188 ADAM SMITH. 



and Switzerland. They repaired in the spring of 1764 

 to Paris, where they only remained a few days, and 

 proceeding to Toulouse, passed in that provincial 

 capital a year and a-half. Except that the French 

 spoken on the Garonne is by no means so pure as that 

 of the Loire and other districts in the centre of the 

 country, the place was well chosen for a residence 

 connected with education. There was an university 

 of good repute with an excellent library ; it was also 

 the seat of one of the most important parliaments, and 

 of an engineer and artillery head-quarters (a requisite of 

 good society in my late friend Mr. Wickham's opinion) ; 

 the society was polished and not dissipated, commerce 

 and manufactures having somewhat unaccountably 

 never established themselves in a city which seems 

 well-suited to both from its central position and the 

 neighbourhood of the canal, as well as from the fer- 

 tility of the surrounding country. It is not doubtful 

 that Dr. Smith obtained, by his residence in this ancient 

 and flourishing city, and his intercourse with the well- 

 informed and polished circles of its society, much of 

 that accurate information respecting French affairs 

 which plainly appears in his writings, and which, as 

 he habitually distrusts the statements of political autho- 

 rities, was the result of his own inquiries and observa- 

 tions.* From Toulouse they went to Geneva, where 

 they passed two months, and then remained ten months 

 in Paris. Here he enjoyed an intimate acquaintance 

 with all the most eminent men of science and of letters, 

 particularly D'Alembert, Necker, Marmontel, Helvetius, 

 Morellet, Turgot, and above all, Quesnay, whose tastes 



* He has preserved in his ' Theory of Moral Sentiments ' an anecdote, 

 which, unless it is to be found in the earlier editions, I should imagine 

 him to have heard at Toulouse ; that when the unhappy Galas was mur- 

 dered by the law, and among other torments a monk was sent to obtain 

 his confession, the wretched sufferer, already broken on the wheel ex- 

 claimed, " Can you, yourself, father, believe me guilty?" (I., 303.) The 

 paragraph certainly is in one of the chapters which he says was altered in 

 the edition of 1788. 



