siasm."[61] Yet here we seem to find him
in alliance with the little sects himself, and trying to crush that
liberty of dramatic representations which he declares to be so vital
to the health of the community.

The reason is not, moreover, that he had changed his opinions in the
interval between the attempts to suppress the Glasgow playhouse in
1762 and the publication of his general plea for playhouses in the
Wealth of Nations in 1776. He had not changed his opinions. He
travelled with a pupil to France, still warm from this agitation in
Glasgow, and, as we learn from Stewart, was a great frequenter and
admirer of the theatre in that country,[62] and a few years before the
agitation began he was as deeply interested as any other of John
Home's friends in the representations of the tragedy of Douglas, and
as much a partisan of Home's cause. He does not appear indeed, as is
sometimes stated, to have been present either at the public
performance of Home's tragedy in Edinburgh in 1756, or at the previous
private performance, which is alleged to have taken place at Mrs. Ward
the actress's rooms, and in which the author himself, and Hume,
Carlyle, Ferguson, and Blair are all said to have acted parts. But
that he was in complete sympathy with them on the subject is manifest
from an undated letter of Hume to Smith, which must have been written
in that year. In this letter, knowing Smith's sentiments, he writes:
"I can now give you the satisfaction of hearing that the play, though
not near so well acted in Covent Garden as in this place, is likely to
be very successful. Its great intrinsic merit breaks through all
obstacles. When it shall be printed (which shall be soon) I am
persuaded it will be esteemed the best, and by French critics the only
tragedy of our language." After finishing his letter he adds: "I have
just now received a copy of _Douglas_ from London. It will instantly
be put on the press. I hope to be able to send you a copy in the same
parcel with the dedication."[63] These sentences certainly imply that
Smith's ideas of theatrical representations were in harmony with those
of Hume and his other Edinburgh friends, but shortly afterwards he is
seeking to revive obsolete academic privileges to prevent the erection
of a theatre.

The explanation must be looked for in the line of the conditional
clause with which he limits his claim for entire liberty to dramatic
entertainments--they must be "without scandal or ind