ADAM SMITH. Ill 



pride to reflect that our Government could find no 

 better employment, and no fitter reward for the most 

 eminent philosopher of the age, than making him a 

 revenue officer. For the last twelve years of his precious 

 life he was condemned to go through the routine business 

 of a Commissioner of the Customs ; as, some time after, 

 one of the greatest poets who ever appeared in this 

 island was made an exciseman, at seventy pounds a-year, 

 for a bare subsistence, and daily threatened with removal, 

 to die of hunger, if he did not square his conversation by 

 the opinions on French politics which his superiors enter- 

 tained. * 



It must, however, be added, that nothing could better 

 suit Dr. Smith, than the opportunity which his connexion 

 with the Duke gave him of visiting France and Switzer- 

 land. 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 impor- 

 tant parliaments, and of an engineer and artillery head- 

 quarters (a requisite of good society in my late friend 



* It is a gratifying proof of the progress which has since those 

 times been made, that no Minister could in our day propose such 

 preferment to such men. An instance may probably be cited of an 

 eminent poet being early in this century so employed; but there 

 was a wide difference in the emoluments, and the place was nearly 

 a sinecure. 



