prior probability

As Alain Alcouffe and I mentioned in our previous post, a dramatic political showdown was unfolding in real time in the Republic of Geneva during Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland; in fact, as we shall soon see, the high point of this constitutional conflict coincided with the Scottish philosopher’s visit to the Swiss city-state.

In summary, the leading protagonists of this conflict were, on the one side, Geneva’s famed legislative body — the Conseil Général or “General Council”, which purported to be the true source of the republic’s political sovereignty since it represented all the citizens of Geneva — and on the other, the true center of power in Geneva, the city-state’s elite executive-judicial “junta”, the Petit Conseil or “Small Council” (or Council of Twenty-five). Among a number of issues, the central point of constitutional contention at the heart of this power struggle was the scope of the Small Council’s veto power or droit négatif — namely, the right of the Small Council to control what proposals were placed before the General Council. Suffice it to say the General Council wanted a larger role to play in Geneva’s governance — a demand that became louder and more strident during the course of the “Rousseau Affair” — while the Small Council refused to share, let alone give up, any of its constitutional powers and prerogatives. [See generally Angela Bennett, Continuity and conflict : the struggle for political rights in eighteenth-century Geneva, PhD thesis, University of Kent (1995), especially pp. 136-150.]

But as it happens, the triennial election of various officers of the Small Council, including the Auditeurs and the Procureur-Général, was scheduled to take place at the autumn session of the General Council in November 1765. [As an aside, the Procureur-Général was the chief prosecutor or law enforcement officer of the Republic of Geneva, while the auditeurs were his assistants. See generally Raphael Barat, “The introduction of the vote by ballot in the elections of magistrates by the General Council of the Republic of Geneva (1707)”, in Jon Elster, editor, Secrecy and Publicity in Votes and Debates, Cambridge University Press (2015), pp. 72-96.] The way in which past elections were carried out, however, was emblematic of the gross imbalance of power in Geneva’s constitution, for in previous election cycles the Small Council would simply present a slate of pre-approved candidates to the General Council, and the General Council would then rubber-stamp the Small Council’s candidates. (Ibid.) Not this time.

This time, the General Council would use the November 1765 election cycle to strike back and raise the stakes in their ongoing power struggle with the Small Council, or in the words of one historian, the General Council finally “resorted to their one remaining legal and non-violent way to bring the government to see the error of its ways” (Bennett 1995, p. 145). Specifically, the General Council refused to elect any of the names from the Small Council’s slate of pre-approved candidates, voting instead to request a new slate of candidates (“la ligne de nouvelle election“; Bennett 1995, p. 145). This procedural vote and refusal was repeated multiple times until all the names of those eligible for office were exhausted. [See ibid., p. 145 & n. 48. See also Richard Whatmore, Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans: The Genevans and the Irish in Time of Revolution, Princeton University Press (2019), p. 92.] As a result of this deliberate inaction, nobody was elected and all the posts remained vacant!

Since no officers were elected, the government of Geneva was now facing a serious constitutional crisis, but how would the members of the Small Council respond to the legal vacuum created by General Council’s deliberate inaction? Would they back down, make concessions, and resolve the crisis in an equitable manner, or would they remain intransigent and paint themselves into a constitutional corner? As Alain Alcouffe and I will explain in our next post, the response of the Small Council would not only up the stakes of this constitutional crisis; it would also fan flames to the fire and produce a dire deadlock in January of 1766 …

(To be continued)

What did Adam Smith discuss during his sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766? What lessons might he have learned while conversing with Voltaire at his country estate in Ferney or with the duchesse d’Enville at her interim salon in Geneva? And how did his encounters with these Lumières inform his subsequent work?

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have identified several matters of historical interest that Smith himself was either personally aware of or that might have piqued his curiosity during this chapter in his life, including the physical whereabouts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (a fugitive from justice at the time), the ongoing pamphlet war between John Needham and Voltaire on the nature of miracles (see here, for example), and a spat between Voltaire and an English hunter that occurred on the Frenchman’s country estate in December 1765 (a hunting incident we call the “Fracas at Ferney” or the “Dillon Affair”).

But up to this point we have omitted any discussion of a dramatic political showdown that was unfolding in Geneva at this very moment in history. This unprecedented constitutional controversy was set into motion when the government of Geneva decided to prosecute Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, but the highpoint of this stalemate happens to coincide with Adam Smith’s visit to Geneva in 1765/66 … (To be continued)

Alain Alcouffe and I will resume our series on Adam Smith in Switzerland in the next day or two, but in the meantime I am sharing my love of the parranda, a Puerto Rican musical tradition that takes place during the Christmas holiday season, which in Puerto Rico lasts until the “Fiestas de San Sebastian” in mid-January! While I agree with Sabrina Carpenter that too many Christmas songs are way overplayed, for some nostalgic reason I never tire of parrandas. ¡Feliz Nochebuena!

What did Adam Smith learn during his Swiss sojourn in late 1765/early 1766? As Alain Alcouffe and I mentioned in our previous post, he must have learned a lot, for The Wealth of Nations contains a plethora of references to Switzerland as well as to several specific Swiss cantons, including Berne, Geneva, Lucerne, and Unterwald. Here, we shall survey some remarkable but prescient observations Smith makes about the role of religion on Swiss politics, education, and income inequality, among other things — remarkable because his observations are deep and original; prescient because Smith extends economic analysis to new domains beyond firms and markets. [See, e.g., Gary M. Anderson, “Mr. Smith and the Preachers: The Economics of Religion in the Wealth of Nations”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 96, No. 5 (Oct., 1988), pp. 1066-1088.]

For starters, the Scottish philosopher-economist has something to say about the politics of pastoral elections. According to Smith, when the members of a particular parish have the right to elect their own pastors — a Protestant practice at the time — then the inevitable result would be faction and polarization. Smith’s stunning observation about the politics of religion is so avant-garde, eloquent, and memorable that it deserves to be quoted in full:

As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of electing their own pastors, they acted almost always under the influence of the clergy, and generally of the most factious and fanatical of the order. The clergy, in order to preserve their influence in those popular elections, became, or affected to become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged fanaticism among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of a parish priest occasioned almost always a violent contest, not only in one parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes, who seldom failed to take part in the quarrel. When the parish happened to be situated in a great city, it divided all the inhabitants into two parties; and when that city happened either to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head and capital of a little republic, as is the case with many of the considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry dispute of this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity of all their other factions, threatened to leave behind it both a new schism in the church, and a new faction in the state. In those small republics, therefore, the magistrate very soon found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the public peace, to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant benefices. [WN, Glasgow ed., pp. 808-809 (para. 36).]

Next, Smith not only compares and contrasts the incentive effects of “church benefices” [note: a benefice is a reward or benefit — such as land, rents, or other rewards — received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services]; he also reveals why he himself chose to become a professor instead of joining the clergy in Scotland as he was required to do under the terms of his “Snell Exhibition”, which he was awarded in 1740. According to Smith, in Protestant countries where church benefices are “very moderate” (like Scotland and Switzerland), talented men of letters will generally prefer a chair in a university to becoming a clergyman: “a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than a church benefice”, and the universities in these places can cherry pick the best and brightest from the ranks of would-be clergy. [WN, Glasgow ed., p. 811 (para. 39).] By contrast, in Roman Catholic countries where such benefices are “very considerable”, talent flows in the opposite direction: “the church naturally draws from the universities the greater part of their eminent men of letters, who generally find some patron who does himself honour by procuring them church preferment”. [Ibid.] Smith also cites the great “Voltaire” (see here) in support of his conclusion and then goes on to discuss the situation in Geneva:

In Geneva, on the contrary, in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in the Protestant countries of Germany, in Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the far greater part of them, been professors in universities. In those countries the universities are continually draining the church of all its most eminent men of letters. [Ibid.]

Moreover, on the next page of his magnum opus, Smith posits an inverse relation between the wealth of churches and the wealth of their parishioners: “the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other”(!). [WN, Glasgow ed., p. 812 (para. 41).] In reaching this remarkable, if not prescient, conclusion (cf. Anderson 1988, cited above), the Scottish philosopher-economist not only cites “the Protestant cantons of Switzerland” as evidence in support of his observation; he also uses the phrase “all other things being supposed equal” for the first time in history [note: the only other place a similar phrase is used is on page 677 of the Glasgow edition of The Wealth of Nations], a phrase that would become a staple of modern economists everywhere:

It may be laid down as a certain maxim that, all other things being supposed equal, the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be, either the sovereign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases, the less able must the state be to defend itself. In several Protestant countries, particularly in all the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, the revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, the tithes and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. [Ibid.]

Last but not least, Smith also has something novel and interesting to say about the effects of church endowments on religious devotion. Specifically, are people who attend more “opulent” churches themselves more religious and less sinful than the members of more “poorly endowed” churches, such as those of Scotland or Switzerland? Smith’s remarkable conclusion is that a church’s level of endowment has no effect on the relative levels of religious devotion and sin; if anything, the arrow of causation runs in the opposite direction:

The most opulent church in Christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith, the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere morals in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed Church of Scotland. All the good effects, both civil and religious, which an established church can be supposed to produce, are produced by it as completely as by any other. The greater part of the Protestant churches of Switzerland, which in general are not better endowed than the Church of Scotland, produce those effects in a still higher degree. In the greater part of the Protestant cantons there is not a single person to be found who does not profess himself to be of the established church. If he professes himself to be of any other, indeed, the law obliges him to leave the canton. [Glasgow ed., p. 813 (para. 41).]

Were any of these observations about religion informed by Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland during his grand tour years? Hold that thought, for Alain Alcouffe and I will resume our “Adam Smith in Switzerland” series after Christmas …

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have surveyed several different facets of Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766 — such as his close contacts and encounters with the well-connected Dr Theodore Tronchin and with the great Voltaire — and we have also identified several matters of historical interest that Smith himself was either personally aware of or that might have piqued his curiosity during this chapter in his life, including the whereabouts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the ongoing pamphlet war between John Needham and Voltaire, and the Dillon Affair (an incident that occurred on Voltaire’s country estate at Ferney in December 1765).

But what did Adam Smith learn during his Swiss sojourn? If the dozen or so references to Switzerland in The Wealth of Nations — as well as the several additional references to specific cantons like Berne, Geneva, Lucerne, and Unterwald — are any indication, then the Scottish philosopher must have learned a lot during his Swiss travels! For example, in Book 1, Chapter 3 of his magnum opus on “The Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns after the Fall of the Roman Empire”, Smith explains why so many cities in Italy and Switzerland became independent city-state or mini-republics:

In countries, such as Italy and Switzerland, in which, on account either of their distance from the principal seat of government, of the natural strength of the country itself, or of some other reason, the sovereign came to lose the whole of his authority, the cities generally became independent republics, and conquered all the nobility in their neighbourhood, obliging them to pull down their castles in the country and to live, like other peaceable inhabitants, in the city. This is the short history of the republic of Berne as well as of several other cities in Switzerland. [Glasgow ed., pp. 403-404 (end para. 10).]

The bulk of Smith’s references to Switzerland in The Wealth of Nations, however, occurs in Book 5 of his magnum opus on “The Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth”. For starters, Smith compares and contrasts the militias of ancient Greece and Rome with those of “England, Switzerland, and … every other country of modern Europe” in Book 5, Chapter 1 as follows:

Militias have been of several different kinds. *** In the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, each citizen, as long as he remained at home, seems to have practised his exercises either separately and independently, or with such of his equals as he liked best, and not to have been attached to any particular body of troops till he was actually called upon to take the field. In other countries, the militia has not only been exercised, but regimented. In England, in Switzerland, and, I believe, in every other country of modern Europe where any imperfect military force of this kind has been established, every militiaman is, even in time of peace, attached to a particular body of troops, which performs its exercises under its own proper and permanent officers. [Glasgow ed., pp. 698-699 (para. 20).]

Later, Smith identifies another significant difference in the organization and morale of militias in ancient versus modern times: the militias of ancient Greece and Rome “required little or no attention from government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour”, while modern militias “are constantly falling into total neglect and disuse”. [WN, Glasgow ed., p. 787 (para. 60).] But at the same time, Smith also singles out Switzerland as an exception to this general rule:

The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the people than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern times. They were much more simple. When they were once established they executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour. Whereas to maintain, even in tolerable execution, the complex regulations of any modern militia, requires the continual and painful attention of government, without which they are constantly falling into total neglect and disuse. The influence, besides, of the ancient institutions was much more universal. By means of them the whole body of the people was completely instructed in the use of arms. Whereas it is but a very small part of them who can ever be so instructed by the regulations of any modern militia, except, perhaps, that of Switzerland. [Ibid.]

The remainder of Smith’s references to Switzerland in The Wealth of Nations, however, deal with religion — more specifically, with the effects of religion on politics, education, and the distribution of wealth. Among other things, Smith has something to say about the politics of pastoral elections and the rise of fanatical factions in the Protestant city-states of Switzerland, about the inverse relation between the wealth of churches and the wealth of their parishioners, and about the effects of established churches on morals. Alain Alcouffe and I will revisit Smith’s sundry observations on Switzerland in our next post …

Continued from yesterday: What was the Voltaire-Tronchin conspiracy, and why did these two leading denizens of Geneva decide to conspire to ruin Rousseau’s reputation and expose him as an intellectual and moral fraud? (And where does Adam Smith, who was in close contact with both conspirators during his sojourn in Switzerland, fit in?) In short, this conspiracy was not an imagined plot or feigned intrigue. It involved a deep secret about Rousseau’s dark past, about acts so shameful and deplorable that their disclosure to the public would all but destroy Rousseau’s reputation.

According to one Rousseau scholar (Matthew D. Mendham), Voltaire’s doctor, Théodore Tronchin, became aware of the Swiss philosopher’s shameful secret through one of his most glamorous private patients, Madame Louise d’Epinay, a wealthy salonnière and woman of letters who had been Rousseau’s patroness — she had furnished Rousseau a cottage called “the Hermitage” in the valley of Montmorency — and it was this same Dr Tronchin who then divulged Rousseau’s secret to Voltaire. [See, e.g., Matthew D. Mendham, Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau: The Jean-Jacques Problem, (2021), pp. 170-171 n.25 & p. 129. See also R. A. Leigh, “Review: Jean-Jacques Rousseau”, Historical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1969), pp. 549-565.]

So, did Madame d’Epinay, in fact, reveal Rousseau’s dark secrets to Dr Tronchin during one of her visits to Geneva, and did Tronchin then conspire with Voltaire to air Rousseau’s dirty laundry? Here is what we know for certain. First off, we know that Madame d’Epinay had been under Dr Tronchin’s personal care and attention during a visit to Geneva in 1757 — in fact, it was Rousseau who had introduced his patroness to Tronchin in the spring of 1756 (see Cranston 1991, pp. 22-23, cited in our previous post) — and we also know that “Dr Tronchin was by this time [i.e. 1757] on fairly intimate terms with Mme d’Epinay, addressing her as ‘ma bonne amie‘” (again, see Cranston, op. cit., p. 41 & p. 368 n.98, citing “BPUG, Archives Tronchin, 204, p. 29”).

In addition, we know that Dr Tronchin was in close and frequent contact with his lifelong friend and patient Voltaire. [Indeed, the earliest known letter written by Voltaire to Theodore Tronchin is dated 20 February 1741! See Theodore Besterman, “An Unpublished Voltaire Letter to Theodore Tronchin, and Some Notes on Dates”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 67, No. 5 (May, 1952), pp. 289-292.] Moreover, Tronchin and Voltaire had also been in regular correspondence with each other — as well as with Rousseau — on various matters since the summer of 1756 (see Cranston, cited above, pp. 29-31). And third and last, we now know that it was none other than Voltaire (with information provided by Tronchin) who wrote up a devastating exposé of the Swiss philosopher’s misdeeds. [See generally Chapter 5 of Mendham’s 2021 book, cited above, as well as Chapter 4 of Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott, The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding, Yale University Press (2009).]

To the point, Voltaire’s anonymous pamphlet, titled The Sentiment of the Citizens, was published on 27 December 1764 (see Mendham 2021, op. cit., p. 206 n.6). [For reference, Voltaire’s pamphlet is reprinted in Frédéric Eigeldinger, editor, Voltaire: Sentiment des citoyens, Champion (2000), and as a further aside, Rousseau’s reply to Voltaire’s anonymous pamphlet is reprinted in Volume 12 of Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, editors, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, University Press of New England (2007), pp. 45-49, available here.] Among other things, Rousseau’s shocking crimes and salacious secrets are put on full display for all posterity:

Is [Rousseau] a scholar who is disputing against scholars? No, [he] is the author of an opera and of two comedies that were hissed at. Is [he] a good man who, deceived by a false zeal, is making indiscreet reproaches to virtuous men? We admit, blushing and with sorrow, that this is a man who still bears the marks of his debaucheries, and who, dressed up as a street-swindler, drags with him from village to village, and from mountain to mountain, the unfortunate woman whose mother he killed, and whose children he exposed at the door of a hospital, rejecting the cares that a charitable person wanted to provide them, and renouncing all the feelings of nature, as he casts off those of honor and religion.

As it happens, the allegation that Rousseau somehow killed his putative mother-in-law is pure fabrication; the other major revelations, however, are not: the Swiss philosopher had not only fathered several children out of wedlock (five in all!); he had also forced the unfortunate unwed mother to discard her own children on the cold doorstep of an orphanage, never to be seen or heard from again. Alas, although the abandonment of unwanted babies was an accepted practice in many places at the time (for a survey, see Roberta Wollons, “Abandonment and Infanticide” in Richard A. Shweder, editor, The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion, University of Chicago Press (2009), pp. 1-4, available here), the damage was done; Rousseau’s darkest skeletons were now out of the closet. The Swiss philosopher was no scholar; he was a heartless rogue who had abandoned his own children!

Postscript: What is Adam Smith’s part in this sordid affair? Although Smith was in close contact with both Dr Tonchin and Voltaire during his sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765 and early 1766, he could not have played a direct role in the plot to tarnish Rousseau’s reputation, for Voltaire had already published his withering exposé in late 1764, when Smith was still in the South of France. That said, however, Tronchin and Voltaire’s backstabbing machinations may have shaped Smith’s priors when the Hume-Rousseau affair exploded in 1766.

Continued from yesterday’s post — footnotes and references are below the fold:

The correspondence between Dr Theodore Tronchin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau resumed in the spring of 1759, when the Swiss philosopher wrote to the doctor in Geneva asking for medical advice on behalf of two neighbors in Montmorency, France, where Rousseau was residing at the time. [1] Dr Tronchin dutifully replied to Rousseau on 17 April 1759. Among other things, the medical doctor reproaches the Swiss philosopher in a playful tone for not writing more often, ending his letter by asking, “How is it that the friend of humanity is hardly any longer the friend of men?” [2]

Alas, as Dr Tronchin — and later, the world during the Hume-Rousseau debacle — was about to discover, Rousseau was one of the most megalomaniacal, thin-skinned, and touchy moral and political philosophers of all time, an insecure introvert quick to take offense at the slightest perceived provocation, for Rousseau replied to Tronchin on 28 April 1759 as follows:

You accuse me of indifference to men, and you use the sweetest of words to name me. In order to answer you, Monsieur [note: Rousseau does not refer to his interlocutor as “doctor”], I must ask you in turn by what standards you judge me. Your manner of questioning me resembles that used in the interrogation of the wretched victims of the Inquisition. If I have secret accusers, tell me who they are, and of what they accuse me; then I will answer you. In the meantime, of what do I accuse myself? [3]

It gets worse, for Rousseau not only blows Tronchin’s playful reproach (“how is it that the friend of humanity is hardly any longer the friend of men?”) out of all reasonable proportion; he then goes on to say in a most scathing and sarcastic tone:

I congratulate you heartily on your good life, on your health, on your friends, and if I have none of these things, it is a misfortune and not a crime. Such as I am, I complain neither of my fate nor of my condition. I am the friend of the human race, and men are found everywhere. The friend of truth also finds ill-wishers everywhere, and I do not need to come far to meet them…. I prefer to live among the French rather than seek out enemies in Geneva. In a place where smart wits [i.e. Voltaire] are fêted, J.-J. Rousseau will hardly be fêted, and if he were, he would hardly glory in it. [4]

In some ways, the Swiss philosopher’s swift but indignant reply would foreshadow the more famous “philosophers quarrel” between David Hume and himself that would occur a few years later in 1766. He not only refers to himself in the third person — a true sign of a megalomaniac — he also sees “enemies in Geneva” as well as “ill-wishers” and imagined conspiracies “everywhere.” [5] Rousseau also concludes his missive by raising the stakes of their dispute in melodramatic fashion: “O worthy Tronchin. Let us both stay where we are. You may still honour your country. For me, it remains only to weep for it.” [6]

For his part, Dr Tronchin promptly replied to Rousseau’s accusations on 7 May 1759, and he (Tronchin) did not pull any punches: “You have wounded my soul, and my soul did not deserve the least injury from you.” [7] Furthermore, he called out Rousseau’s self-righteous indignation as unworthy of the Swiss philosopher and fought back with these words: “the most profound humility is the only state suited to man: the philosophers are absurd.” [8] But Dr Tronchin saved his most biting reply for last: “I pity clever men.” [9]

The back-and-forth between Rousseau and Tronchin would continue for several more rounds, but to make a long story short, it turns out that Rousseau did indeed have a valid reason, after all, to suspect Tronchin of engaging in a mean-spirited and nefarious smear campaign behind the scenes in Geneva, for at that very moment in time Dr Tronchin and Voltaire were, in fact, conspiring together to ridicule Rousseau and ruin his reputation … [10] (To be continued.)

One aspect of Rousseau’s thought that may have piqued Adam Smith’s admiration, curiosity, and intellect, even before his travels to Geneva in 1765-66, was the Swiss philosopher’s Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles, first published in 1758, the original cover page of which is pictured above. (For reference, see Allan Bloom’s translation of Rousseau’s classic 1758 letter-essay in Politics and the Arts; Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theater, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press (1960), available here.) Although this work by the famed “Citizen of Geneva” is addressed directly to the French mathematician and philosophe Jean le Rond d’Alembert (Rousseau was writing in reply to an article published in the famed Encyclopédie in which d’Alembert proposed the establishment of a theater in Geneva), the letter-essay was written for a general audience. In fact, a copy of Rousseau’s celebrated letter-essay on the theater found its way into Adam Smith’s library. [See Hiroshi Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library: A Supplement to Bonar’s Catalogue with a Checklist of the Whole Library, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1967), p. 53, available here.]

Moreover, one of the Lumières who received an initial copy of Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay was none other than Dr Théodore Tronchin, the scholar-medical doctor who would later be Smith’s key contact in Geneva. [See Maurice Cranston, The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754-1762, University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition (1991), p. 140.] Writing to a friend in Geneva (pastor Jacob Vernes), the Swiss philosopher had singled out Dr Tronchin among the citizens of Geneva and other prominent persons who were to receive presentation copies of Rousseau’s letter-essay. (In addition to Dr Tronchin, Rousseau asked his agent in the Swiss city-state to distribute copies to the great Voltaire, who at the time lived nearby in Les Délices; to two of Geneva’s syndics or chief magistrates, Jean Antoine Saladin and Pierre Mussard; as well as to several professors of the Académie de Genève. See ibid.)

As it happens, Dr Tronchin had not only read Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay; he also corresponded with the Swiss philosopher directly in November of 1758 to share his thoughts with him. Tronchin, however, was highly critical of Rousseau’s arguments. Maurice Cranston sums up Tronchin’s eloquent critique of Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay thus:

Dr Theodore Tronchin wrote [to Rousseau] suggesting that the morals of the Genevese were less pure than Rousseau realized, but also to suggest that the cultural activities Rousseau had proposed in his Letter to M. d’Alembert as an alternative to a theatre would only make things worse. In particular the men’s clubs, which once seemed good, had become a source of dissipation and wasted time, and were injurious to family life. He reminded Rousseau that the Genevese were not Greeks; they were a people of artisans, not warriors, and Rousseau’s idea of imitating Sparta and introducing state education, gymnastics, and military training was unsuited to children destined to earn their living in trades and industries. Moreover, if Rousseau’s policy of separating the sexes was adopted, Dr Tronchin pointed out that children would spend all their time with their mothers, and be deprived of the discipline of a father’s hand. ‘Geneva no more resembles Sparta,’ he continued, ‘than the white glove of an opera girl resembles the gauntlet of an athlete.’

[Cranston 1991, pp. 145-146. Dr Tronchin’s 3 November 1758 letter to Rousseau is reprinted in Volume 5 of R. A. Leigh, editor, Correspondance complète de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 734. See Cranston 1991, p. 375 n.67, citing “3.11.1758. MS R303, ff.62-3 (CC, V, 734)”.]

For his part, Rousseau wasted no time in writing up a point-by-point reply to Dr Tronchin on 26 November 1758. According to Maurice Cranston, Rousseau tried to find common ground with Tronchin: “He [Rousseau] noted with pleasure that Tronchin shared his views on the drama and expressed the hope that ‘your authority and your wisdom will prevent both the introduction of a theatre into the city and the continued existence of one at its gates’, the latter being … a reference to the theatre at Carouge, which Tronchin and others were trying to have closed”. [Cranston 1991, p. 147; Rousseau’s 26 November 1758 reply letter to Tronchin is reprinted in Volume 5 of R. A. Leigh, editor, Correspondance complète de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 743. See Cranston 1991, p. 375 n.70, citing “26.11.1758. BPUG, Archives Tronchin 165, ff.9-10 (CC, V, 743)”.]

Before proceeding, however, two important points are now worth noting. One is that the Geneva theater controversy — specifically, what effect does the theater, and popular entertainment more generally, have on morals? — was a question that Adam Smith no doubt must have cared about. Why? Because Smith himself had once served on a university committee to thwart the construction of a new theater in Glasgow. [On this peculiar chapter of Smith’s life — peculiar, given Smith’s love of theater during his grand tour years in Paris — see generally Ryan Patrick Hanley, “From Geneva to Glasgow: Rousseau and Adam Smith on the theater and commercial society”, Vol. 35 (2006), pp. 177-202, available here.] The second point is that the Tronchin-Rousseau correspondence would resume — and then come to an abrupt end — in April of 1759. (To be continued …)

Pictured above is Dr Théodore Tronchin (1709-1781), one of the most celebrated — in some quarters, despised — medical doctors of the Age of Enlightenment. In this post, Alain Alcouffe and I will discuss what we like to call “the Adam Smith-Théodore Tronchin connection“. Simply put, Dr Tronchin would turn out to be the single-most important Lumière that Adam Smith would have the pleasure of meeting during his (Smith’s) sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766, for it was most likely the Swiss doctor who introduced the Scottish philosopher to Turgot’s muse, the duchess d’Enville; who opened the doors of Voltaire’s country estate at Ferney to Smith; and who informed Smith of the latest developments involving Voltaire’s nemesis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

At the time, Théodore Tronchin was Europe’s most famous médecin or medical doctor. [For an excellent overview (in French) of Dr Tronchin’s fame — or notoriety, depending on one’s opinion of Tronchin –, see generally Giacomo Lorandi, “Les dynamiques d’une célébrité transnationale: Théodore Tronchin et l’inoculation de l’Infant Ferdinand de Parme en 1764”, Gesnerus, Vol. 74, no. 2 (2017), pp. 240–267.] Tronchin’s main claim to fame was an innovative method of inoculation against smallpox he had developed, refined, and perfected over the years. Among his most celebrated deeds, for example, Tronchin had successfully inoculated the sons of the Duke of Orléans in 1756 and published a highly-acclaimed research article on the topic of inoculation for the famed Encyclopédie. Yet it was a serendipitous triple-coincidence that would fate Adam Smith and Dr Tronchin to finally cross paths in the fall of 1765.

One set of coincidences was Dr Tronchin’s residence in Geneva and his elite circle of celebrity patients: Voltaire, the duchesse d’Enville, and the Stanhopes, among others. As a result, Smith would have ample opportunities to meet and interact with Tronchin and with the members of his inner circle during Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland. Another significant coincidence was that one of Smith’s students during his Glasgow days was Dr Tronchin’s youngest son, François Louis Tronchin (1743-1785). [See F. E. Guerra-Pujol, “Adam Smith through the Eyes of Horace Walpole”, SSRN, p. 65 n.268, available here.] According to Smith’s biographer John Rae, Tronchin had sent his son to Scotland in 1761 in order to enroll him in Smith’s foundational philosophy lectures at the University of Glasgow. [See John Rae, Life of Adam Smith, London: Macmillan (1895), p. 59; see also Francis W. Hirst, Adam Smith, London: Macmillan (1904), p. 127.] In the words of Rae (1895, p. 59):

Tronchin, the eminent physician of Geneva, … sent his son to Glasgow in 1761 purposely “to study under Mr. Smith,” as we learn from a letter of introduction to Baron Mure which the young man received before starting from Colonel Edmonston of Newton, who was at the time resident in Geneva. It was of Tronchin Voltaire said, “ He is a great physician, he knows the mind,” and he must have formed a high idea of the Theory of Moral Sentiments to send his son so far to attend the lectures of its author.

But perhaps the most important coincidence of all was Dr Tronchin’s connection to the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As it happens, it was Tronchin’s younger brother, Jean-Robert Tronchin (1710-1792), “Procurator General” or chief prosecutor of Geneva, who first condemned Rousseau’s works in 1762. [See generally Chapter 4 of Matthew D. Mendham, Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2001).] A few years prior to this prosecution, however, Dr Tronchin was a friend of Rousseau’s and was in regular correspondence with him. But by the time Smith arrived in the Swiss city-state in the fall of 1765, Dr Tronchin and Rousseau had had a serious falling out. In fact, Dr Tronchin would end up siding with his brother and concluding that Rousseau was a rogue: “The miserable Rousseau, who had the black project of overthrowing his fatherland in order to avenge himself, is currently the object of contempt and public hatred.” [See Letter of 15 February 1765, quoted in Raymond Trousson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau au jour le jour, Paris: Honoré Champion (2000), p. 588, and cited in Mendham 2001, p. 99, p. 202 n.131.]

In our next two posts, Alain Alcouffe and I will describe the chain of epistolary events that led up to the final rupture between Rousseau and Dr Tronchin, and we will also show why Adam Smith might have taken a keen interest in this state of affairs.