estate in 1893 for L20,000, and after all claims are met may probably have L15,000 of its original capital of L35,000 left to divide.  The net result of the scheme therefore on the development of Highland fisheries has been as near nil as Smith anticipated; and if the shareholders have not, as he predicted, lost every shilling of their money, they have lost half of it, and only saved the other half by abandoning the scheme for which it was subscribed.  In the whole course of its one hundred and eight years’ existence the society never paid more than eleven annual dividends, because for many years it saved up its income for building an extension to its harbour, and eventually lost all these savings and L100,000 of Government money besides in a great breakwater, which proved an irremediable engineering failure, and lies now in the bottom of the sea.

Smith returned to Edinburgh deeply pleased with the reception he met with from the ministers and the progress he saw his principles making.  He came back, says the Earl of Buchan, “a Tory and a Pittite instead of a Whig and a Foxite, as he was when he set out.  By and by the impression wore off and his former sentiments returned, but unconnected either with Pitt, Fox, or anybody else."[346] Had the impression remained till his death, it would be no matter for wonder.  A Liberal has little satisfaction in contemplating the conflict of parties during the first years of Pitt’s long administration, and seeing the young Tory minister introducing one great measure of commercial reform after another, while his own Whig chief, Charles Fox, offers to every one of them a most factious and unscrupulous opposition.

Soon after his return Smith received another, and to him a very touching, recognition of his merit in being chosen in November Lord Rector of his old alma mater, the University of Glasgow.  The appointment lay with the whole University, professors and students together, but as the students had the advantage of numbers, the decision was virtually in their hands, and their unanimous choice came to Smith (as Carlyle said a similar choice came to him) at the end of his labours like a voice of “Well done” from the University which had sent him forth to do them, and from the coming generation which was to enter upon the fruits of them.  There was at first some word of opposition to his candidature, on the good old electioneering plea that he was the professors’ nominee, and that it was essential for the students to resent dictation and assert their independence.  One of Smith’s keenest opponents among the students was Francis Jeffrey, who was then a Tory.  Principal Haldane, who was also a student at Glasgow at the time, used to tell of seeing Jeffrey—­a little, black, quick-motioned creature with a rapid utterance and a prematurely-developed moustache, on which his audience teased him mercilessly—­haranguing a mob of boys on the green and trying to rouse them to their manifest duty of organising opposition to the professors’ nominee.  His exertions failed, however, and Smith was chosen without a contest.