Parc-Royal in Saint-Germain, near the British Embassy, their home for the next nine months. The ambassador, the Earl of Hertford, launched the Duke at Court and in diplomatic society, and Townshend told Buccleuch that he expected David Hume would introduce him to literary society and to ‘men of the world, [who] are therefore the most useful society to you, who must be one, & ought to be the other, of these characters’.22 No visitor could have looked forward to a more glamorous introduction to French intellectual society than the one Hume was able to offer. He had been Hertford’s secretary in Paris since 1763, enjoying the cachet that a diplomatic post and a decent salary provided, as well as the reputation his Political Discourses and the History of England were making for him. What had surprised him were the unexpected joys of being lionized, an experience he reported in detail to Smith and his Scottish friends. ‘Can I ever forget,’ he wrote to Smith in October 1763, reflecting on the churlish reception so much of his writing had received in Edinburgh and London, ‘that it is the very same Species, that wou’d scarce show me common Civilities a very few Years ago at Edinburgh, who now receive me with such Applauses at Paris?’23 Two years later, when Smith was in Toulouse, Hume was even speculating on the possibility of settling in Paris, a proposal which al
armed Smith enough to provoke an unexpectedly sharp and prompt reply:

  A man is always displaced in a forreign Country, and notwithstanding the boasted humanity and politeness of this Nation, they appear to me to be, in general, more meanly interested, and that the cordiality of their friendship is much less to be depended on than that of our own countrymen. They live in such large societies and their affections are dissipated among so great a variety of objects, that they can bestow but a very small share of them upon any individual. Do not imagine that the great Princes and Ladies who want you to live with them make this proposal from real and sincere affection to you. They mean nothing but to gratify their own vanity by having an illustrious man in their house, and you would soon feel the want of that cordial and trusty affection which you enjoyed in the family of Lord and Lady Hertford.24

  By then, however, Hume’s Parisian days were numbered. Hertford had been recalled in order to be posted to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant, Hume remaining his secretary. It was a move that would have earned Hume a handsome salary but ‘it is like stepping out of Light into Darkness to exchange Paris for Dublin’.25 Although Hertford’s posting was cancelled, he returned to London with Hume, leaving Smith with the task of launching himself and his pupil on Parisian society without the direct assistance of a celebrated intellectual ambassador.

  Not that Smith need have worried. Hume had taken care to advertise the visit well in advance and, anyway, Smith himself was not unknown. The Theory of Moral Sentiments had been well received in Paris, although it and had been published in French in a bad translation by one of the Baron d’Holbach’s circle in 1764. To make matters worse it had been given a new, unhelpfully Jansenist title, La Métaphysique de l’âme, which encouraged French readers to discuss its theological failings as much as its generally acknowledged strengths in exploring the aetiology of the sentiments. But Smith’s visit was taking place at a moment when Scottish philosophy and letters were becoming fashionable despite the vicissitudes of his own translation. The first poems of Ossian, published in 1762 and 1765, were proving to be as much of a success de scandale in Paris as they were in London and Edinburgh, and Lord Kames’ Elements of Criticism, in which he had dared to criticize Voltaire’s Henriade, had evoked the author’s caustic response.

  It is a wonderful result of the progress of human culture, that at this day there come to us from Scotland rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening. Every day the mind of man expands, and we ought not to despair of receiving ere long treatises on poetry and rhetoric from the Orkney isles. True it is, that in this country we still prefer to see great artists than great discourses upon the arts.26

  Smith’s reception in Paris was to be almost as momentous as Hume’s. Before long he had become a habitué of the leading salons, including those of the Duchesse d’Enville, Mme Geofrin, Mme de l’Espinasse, Mme de Grouchy, and Hume’s old friend the Comtesse de Boufflers. Here, in a milieu in which intelligent women had discussed sentimental ethics and literature since Marivaux’s day, much of the discussion of the Theory of Moral Sentiments took place. The Comtesse, who once idly wondered whether she should attempt a new and better translation of the book, thought that Smith’s theory of sympathy seemed set fair to supplant Hume’s scepticism as the fashionable opinion of female society.27 Smith also had easy access to the world of the philosophes at d’Holbach’s weekly dinners, at Claude-Adrien Helvétius’s house and with Quesnay’s circle in Paris or at Versailles (Quesnay was a royal physician). He made friends with Turgot, Morellet, Necker, d’Alembert, Marmontel and Mme Riccoboni, one of the most fashionable of contemporary novelists.28 Never before and never again would he have a fuller and easier social life. As Rae points out, in one week in July, Smith was with Mme de L’Espinasse on the 21st, the Comtesse de Boufflers on the 25th and Baron d’Holbach on the 27th.29 His servant’s inventory of his wardrobe suggests that he began to dress rather expensively.30 In a later essay he was to recall that he had become a keen theatre- and opera-goer, who used his time in the theatre to reflect on the arts of theatrical and vocal performance. Gossips had it that he even embarked on an inconclusive romance.31

  What mattered most, however, were his meetings with Quesnay and his circle, ‘the most intelligent men in France’.32 For the économistes Smith was an unknown quantity, ‘a judicious and simple man, but one who had not yet proved his worth’, as Du Pont de Nemours put it33; a friend of Hume who had a brilliant and currently fashionable system of moral philosophy to his credit, and a system of political economy in gestation that addressed many of the économistes own concerns but did so in ways which were puzzlingly different to theirs. Smith’s knowledge of Quesnay’s work was equally incomplete. He had first got to know of him in the late 1750s through the Encyclopédie articles on ‘Grains’ and ‘Fermiers’, which had advocated free trade in grain and laid the foundations of Quesnay’s classic claim that land was the sole source of a nation’s wealth. Quesnay had developed these principles in highly abstract terms in his Tableaux économiques, which had been printed in 1758–9 in editions designed for a strictly limited readership and were probably unknown in Glasgow. When Smith first met the économistes in 1766, they were working on the wider conceptual and political implications of Quesnay’s system, a development which was heralded in 1767 by the publication of the Marquis de Mirabeau’s Rural Philosophy and continued in Quesnay’s Physiocratie of the same year, and a series of publications by Turgot, Du Pont de Nemours and La Mercier de la Rivière which were either in preparation or production.34 Smith was, in fact, in the extraordinary position of being able to witness at first hand the development of the only other great system of political economy of the Enlightenment to his own.

  For all his shocking French, awkward manner and serious intellectual reservations about their system, Smith got on well with Quesnay and his circle, and his extended critique of them in the Wealth of Nations was to be notable for its friendliness as well as its severity. Quesnay, who presented Smith with a copy of his Physiocratie, was ‘a man of the greatest modesty and simplicity’ who was held in as much reverence by his disciples as ‘any of the antient philosophers for the founders of their respective systems’35; Mirabeau was ‘a very diligent and respectable author’36; and Turgot, he told Hume, was ‘a friend every way worthy of you’.37 For his part, Smith was to speak of the économistes’ system ‘with all its imperfections [as], perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political oeconomy, and is upon that account well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that very important science’.38 He actually told Dugald Stewart that had Quesnay lived to see the publication of the Wealth of Nations, it would have been dedicated to him.39 It is language that contrasts strikingly with Hume’s, who hoped that the Abbé Morellet would ‘thunder them [the économistes], and crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and ashes!’ in his forthcoming Dictionnaire du commerce. ‘They are, indeed,’ Hume exclaimed, ‘the set of men the most chimerical and most arrogant that now exist.’40 It was a view with which Smith would become increasingly sympathetic at the end of his life.

  Stewart thought that Smith took the économistes’ system seriously because it helped him to clear his mind about his own, but there is surely more to it than that. His introductions to Condillac, Montesquieu and Rousseau had been encounters with systems of philosophy he took seriously but found fundamentally flawed. His introduction to Quesnay’s system of economics was another such encounter. At one level they spoke the same language. They both discussed the wealth and revenue of a state in terms of its ability to satisfy the needs and desires of its inhabitants. They both thought that in one of Hume’s ‘enormous’ European monarchies, the business of satisfying these needs and desires was a matter of using agricultural surpluses to maintain those who were not employed on the land, and they both argued that the long-term revenue and power of a state and the happiness of its people woul
d depend on its ability to sustain a sufficiently high level of agricultural production to maintain a system of commerce and manufactures. And they both agreed that the best way of achieving this end was by removing obstacles to the free exchange of goods, services and sentiments. Indeed, the point of the highly abstract argumentation in Quesnay’s Tableaux was to show how, in a developed economy, wealth generated by agriculture would naturally circulate through the different sectors of an economy in ways which would naturally increase the revenue of the sovereign and the wealth of his people.

  The économistes claimed that they were developing a general theory of political economy. Smith, with his unrivalled sensitivity to the historical contexts in which thought develops, preferred to see it in a French context, as part of a long-standing preoccupation with the problem of stimulating trade and commerce and national glory in a great territorial state with an underdeveloped system of agriculture. In the Wealth of Nations he wrote of the économistes’ system as an overreaction to Colbert’s celebrated and abortive attempt to turn France into a great trading and manufacturing country by means of ‘a system of restraint and regulation’ that favoured the industry of the towns to that of the country, a scheme which Smith thought, sardonically, ‘could scarce fail to be agreeable to a laborious and plodding man of business, who had been accustomed to regulate the different departments of publick offices’. The économistes had gone to the other extreme by proposing a scheme that ‘represents agriculture as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country’, and they consequently regarded the labour deployed in commerce and industry as useful but essentially unproductive, in the sense that it simply returned to the land the value of the labour and capital resources on which it depended.41 Smith thought this erroneous, utopian and capable of provoking political unrest. As Mirabeau pointed out in Rural Philosophy, the analysis assumed the existence of the large-scale, developed agriculture characteristic of England and not the existing system of tenant farming and subsistence cultivation characteristic of France. The problem was how to set in motion the agricultural revolution on which the future prosperity and greatness of France would depend. Replacing the existing tax system by a single tax on land and the landed classes, and removing existing obstacles to internal trade and the movement of labour, would encourage the circulation of wealth through the different sectors of the economy, generate the resources on which agricultural improvement depended and increase the wealth of the sovereign. It was a recipe for the regeneration of an underdeveloped economy that could only be brought into existence by a revolutionary act of state, which Quesnay iconoclastically called an act of ‘legal despotism’. So far as Smith was concerned it was a form of ‘projecting’ that was dangerously utopian.