Cochrane was indeed one of the remarkable men of that time.  Smollett describes him in Humphrey Clinker as “one of the first sages of the Scottish kingdom,” and “a patriot of a truly Roman spirit.”  He was Provost of Glasgow during the Rebellion, and while the Government and the Horse Guards slumbered and dawdled, and let Prince Charlie march from the Highlands to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh up into the heart of England, Cochrane had already raised two regiments in Glasgow to resist the invader, which, however, this same dawdling Government, from mistaken suspicions of Scottish loyalty, refused to permit him to arm.  The Prince, on his return from England, actually occupied Glasgow, and taxed it severely, but Cochrane’s sagacious management piloted the city through the crisis, so that it neither yielded to the popular Prince’s arts nor provoked him to hostilities; and, looking back at these difficulties when he laid down the Provostship a few years later, he said, “I thank my God that my magistracy has ended without reproach.”  His correspondence, published by the Maitland Club, contains some terse descriptions of the “prodigious slavery” he underwent, “going through the great folks” in London day after day for two months trying to recover from the Government some compensation for the Prince’s exactions.  And it may be added that it was his banking firm—­Cochrane, Murdoch and Co., generally known, however, as the Glasgow Arms Bank, because they printed the Glasgow arms on their notes—­that fell on the happy expedient of paying in sixpences when the Bank of Scotland made the infamous attempt to “break” it in 1759 by first collecting its notes for some time, and then suddenly presenting the whole number collected for immediate payment.  The agent of the Bank of Scotland presented L2893 of notes on the 14th of December, and after thirty-four successive days’ attendance he wrote his employers that he had only received L1232, because “the partners vied with each other in gaining time by miscounting and other low arts, and when the partners became wearied or ashamed of the task, their porter, a menial servant, would act the part of teller."[67]

Of the Political Economy Club, founded by this able man, we know nothing except what Dr. Carlyle tells us, and the only other member of it besides Smith and Cochrane whose name Carlyle mentions is Dr. Wight, Professor of Ecclesiastical and Civil History.  But it met once a week all the thirteen years Smith resided in Glasgow, and must have discussed many commercial problems during that time.  We know, indeed, some of the principal practical questions which were then agitating the minds of Glasgow merchants, and may be sure those, at least, would be among the questions discussed at the club.  Some of them concerned the removal of trade restrictions, but the restrictions which those Glasgow merchants were anxious to remove were restrictions on the import of raw materials for their manufactures, such as iron and linen yarn, and manufacturers, of course, are not necessarily free-traders because they want free import of raw materials.  That was advocated as strongly from the old mercantilist standpoint as it is now from the free-trade one; it was merely sanctioning a little addition to our imports in order to produce a much greater addition to our exports.