ecency." There is
never any question that if free trade and public morals clash, it is
free trade that must give way, and his opposition to the project of
the Glasgow playhouse must have originated in his persuasion that it
was not attended, as things then went, with sufficient practical
safeguards against scandal and indecency. In considering that point
due weight must be given not only to the general improprieties
permissible on the English stage at that time, but to the fact that
locally great offence had quite recently been given in Scotland by the
profane or immoral character of some of the pieces presented on the
Scottish boards,[64] and that Glasgow itself had had experience of a
disorderly theatre already--the old wooden shed where hardy playgoers
braved opinion and listened to indifferent performances under the
protection of troops, and where, it will be remembered, Boswell, then
a student at the College, made the acquaintance of Francis Gentleman,
the actor. That house was not a licensed house, but the new house was
not to be a licensed house either, and it is quite possible for one
who thought a theatre generally, with due safeguards, a public
benefit, to think that a particular theatre without those safeguards
might constitute a public danger, especially in a university town.

On two delicate questions of professorial duty Smith made a decided
stand in behalf of the stricter interpretation. In 1757 Professor John
Anderson, the founder of the Andersonian University, who was then
Professor of Oriental Languages in Glasgow, became a candidate for the
chair which he afterwards filled for so many years with great credit
and success--the chair of Natural Philosophy; and, as the appointment
lay with the professors, Professor Anderson was one of the electors,
and was quite within his legal right in voting for himself. But Smith,
impressed with the importance of keeping such appointments free from
any leaven of personal interest, tabled a formal protest on three
successive occasions against the intervention of that distinguished
but headstrong professor in the business of that particular election.
He protested first against Anderson voting on a preliminary resolution
respecting the election; he protested the second time against him
taking part in the election itself; and he protested a third time
after the election, desiring it to be recorded expressly "that he did
not vote in the election of Mr. Anderson as Professo