I have posted a revised draft of my most recent paper “COASE’S PARABLE” to SSRN. This paper, which traces the intellectual origins of the late Ronald Coase’s “reciprocal harms” idea (an idea with radical moral, political, and legal implications that has haunted me since my first year of law school — it was my beloved mentor and law professor Guido Calabresi who introduced me to Coase’s counter-intuitive idea in the fall of 1990), will be published later this year in a special symposium issue of the Mercer Law Review; in the meantime, my Coase paper is available here. (Professor Coase is pictured below during his early University of Chicago days.)
Yesterday was the last day of the spring semester at my home institution, and starting tomorrow my wife and I will be visiting a number of places over the next two weeks, including Las Vegas, Nevada (to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary); Santa Barbara, California (to visit my alma mater UCSB); and Washington, D.C. (to attend some lectures and visit some cultural sites), so I will be blogging much less frequently in the days ahead.
My previous posts assembled, surveyed, and subjected to lawyerly scrutiny the three different versions of “The Adam Smith-David Hume Incident at Oxford” that appear in the historical record — the 1797 version of this storied anecdote attributed to Sir John Leslie (see here), the 1853 version authored by John Ramsay McCulloch (here), and the 1855 version reported by Dr John Strang (here).
Here, I will add a short postscript to my researches: is there any reference to the Smith-Hume incident in the records of Oxford University itself? Considering that all three versions of this anecdote agree that the young Adam Smith was “severely reprimanded” and that his copy of Hume’s works were confiscated, there should be some mention of this affair in the records of Balliol College, where this incident supposedly occurred. By way of example, see the meticulous set of itemized entries in the “Bursars’ Computi” or financial accounts of Balliol College for the 1734-35 academic year, which are reproduced in Beachcroft 1982, Table 2 (see Note 1 below the fold) and which span nine pages.
To this end, I read two book-length and well-researched histories of this storied institution: one by an emeritus fellow of Balliol College (Jones 1988); the other by an editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (Davis 1899), the precursor of today’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (See also note 1 below the fold.) Although both of these tomes refer to Adam Smith and to his time at Balliol College (see, e.g., Davis 1963 [1899], pp. 154-155; Jones 1988, pp. 164, 261), but the Smith-Hume incident is mentioned in passing in one of these books (Davis 1963 [1899], p. 155) and is not mentioned at all in the other (Jones 1988).
In summary, the one Oxford Univeristy historian to mention the anecdote is Henry William Carless Davis, who asserts that the young Adam Smith “was one of the unpopular Snell Exhibitioners [at Balliol College], and never appears to have mingled much in undergraduate society.” (See Davis 1963 [1899], p. 154.) In addition to being an unpopular introvert who kept to himself (if Davis is to be believed), the future economist also “had the misfortune to be caught in the act” of reading one of the works of David Hume. In Davis’s words:
“And Smith, moreover, had the misfortune to be caught in the act of reading Hume’s Treatise; the fact, we may be sure, did not increase the goodwill of his tutor.”
Davis 1963 [1899], p. 155
Alas, where have we seen such an uncorroborated statement before? Like Sir John Leslie’s 1797 version of the anecdote, John Ramsay McCulloch’s 1853 version, and Dr John Strang’s 1855 version, no evidence or other source is offered in support of this hearsay statement in Professor Davis’s 1899 history of Balliol College. In fact, to this day we still don’t know the identity of Smith’s tutor during his Oxford years, let alone the identities of the actual superiors who supposedly confiscated Hume’s works from Smith’s dorm room and reprimanded him for reading those works.
In closing, I will bring this series of blog posts to an end by posing a new set of questions for future research. Specifically, how common was it for chaplains, tutors, or college masters to search the rooms of their students at Oxford during the mid-17th century, and what formal or informal procedures were in place at that time whenever forbidden books or other contraband materials were found within the walls of the university? I shall consider this new set of questions in a future blog post.
Nineteenth century Scottish author, historian, and statistician John Strang surveys the founding and subsequent history of two of Glasgow’s most illustrious private societies in chapter 1 of his most important work Glasgow and It Clubs, which is available here and the cover of the 3rd edition of which is pictured below. One is the legendary Literary Society, which met on Friday evenings at the University of Glasgow when classes were in session; the other is the storied Anderston Club, which met on Saturday afternoons in the friendly confines of John Sharpe’s tavern on the north bank of the River Clyde.
As it happens, Adam Smith was a member of both clubs, and by all accounts he attended their meetings on a regular basis during the 1750s and early 1760s, when he was the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University. For his part, Dr Strang drops this bombshell about the Anderston Club toward the end of the chapter:
“And then, to crown all, the author of the “Wealth of Nations” might be there heard telling, as he was often wont, of his experiences at Oxford, where he was deterred from adopting the clerical profession, in consequence of the unceremonious manner in which he was treated by the superiors of Baliol [sic], when they discovered him studying one of the early lucubrations of Hume.”
Strang 1855, pp. 27-28
Is this testimony the proverbial “smoking gun” that both Ross (1995) and Rae (1895) believe it to be? No, it is not. For the three reasons I provide below, Strang’s version of “The Anecdote” is built on a shaky foundation, the equivalent of evidentiary quicksand.
For starters, Strang’s purported smoking gun story was published over 100 years after the fact! Strang was not even alive during Adam Smith’s lifetime — he was born in 1795; five years after economist-philosopher’s death — so he himself has no personal knowledge of The Anecdote. Secondly, what is the actual source of Strang’s hearsay testimony? Alas, Strang fails to produce a single witness, someone with first-hand knowledge of this story. Not only does Strang fail to identify even one actual witness; he also fails to cite any secondary sources in support of his story, a glaring omission in what is an otherwise well-researched book.
But most importantly, why is there no contemporaneous corroboration of Strang’s story? Assume Strang’s story is true. If so — if it was really Adam Smith himself who used to tell this fable during his Glasgow professor years — then why does no other first-hand account or even second-hand report of The Anecdote appear anywhere in the historical record until 1797, more than 50 years after this storied incident was supposed to have actually occurred? As we Bayesians like to say, “the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.” Strang’s story, like Sir John Leslie’s and John Ramsay McCulloch’s, falls apart like a house of cards as soon as it is subjected to closer scrutiny.
According to one of Adam Smith’s biographers (John Rae 1895, p. 24): “A story has come down … to the effect that [the young Adam Smith] was one day detected [by his superiors at Balliol College, Oxford] reading Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature … and was punished by a severe reprimand and the confiscation of the evil book.” Is this story true, though?
My previous post (see here) traced the origins of this oft-repeated Smithian anecdote to three historical sources: an anonymous essay published in the January 1797 issue of The Monthly Review; an 1853 biography of Smith by Scottish economist John Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864), and an 1855 history of “Glasgow and Its Clubs” by Scottish author John Strang (1795–1863). In addition, I also concluded that these various versions of “The Anecdote” are based on pure hearsay and should therefore be discounted as uncorroborated and far-fetched fabrications, but one reputable Adam Smith scholar (Ian Simpson Ross 2010, p. 71) claims that we can believe the 1797 version of this story because it was published in a reputable journal (The Monthly Review) by a reputable source with direct knowledge of The Anecdote (the mathematician John Leslie, who is pictured below)!
In the words of Ian Simpson Ross (2010, p. 71): “We can believe this story, since it is included in a review of EPS [i.e. Adam Smith’s posthumous Essays on Philosophical Subjects] in the Monthly Review, 1797 (Mizuta, 2000: v.2) [i.e. Volume 2 of Hiroshi Mizuta’s six-volume collection of reviews of Adam Smith’s works, published by Routledge in 2000], written by the mathematician and natural philosopher, John Leslie (identified in Nangle, 1955).” Note: The reference to “Nangle, 1955” is to the master index of Monthly Review contributors and articles compiled by Benjamin Christie Nangle and published by the Clarendon Press in 1955. Simpson Ross (2010, p. 71) further claims a direct connection between John Leslie and Adam Smith: “Smith had befriended Leslie in 1787-8 (Morrell, ODNB, 2004) [i.e. Jack Morrell’s entry for “Leslie, Sir John” in the 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography], and employed him to teach his heir, David Douglas (Corr. No. 275) [i.e. Letter #275 in The Correspondence of Adam Smith].”
The mathematician John Leslie is indeed identified as the author of The Anecdote in Nangle’s 1955 index (see Nangle 1955, p. 204), and furthermore, Leslie did know Adam Smith personally for many years. We know about this direct connection between the political economist (Smith) and the mathematician (Leslie) because Smith himself once wrote a letter of introduction on behalf of John Leslie in 1787, and in this letter Smith acknowledges that Leslie “has been known to me for several years past” and that “more than two years ago” (i.e. 1784 or 1785) Leslie had been a tutor to Smith’s “nearest relation” (namely, to Smith’s nephew and heir David Douglas). (See The Correspondence of Adam Smith, Letter #275, which is addressed to Sir Joseph Banks in Edinburgh and is dated 18 December 1787. Smith further adds that Leslie the tutor “acquitted himself most perfectly both to my satisfaction and to the young Gentleman.” Ibid.)
It is therefore possible that Adam Smith recounted The Anecdote to John Leslie sometime in the 1780s, but if so, then why does John Leslie’s version of The Anecdote (assuming that Leslie is, in fact, its author) begin with the words “We have heard …” Why not identify Smith himself as the source? Also, even if these conjectures were true — i.e. that Smith told The Anecdote to Leslie in the 1780s and that Leslie then included it in his review of Smith’s posthumous essays — why did Smith wait over 40 years to tell his story, and why did Smith tell it to Leslie of all people? Did Smith share The Anecdote with anyone else, and did he do so earlier than the 1780s? I shall address these questions and wrap up this series in my next post.
Sir John Leslie, via the Encyclopaedia Britannica (see here)
Although I have surveyed Adam Smith’s “Oxford years” in three separate posts this month (see post #1 here, #2 here, and #3 here), I have left out what is perhaps the most intriguing anecdote involving Adam Smith at Oxford, an incident that allegedly occurred in his private quarters when he was a Snell scholar at Balliol College. (Shout out to Peter Clark bringing this incident to my attention.) According to lore, someone at Oxford — it’s unclear who: either one or more of the fellows or chaplains at Balliol or perhaps even the master of the college — “severely reprimanded” the young Adam Smith for daring to read David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, and they confiscated Smith’s copy of Hume’s works to boot!
But did this alleged affair really happen? Although this formative incident of Smith’s youth is recounted in just about every sketch of the political economist’s life and work (one notable exception, however, being Dugald Stewart’s biography of Adam Smith), I did some further digging and discovered that there are at least two — and possibly as many as three — different versions of The Anecdote! (Note: I shall hereafter refer to the various reports of this alleged incident as “The Anecdote“.) The earliest version was published in 1797 — more than 50 years after Smith had left Oxford — and is cited by Ian Simpson Ross (see Ross 2010, p. 71), Nicholas Phillipson (see Phillipson 2010, p. 65 & p. 292 n.28), and Dennis Rasmussen (2017, pp. 39-40 & p. 266 n.19), while another version was published another 50 years later in the 1850s and is also cited by Ian Simpson Ross (see Ross 2007, p. 347 & p. 347 n.4) as well as by John Rae (see Rae 1895, p. 24). The third version was not published until 1855 (see Strang 1855, pp. 27-28) and is cited by both Ross (1995) and Rae (1895).
Although all these various versions of The Anecdote are similar, there are two subtle but salient differences. In one version of this story Smith is caught red-handed by his “superiors” in the actual act of reading Hume’s work; in the other version, by contrast, a copy of one of Hume’s works is found lying around somewhere in Smith’s rooms by a group of “reverend inquisitors”. Here, for example, is Story #1 of The Anecdote — the less dramatic version of events — which first appeared in press on page 60 of Volume 22 of the January 1797 issue of The Monthly Review (see screenshots below):
“We have heard that the heads of the college thought proper to visit his chamber, and finding Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, then recently published, the reverend inquisitors seized that heretical book, and severely reprimanded the young philosopher.”
Next, here is Story #2, which first appeared on pages 445-446 of the first edition (1853) of Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with Economic Policy with Biographical Sketches of Quesnay, Adam Smith & Ricardo by John Ramsay McCulloch (born 1789, died 1864) and also on pages 511-512 of the “enlarged and improved” second edition of this work:
“Something had occurred, while Smith was at Oxford, to excite the suspicions of his superiors with respect to the nature of his private pursuits; and the heads of his college, having entered his apartment without his being aware, unluckily found him engaged reading Hume’s “Treatise of Human Nature.” The objectionable work was, of course, seized; the young philosopher being at the same time severely reprimanded.”
At the end of the last sentence of Story #2, the author also drops a footnote to explain why this report is most likely true, even though The Anecdote does not appear in any edition of Dugald Stewart’s widely-read biography of Adam Smith and even though Stewart knew Smith personally: “Mr Stewart has not mentioned this circumstance, but it rests on the best authority.” (As an aside, both the 1853 and 1859 editions of McCulloch’s book were published in Edinburgh by Adam and Charles Black, and The Anecdote appears the same word-for-word in both editions.)
I will return to Story #3 later. In the meantime, it suffices to say that all three versions of The Anecdote are based on pure hearsay. Story #1 begins with the words, “We have heard …” The anonymous author of the story, however, does not bother to tell us from whom he has heard this story, so we have no way of judging the credibility of his source. Worse yet, the credibility of Story #2 is ever more dubious: it is told in the passive voice, and we are simply informed in a footnote that this second story is true “on the best authority” yet that authority or source is never specified. Furthermore, there is no reference to this incident in Smith’s surviving correspondence, and neither version of The Anecdote was published during Smith’s lifetime. In fact, the first version of The Anecdote was not published until half a century after this alleged affair was supposed to have occurred!
Nevertheless, most of Smith’s biographers — some of the most eminent and learned scholars in the world — continue to believe in the veracity of this incredible tale for at least two reasons. One is that the anonymous author of the 1797 version of The Anecdote was later revealed to be John Leslie, who did know Adam Smith personally. The other reason is a supposed “smoking gun” piece of evidence — Story #3! — in the form of an 1855 book by Dr John Strang titled Glasgow and Its Clubs. According to Strang’s story, it was none other than Adam Smith himself who used to tell The Anecdote among the company of friends at the private clubs of Glasgow, presumably during his professor years at the University of Glasgow (1751 to 1763)! I shall address the first of these points (the Leslie connection) in my next post in this series.
That is the volume number of the new issue of The Adam Smith Review, which is now available (see here). I was invited to contribute a book review to this volume — “Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life” by Ryan Patrick Hanley. Via SSRN, here is an ungated version of my review of Hanley’s book, along with my review of “Law and the Invisible Hand: A Theory of Adam Smith’s Jurisprudence” by my colleague and friend Robin Paul Malloy: “Do Grasshoppers Dream of Impartial Spectators?“
As of this writing, the U.S. Congress and many State legislatures are currently debating whether to ban the popular social media app TikTok–not just from government-issued devices, but outright! But did you know that access to TikTok is already being blocked at such major research universities like the University of Texas (since January of this year; see here) and at all the public universities in the “Free State” of Florida, including my home institution the University of Central Florida. (The Florida Board of Governors, which is responsible for the management of the public universities in the state, enacted Emergency Regulation 3.0075 on data security at the end of March, and now all persons are prohibited from using public university Wi-Fi networks in Florida to access TikTok; see, for example, this report in The Gainesville Sun.) Although I can appreciate the data privacy and national security hysteria that is ostensibly motivating these drastic anti-TikTok actions, to my classical liberal mind these draconian measures not only constitute an unlawful abridgement of speech rights; they smack of pure sinophobia and moral panic.
prior probability 