rter for the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, founded two years before. Robertson was very
anxious to have only one learned society in Edinburgh, of which
antiquities might be made a branch subject, and he even induced the
University authorities to petition Parliament against granting a
charter of incorporation to the Antiquarian Society. In this strong
step the University was seconded by the Faculty of Advocates and the
old Philosophical Society, founded by Colin Maclaurin in 1739, but
their efforts failed. Out of the agitation, however, the Royal Society
came into being. Whether Smith actively supported Robertson, or
supported him at all, in his exertions against the Antiquarian
Society, I do not know. He was not, as Robertson was, a member of the
Society of Antiquaries. But he was one of the original members of the
Royal Society. The society was divided into two branches,--a physical
branch or class devoted to science; and a literary branch or class
devoted to history and polite letters,--and Smith was one of the four
presidents of the literary class. The Duke of Buccleugh was President
of the whole society; and Smith's colleagues in the presidency of the
literary class were Robertson, Blair, and Baron Gordon (Cosmo Gordon
of Cluny, a Baron of Exchequer and most accomplished man).

Smith never read a paper to this society, nor does he ever seem to
have spoken in it except once or twice on a matter of business which
had been entrusted to him. The only mention of his name in the printed
_Transactions_ is in connection with two prizes of 1000 ducats and 500
ducats respectively, which were offered to all the world in 1785 by
Count J.N. de Windischgraetz for the two most successful inventions of
such legal terminology for every sort of deed as, without imposing any
new restraints on natural liberty, would yet leave no possible room
for doubt or litigation, and would thereby diminish the number of
lawsuits. The Count wished the prizes to be decided by three of the
most distinguished literary academies in Europe, and had chosen for
that purpose the Royal Academy of Science in Paris, which had already
consented to undertake the duty; the Royal Society of Edinburgh, whose
consent the Count now sought; and one of the academies of Germany or
Switzerland which he was afterwards to name. He addressed his
communication to the society through Adam Smith, who must therefore be
assumed to have had some private acquaintance or conn