d on the sword and the other on the plough, and
that nothing could now answer for what he calls "the noblest of all
arts," the art of war, but the division of labour, which answered best
for the arts of peace, and a standing army of soldiers by exclusive
occupation.

Divided counsels and diminished zeal supply, no doubt, the main reason
for the decay of the Poker Club, but other causes combined. Dr.
Carlyle, who was an active member of the club, says it began to
decline when it transferred itself to more elegant quarters at
Fortune's, because its dinners became too expensive for the members;
and Lord Campbell attributes its dissolution definitely to the new
taxes imposed on French wines to pay the cost of the American War. His
statement is very explicit: "To punish the Government they agreed to
dissolve the 'Poker,' and to form another society which should exist
without consumption of any excisable commodity."[106] But he gives no
authority for the statement, and they are at least not likely to have
been such fools as to think of punishing the Government by what was
after all only an excellent way of punishing themselves. The wine duty
was no doubt a real enough grievance; it was raised five or six times
during the club's existence, and many a man who enjoyed his quart of
Burgundy when the duty was less than half-a-crown a gallon, was
obliged to do without it when the duty rose to seven shillings. It
may be worth adding, however, that the Poker Club was revived as the
Younger Poker Club in the very year, 1786, when the duty on Burgundy
was reduced again by the new Commercial Treaty with France.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Southey's Life of A. Bell, i. 23.

[76] Oswald had just been appointed commissioner for trade and
plantations.

[77] _Correspondence of James Oswald_, p. 124.

[78] Burton's _Life of Hume_, i. 375.

[79] Mr. Burton thinks the Society mentioned in this paragraph to be
"evidently the Philosophical Society" of Edinburgh, but it seems much
more likely to have been the Literary Society of Glasgow, of which
Hume was also a member. Of the Philosophical Society he was himself
Secretary, and would therefore have been in the position of giving
warning rather than receiving it; nor would he have spoken of sending
that Society a paper which he would be on the spot to read himself.
Whether Smith was Secretary of the Glasgow Literary Society I do not
know, but even if he were not it would be nothing strange though