Smith was thus perfectly alive to the prevailing poverty and distress of the French population, to the oppression they suffered, to the extreme difficulty, the hopelessness even, of any improvement of their situation while the existing distribution of political forces continued, and was able to defeat all efforts at reform.  Now from all this it was not very far to the idea of a political upheaval and a new distribution of political forces, and Smith saw tendencies abroad in that direction also.  He told Professor Saint Fond in 1782 that the “Social Compact” would one day avenge Rousseau for all the persecutions he had suffered from the powers that were.

FOOTNOTES: 

[159] Hume MSS., R.S.E.  Partially published in Burton’s Life.

[160] Correspondance Litteraire, I. iv. 291.

[161] Burton’s Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume, p. 238.

[162] Lady Minto, Memoirs of Hugh Elliot, p. 13.

[163] Morellet’s Memoires, i. 237.

[164] Schelle, Dupont de Nemours et les Physiocrates, p. 159.

[165] i.e. the Royal Society of Edinburgh, to whom Stewart first read his Life of Smith.

[166] Stewart’s Works, v. 47.

[167] Clayden’s Early Life of Samuel Rogers, p. 95.

[168] Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VI. sec. ii.

[169] Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, iii. 13.

[170] Brougham’s Men of Letters, ii. 226.

[171] Burton’s Hume, ii. 348.

[172] Garrick Correspondence, ii. 550.

[173] Garrick Correspondence, ii. 549.

[174] Ibid. ii. 501.

[175] Ibid. ii. 511.

[176] Stewart’s Works, x. 49, 50.

[177] “Essay on the Imitative Arts,” Works, v. 281.

[178] Works, v. 294.

[179] Say, Cours Complet, OEuvres, p. 870.

[180] Turgot’s OEuvres, v. 136.

[181] Wealth of Nations, Book IV. chap. ix.

[182] Memoirs of Madame du Hausset, p. 141.

[183] Marmontel’s Memoirs, English Translation, ii. 37.

[184] Fraser’s Scotts of Buccleuch, ii. 405.

[185] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 348.

[186] Hill’s Letters of Hume, p. 59.  Original in R.S.E.

[187] New Statistical Account of Scotland, i. 490. (Account of Dalkeith by the late Dr. Norman Macleod, then minister of that parish, and Mr. Peter Steel, Rector of Dalkeith Grammar School.)

[188] Autobiography, p. 280.

[189] Ibid.

[190] Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. ix.

[191] Ibid., Book V. chap. ii. art. iii.

[192] Wealth of Nations, Book V. chap. ii. art. iv.

[193] “Essay on the Imitative Arts,” Works, v. 260.