The Wealth of Nations_ Books 4-5 - Adam Smith [3]
Supposing therefore, that you have duely prepared yourself for the worst by these Reflections; I proceed to tell you the Melancholy News, that your Book has been very unfortunate: For the Public seem disposed to applaud it extremely.1
Charles Townshend was among those to whom Hume had sent a copy of Smith’s treatise. Townshend (1725–67) had been appointed First Lord of Trade and the Plantations in 1763 and later served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, where his taxation policy heightened the developing tension with the American Colonies. Townsend had married the widowed Countess of Dalkeith in 1755 and was sufficiently impressed by Smith’s work to arrange for his appointment as tutor to her son, the young Duke of Buccleuch. The position brought financial security (£300 sterling per annum for the rest of his life), and Smith eventually accepted, formally resigning his chair early in 1764.
Smith and his party left almost immediately for France to begin a sojourn of some two years. At the outset, the visit was unsuccessful, causing Smith to write to Hume, with some humour, ‘I have begun to write a book in order to pass away the time. You may believe I have very little to do.’2 But matters improved with Smith’s increasing familiarity with the language and the success of a series of short tours. In 1765 Smith, the Duke, and the Duke’s younger brother, Hew Scott, reached Geneva, giving Smith an opportunity to meet Voltaire, whom he genuinely admired as ‘the most universal genius perhaps which France has ever produced’.3
The party arrived in Paris in mid February 1766, but their stay there was marred by the developing quarrel between Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and brought to a tragic end by the death of the Duke’s younger brother. The party returned to London on 1 November. But from an intellectual point of view, the visit was a resounding success. David Hume had held a position at the British Embassy in Paris since 1763 and his contacts, and the reputation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ensured an entry to both English and French circles. The latter were especially important, in that Smith was afforded an opportunity to meet Diderot, Helvetius and Holbach. Other important contacts, of particular interest to the economist, included Quesnay, Mirabeau, Dupont de Nemours and Mercier de la Rivière, whose book, L’Ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques (1767), was considered by Smith to be ‘the most distinct and best connected account’ of physiocratic doctrine. Smith was also able to meet A. R. J. Turgot, later Minister of Finance, whose Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Riches was in the process of completion.
At the time Smith arrived in Paris, the Journal d’agriculture and the Éphémérides du citoyen carried articles of a professional nature, and the central texts of the physiocratic movement were already published, most notably Quesnay’s Tableau économique (1758), Mirabeau’s Friend of Man (1756, 1760) and their joint work, the Philosophie rurale (1763). At the time, Quesnay was working upon the Analyse while Dupont de Nemours was writing his account of the Origin and Progress of a New Science, that of political economy.4
The content of Smith’s library confirms his interest in this movement.5 He also enjoyed his friendship with Quesnay, whom he described as ‘one of the worthiest men in France and one of the best physicians that is to be met with in any country. He was not only physician but the friend and confidant of Madame Pompadour, a woman