,"
and that Smith became a member of this club after coming to reside in
Glasgow. This was probably the first political economy club in the
world, for Carlyle was in Glasgow in 1743, and it is of that period he
speaks when he says, "I was not acquainted with Provost Cochrane at
this time, but I observed that the members of this society had the
highest admiration of his knowledge and talents."

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 partn