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LETTER LXXX.: Publication of the Wealth of Nations and of the Decline and Fall: the Armament for America. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

Edition used:

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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LETTER LXXX.

Publication of the Wealth of Nations and of the Decline and Fall: the Armament for America.

  • Edinburgh,

8 of April, 1776.

Dear Sir

I am employed in finishing the Corrections of the four last Volumes of my History, and these Volumes will probably be sent you by the Waggon next week. You have certainly Occupation enough on the four first till their Arrival. I beg that after the four first are printed off a Copy of the new Edition of them may be sent me by the Waggon, that I may return you the Errata.

I am very much taken with Mr. Gibbon's Roman History which came from your Press, and am glad to hear of its success. There will no Books of Reputation now be printed in London but through your hands and Mr. Cadel's1 . The Author tells me, that he is already preparing a second Edition. I intended to have given him my Advice with regard to the manner of printing it; but as I am now writing to you, it is the same thing. He ought certainly to print the Number of the Chapter at the head of the Margin, and it woud be better if something of the Contents coud also be added. One is also plagued with his Notes, according to the present Method of printing the Book: When a Note is announced, you turn to the End of the Volume; and there you often find nothing but the Reference to an Authority: All these Authorities ought only to be printed at the Margin or the Bottom of the Page2 . I desire, that a Copy of my new Edition shoud be sent to Mr. Gibbon, as wishing that a Gentleman, whom I so highly value, shoud peruse me in the form the least imperfect, to which I can bring my work3 .

We heard that yours and Mr. Cadell's Warehouses had been consumed by fire: I intended to have written you on the Occasion, but as I received a Letter from you a few Posts after, in which you mentioned nothing of the Matter, I concluded the Rumor to be false. Dr. Robertson tells me, that there was some Foundation for the Report; but that your Loss was inconsiderable; and that your Copies were insured4 . I shoud not have been sorry, if some Bales of my Essays had been in the Number; as I think I coud make some Improvements in a new Edition.

Dr. Smith's Performance is another excellent Work that has come from your Press this Winter; but I have ventured to tell him, that it requires too much thought to be as popular as Mr. Gibbon's5 .

If your Ministry have as much Reflection and Combination of thought as to make a successful Expedition on the other Side of the Atlantic with 40,000 men, they will much disappoint my Expectations. They seem to have gone wrong already by the Lateness of their Embarkations6 . But we shall see, which is the utmost that can be said in most Affairs of this Nature.

I am Dear Sir Yours sincerely

David Hume7 .

[1]Note 1. Gibbon, speaking of the publication of the first volume of his History, says:—‘After the perilous adventure had been declined by my friend, Mr. Elmsly, I agreed upon easy terms with Mr. Thomas Cadell, a respectable bookseller, and Mr. William Strahan an eminent printer; and they undertook the care and risk of the publication, which derived more credit from the name of the shop than from that of the author. So moderate were our hopes that the original impression had been stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan.... I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work, without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin. My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette.’ Misc. Works, i. 222. The preface to the third edition is dated May 1, 1777. Cadell and Strahan were publishing for Johnson, Blackstone, Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Blair, as well as for Gibbon.

[2]Note 2. Hume's wish that ‘something of the contents’ should be added at the head of the margin is scarcely reasonable; as the side marginal entries are numerous, often two or three on a page. In the third edition (perhaps also in the second edition, a copy of which I have not been able to find) his advice about the notes is followed. They are transferred to the foot of each page.

[3]Note 3. Gibbon, in the Journal that he kept when he was serving with the militia, entered on Nov. 2, 1761:—‘I read Hume's History of England to the Reign of Henry VII, just published, ingenious but superficial.’ Misc. Works, i. 139. He was but twenty-four years old when he made this entry. The superficiality was not in any way removed by all Hume's laborious revisions. The author of the Decline and Fall would have found still more to condemn, though perhaps still more to admire, than had been discovered by the young officer of militia in his quarters at Devizes.

[4]Note 4. ‘March 2. About nine at night a fire broke out in the warehouse of Messieurs Cox and Bigg, Printers, in the Savoy, and notwithstanding every possible effort to stop its progress, the warehouse, the printing-office, and the dwelling-houses of the two partners were in a short time consumed, together with two warehouses filled with books belonging to Mr. Cadell, and Mr. Elmsly of the Strand.’ Ann. Reg. 1776, i. 124.

[5]Note 5. Hume wrote to Adam Smith on April 1, 1776:—‘Euge! Belle! Dear Mr. Smith,—I am much pleased with your performance, and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by the public, that I trembled for its appearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily requires so much attention, and the public is disposed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular.’ Burton's Hume, ii. 486. Hume's ‘trembling’ may have been not only that of a friend, but almost of a parent. ‘In the Essays on Political Economy,’ writes Mackintosh, ‘it is very evident that Hume was the true master of Smith.’ Mackintosh's Life, ii. 248.

Boswell, who had arrived in London from Scotland on March 15, and who called on Johnson the next day, records:—‘I mentioned Dr. Adam Smith's book on The Wealth of Nations, which was just published, and that Sir John Pringle had observed to me, that Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject any more than a lawyer upon physic. Johnson. “He is mistaken, Sir: a man who has never been engaged in trade himself may undoubtedly write well upon trade, and there is nothing which requires more to be illustrated by philosophy than trade does.”’ Boswell's Johnson, ii. 430. On April 28 Boswell wrote to his friend Temple:—‘Murphy says he has read thirty pages of Smith's Wealth, but says he shall read no more. Smith too is now of our Club. It has lost its select merit.’ Letters of Boswell, p. 233. Boswell, in a note to the Tour to the Hebrides, somewhat condescendingly says:—‘I value the greatest part of the Wealth of Nations.’ Boswell's Johnson, v. 30, n. 3.

Adam Smith wrote to Strahan on Nov. 13, 1776:—‘I have received 300 pounds of the copy money of the first edition of my book. But as I got a good number of copies to make presents of from Mr. Cadell, I do not exactly know what balance may be due to me.’ On Oct. 26, 1780, he wrote:—‘I had almost forgot I was the author of the inquiry concerning the Wealth of Nations, but some time ago I received a letter from a friend in Denmark telling me that it had been translated into Danish.’ Smith goes on to ask Cadell to send three copies of the second edition to Denmark, and continues:—‘At our final settlement, I shall debit myself with these three Books. I suspect I am now almost your only customer for my own book. Let me know, however, how matters go on in this respect.’ Original Letters of Adam Smith in the New York Evening Post, April 30, 1887.

Romilly, writing from London on Aug. 20, 1790, a few weeks after Adam Smith's death, says:—‘I have been surprised, and I own a little indignant, to observe how little impression his death has made here. Scarce any notice has been taken of it, while for above a year together, after the death of Dr. Johnson, nothing was to be heard of but panegyrics of him. Lives, Letters, and Anecdotes, and even at this moment there are two more Lives of him about to start into existence.’ Life of Romilly, ed. 1840, i. 404. One of these Lives no doubt was Boswell's, and the other, perhaps, Murphy's. One of Gibbon's correspondents, writing from Madrid in 1792, told him that ‘the Wealth of Nations had been condemned by the Inquisition, on account of “the lowness of its style and the looseness of the morals which it inculcates.” Nevertheless the Court had permitted an extract from it to be published.’ Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 479.

Dugald Stewart, in a note which he added in 1810 to his Life of Adam Smith (p. 130), says:—‘By way of explanation of what is hinted at in the foot-note, p. 77, I think it proper for me now to add, that at the period when this Memoir was read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was not unusual, even among men of some talents and information, to confound studiously the speculative doctrines of Political Economy with those discussions concerning the first principles of Government which happened unfortunately at that time to agitate the public mind. The doctrine of a Free Trade was itself represented as of a revolutionary tendency; and some who had formerly prided themselves on their intimacy with Mr. Smith, and on their zeal for the propagation of his liberal system, began to call in question the expediency of subjecting to the disputations of philosophers, the arcana of State Policy, and the unfathomable wisdom of the feudal ages.’

Lord Cockburn, in his Memorials, p. 45, writing of Edinburgh in the closing years of last century, says:—‘The middle aged seemed to me to know little about the founder of the science [of Political Economy], except that he had recently been a Commissioner of Customs, and had written a sensible book. The young, by which I mean the liberal young of Edinburgh, lived upon him. With Hume, Robertson, Millar, Montesquieu, Ferguson, and De Lolme he supplied them with most of their mental food.’ Cockburn adds that when Dugald Stewart in the winter of 1801–2 gave his first course of lectures on Political Economy, ‘the mere term “Political Economy” made most people start. They thought that it included questions touching the constitution of governments; and not a few hoped to catch Stewart in dangerous propositions. It was not unusual to see a smile on the faces of some when they heard subjects discoursed upon, seemingly beneath the dignity of his Academical Chair. The word Corn sounded strangely in the moral class, and Drawbacks seemed a profanation of Stewart's voice.’ Ib. p. 174.

[6]Note 6. See post, p. 327, n. 14.

[7]Note 7. Strahan must have given Gibbon a copy of a part of this letter, for a long extract from it is published in Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 161. Answering Hume on April 12, Strahan wrote:—‘What you say of Mr. Gibbon's and Dr. Smith's books is exactly just. The former is the most popular work; but the sale of the latter, though not near so rapid, has been more than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose1 ....’

If this Ministry cannot land the number of men you mention in America, or very near that number, which from the great difficulty of procuring transports for that purpose, I am afraid they will not; and if the army there is not able to make a very considerable impression this summer, we shall be in the most awkward and disagreeable situation that can be conceived. Delay amounts to Defeat; and the expense of a single campaign in the unhappy contest is beyond all conception enormous. Besides, if things do not go well with us there this summer, it will throw us into such confusion at home as nearly to overset (not the Ministry only, that is often of little consequence) but the Government itself. So that our rulers have now much at stake which I hope they will not fail to keep in view. I am hopeful, and upon that hope rests my chief dependence, that the Colonists, tired of the total stoppage of all trade and improvements, and weary of the anarchy under which they now groan, will do half the work for us.’ M. S. R. S. E.

[7]Note 7. Strahan must have given Gibbon a copy of a part of this letter, for a long extract from it is published in Gibbon's Misc. Works, ii. 161. Answering Hume on April 12, Strahan wrote:—‘What you say of Mr. Gibbon's and Dr. Smith's books is exactly just. The former is the most popular work; but the sale of the latter, though not near so rapid, has been more than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose1 ....’

If this Ministry cannot land the number of men you mention in America, or very near that number, which from the great difficulty of procuring transports for that purpose, I am afraid they will not; and if the army there is not able to make a very considerable impression this summer, we shall be in the most awkward and disagreeable situation that can be conceived. Delay amounts to Defeat; and the expense of a single campaign in the unhappy contest is beyond all conception enormous. Besides, if things do not go well with us there this summer, it will throw us into such confusion at home as nearly to overset (not the Ministry only, that is often of little consequence) but the Government itself. So that our rulers have now much at stake which I hope they will not fail to keep in view. I am hopeful, and upon that hope rests my chief dependence, that the Colonists, tired of the total stoppage of all trade and improvements, and weary of the anarchy under which they now groan, will do half the work for us.’ M. S. R. S. E.

[1]The Wealth of Nations reached its sixth edition by the year 1791, and its ninth by the end of the century. The first two editions were in two volumes quarto, and the numerous succeeding ones at first in three volumes, and later on in four volumes octavo. It was not till 1839 that an edition in one volume was published. Lowndes's Bib. Man. ed. 1871, p. 2417, and Brit. Mus. Cata.