Library, but when that became too small for the numbers that began to attend its meetings, in a room hired from the Mason Lodge above the Laigh Council House; and its debates, in which the younger advocates and ministers—­men like Wedderburn and Robertson—­took the chief part, became speedily famous over all Scotland as intellectual displays to which neither the General Assembly of the Kirk nor the Imperial Parliament could show anything to rival.  Hume wrote in 1755 to Allan Ramsay, who had by that time gone to settle in Rome, that the Select Society “has grown to be a national concern.  Young and old, noble and ignoble, witty and dull, laity and clergy, all the world are ambitious of a place amongst us, and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates as if we were to choose a member of Parliament.”  He goes on to say that “our young friend Wedderburn has acquired a great character by the appearance he has made,” and that Wilkie, the minister, “has turned up from obscurity and become a very fashionable man, as he is indeed a very singular one.  Monboddo’s oddities divert, Sir David’s (Lord Hailes) zeal entertains, Jack Dalrymple’s (Sir John of the Memoirs) rhetoric interests.  The long drawling speakers have found out their want of talents and rise seldomer.  In short, the House of Commons is less the object of general curiosity to London than the Select Society is to Edinburgh.  The ‘Robin Hood,’ the ‘Devil,’ and all other speaking societies are ignoble in comparison."[82]

At the second regular meeting, which was held on the 19th of June 1754, Mr. Adam Smith was Praeses, and gave out the subjects for debate on the following meeting night:  (1) Whether a general naturalisation of foreign Protestantism would be advantageous to Britain; and (2) whether bounties on the exportation of corn be advantageous to trade and manufactures as well as to agriculture.[83] Lord Campbell in mentioning this circumstance makes it appear as if Smith chose the latter subject of his own motion, in accordance with a rule of the society whereby the chairman of one meeting selected the subject for debate at the next meeting; and it would have been a not uninteresting circumstance if it were true, for it would show the line his ideas were taking at that early period of his career; but as a matter of fact the rule in question was not adopted for some time after the second meeting, and it is distinctly mentioned in the minutes that on this particular occasion the Praeses “declared before he left the chair the questions that were agreed upon by the majority of the meeting to be the subject of next night’s debate."[84] It is quite possible, of course, that the subjects may have been of Smith’s suggestion, but that can now only be matter of conjecture.  Indeed, whether it be due to his influence or whether it arose merely from a general current of interest moving in that direction at the time, the subjects, discussed by this society were very largely economic;