prior probability

The late great George Stigler once observed something to the effect: “If you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending way too much time at the airport.” (See also Natasha Geiling’s excellent essay here.) However you answer this question, Justin Wolfers has recently formalized Prof Stigler’s intuition thus (bravo!):

… on the Internet!

… my children!

Since the powers that be, in their infinite and risk-averse and hypocritical wisdom, have decided to cancel the Thanksgiving holiday, we will fast-forward to take this opportunity to wish our readers a Merry Christmas!

I have blogged on a previous occasion about the potential existence of a travel diary that Adam Smith may or may not have kept during his Grand Tour of France (1764 to 1766), but this lost diary–even assuming it exists–may never be recovered. Here, I shall blog about Adam Smith’s lost letters and papers. The following passages are from the latest draft of my most recent work-in-progress “Adam Smith in Love“:

As the old Bayesian saying goes, “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (see, e.g., Altman & Bland, 1995, p. 485; see also Sagan, 1997, p. 213), but toward the end of his life, Doctor Smith specifically instructed his literary executors, Joseph Black and James Hutton, to destroy his unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and other private papers.[1] In fact, Adam Smith insisted on the destruction of his private papers and letters as early as 1773(!), when Smith had made his first will and had appointed his friend David Hume his executor.[2] Among the correspondence destroyed were any letters Adam Smith may have received from any of his lost loves.

So, why did Smith want to destroy his private letters and papers as early as 1773, only a few years after his 18-month sojourn in the South of France (1764 to 1765), his ten-month residency in Paris (1766), and his two-month stay at Dalkeith House (1767)? Did Smith ask his literary executors–first Hume, then Black and Hutton–to burn his manuscripts to hide or cover up any evidence of his lost loves? Nevertheless, despite Doctor Smith’s desire to have his papers and letters destroyed upon his death, a small sample of Smith’s correspondence still survives: 304 letters in all.[3] Among these 304 surviving letters are three addressed to Frances Scott Campbell (Lady Frances): Letter No. 97 dated October 15, 1766; Letter No. 98 dated October 19, 1766; and Letter No. 225 dated March 17, 1783. Why is there such a large gap of time between the first two letters (1766) and the third letter (1783)? Are these the only letters that Adam Smith ever wrote to Lady Frances? In the alternative, are there any additional Adam Smith letters in the possession of any of Lady Frances’ descendants?[4]

One of Smith’s leading biographers, Ian Simpson Ross (2010, p. 405), points to “Smith’s prudence” and “his concern for his literary reputation.”[5] In reality, what if Smith’s main concern was his own moral reputation?[6] After all, in addition to his contributions of jurisprudence, literary studies, and political economy, Doctor Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher, the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, first published in 1759. Any evidence of Smith engaging in “antenuptial fornication” in Scotland or of carrying out secret love affairs in France or in Dalkeith House might tarnish his towering moral reputation.[7] Furthermore, it turns out that Adam Smith, the moral philosopher, had a lot to say to about the passion of romantic love and the problem of licentiousness. ****

[1] See, e.g., Ross, 2010, pp. 404-405. See also Phillipson, 2010, p. 209. Cf. Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave, 2020, p. x: Doctor Smith “insisted to his faithful friends that all his paper be burned. Thus only 193 letters written by him and 129 addressed to him remain. The majority of them date from the latter part of his life, after the publication of The Wealth of Nations [in 1776] ….”

[2] See Phillipson, 2010, p. 279. Alas, Hume died on August 25, 1776, a full 14 years before Smith’s death in 1790.

[3] These 304 letters were eventually assembled together into a single volume and reprinted in Mossner & Ross, 1987. Of these 304 letters, 131 are from Smith’s hand, while 98 are addressed to Smith, and the remaining 75 letters contain information about Adam Smith. See ibid., p. 12.

[4] Cf. W. R. Scott, 1940, p. 272: “[T]here is just a possibility that a large body of documents relating to Adam Smith may still be in existence.” Tracking down any new Adam Smith letters addressed to Lady Frances, however, will be a daunting task. Lady Frances, for example, eventually married Archibald Douglas in 1783, and the couple had six children. See Rubenstein, 1985.

[5] Ross, 2010, p. 405.

[6] Cf. Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave, 2020, p. 133: “… it is important to underline also that the place ascribed to the judgement of posterity is found in the arrangements which he [Smith] to make prior to his death; to make his personal papers disappear and thus to control the image which posterity would later preserve of him.”

[7] Cf. Rashid, 1998, p. 173, who notes that Smith was an “assiduous cultivat[or] of patronage” and knew how “play[] the game.”

If you love trains but hate massive highways as much as I do, you must be asking: Where did we go wrong?

According to the N.Y. Times map pictured below (and putting aside for the moment possible issues of voter fraud), President-Elect (?) Joe Biden “flipped” many more counties in the 2020 presidential election, including Maricopa County in the pivotal southwestern State of Arizona, than Donald Trump did.

Instead of a final exam, why not conduct “exit interviews” with our students? That’s exactly what I have decided to do to conclude my course on Advanced Topics in Business Law. For your further reference, below is a screenshot of my exit-interview guidelines:

Three weeks ago, I shared the following three conjectures about Adam Smith’s love life in one of my previous posts: (1) that Adam Smith may have fallen in love upon his return to Kirkcaldy in 1746 after completing his formal studies at Oxford, (2) that his mother Margaret Douglas objected to this proposed union and that Smith acquiesced to his mother’s veto; and (3) that Smith may have carried out an adulterous love affair at some point during his Grand Tour of France. I now wish to add a fourth conjecture as follows:

“… my final conjecture, though perhaps my most tenuous one, is that during an extended stay at Dalkeith House [pictured below] in late 1767, Adam Smith may have carried out a secret and short-lived love affair with the sister of his former pupil Henry Scott, Lady Frances Scott Campbell.[1] Lady Frances, who would have been 17 years old at the time,[2] did not wed until 1783.[3] Of particular relevance to this conjecture is one of the four primary historical sources discussed at length in the next part of this paper: a short and incomplete recollection titled “Smith and Hume in Love”; see subsection “Exhibit C” in Part 2 of the paper, which identifies a “Miss Campbell of _________” as the object of Adam Smith’s romantic affections. Could this same “Miss Campbell” be a veiled reference to none other than Lady Frances; should “Dalkeith” or “Buccleuch” be inserted in the blank line following her name? According to one scholarly source (Bonnyman, 2014, pp. 59-60), Adam Smith resided at Dalkeith House, the Buccleuch family’s principal and recently-refurbished residence in Scotland.[4] Moreover, his stay at Dalkeith House lasted at least two months, from mid-September 1767 to mid-November 1767,[5] and he may have subsequently visited the Buccleuch estates on several occasions.[6] As a result, the possibility of a secret love affair between Doctor Smith and the young Lady Frances is not a far-fetched one.[7]“

[1] Recall that Adam Smith was Henry Scott’s private tutor during their Grand Tour of Europe (early 1764 to late 1766). Edith Kuiper (2013, p. 70) incorrectly identifies Lady Frances as Henry Scott’s elder sister. In fact, Lady Frances was Henry Scott’s youngest sister. See Bonnyman, 2014, p. 1.

[2] See Stuart, 1985, p. 54.

[3] See Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave, 2020, p. 290. When she married in 1783, at the age of 33, Lady Frances became Lord Archibald Douglas’ second wife. See Rubenstein, 1985, p. 11. As an aside, according to Stuart (1985, p. 59), Lady Frances, upon reaching the age of 21, was entitled to an income from her family of £600 per year. To put this amount in perspective, Adam Smith’s compensation for serving as the Duke’s private tutor and advisor consisted of an annual salary of £300 plus traveling expenses and a pension of £300 a year thereafter. Ross, 2010, p. *.

[4] Dalkeith House or Dalkeith Palace is located only four miles south of Edinburgh, where Smith lived the last 12 years of his life. This neo-classical palace was commissioned and built in the early 18th century and then refurbished in preparation for Henry Scott first visit to Scotland in honor of his reaching the age of majority. See Bonnyman, 2014, p. 10 & pp. 57-58. For an engraving of this palace as it appeared in the early 18th century, see National Library of Scotland, n.d.

[5] For further details regarding Smith’s stay at Dalkeith, see Bonnyman, 2014, pp. 58-59.

[6] See Kuiper, 2013, p. 76, n.14. It is unclear, however, whether Adam Smith ever returned to Dalkeith House following his initial two-month stay in late 1767.

[7] For a biography of Lady Frances written by a contemporary of hers, see Stuart, 1985. See also Rubenstein, 1985. Among other things, Lady Louisa Stuart’s intimate memoire of Lady Frances’ life and circle of family and friends paints a very unflattering picture of Lady Frances’ mother; in addition, Stuart (1985, pp. 45-49) paints Lady Frances’ stepfather as extremely possessive: “unwilling ever to have her out of his sight” (p. 46). Also, Stuart’s memoire (see especially pp. 54 & 58) highlights Lady Frances’ worldliness and awareness of adult double standards. Given these facts, along with Townsend’s sudden death in August of 1767, it is not far-fetched to imagine a fling between an erudite middle-aged Adam Smith and a young, newly-liberated damsel. For a portrait of Lady Frances by Sir Joshua Reynolds when she was still a child, see National Galleries of Scotland, n.d. As a further aside, Lady Frances was an accomplished artist in her own right. For a collection of her works, see Tate, n.d.

No, it’s neither Trump nor Biden, but rather the venerable Gavin Newsom, the deceitful Governor of California. “White privilege,” anyone? (Yes, the Governor of N.Y., Andrew Cuomo, came in a close second.) In any case, Newsom must resign or be removed from office, for when you openly flaunt your own rules, you are not fit to hold public office. Bonus material: Beyond the “bad optics” of this sordid episode, here is a powerful critique of the substance of Newsom’s misguided lockdown order via Dylan Shetler’s excellent Onlookers blog.

Update (11/21): It turns out that Newsom is not the only petite tyrant flaunting his own lame lockdown orders. Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.