From this reformed and progressive University the economist often issued forth to breathe the eager air of a thriving mart. The town was remarkably free from poverty and crime. In his lectures he said that in Glasgow there was less crime than in Edinburgh, because it had more commerce and independence, fewer servants and retainers. When he first went to Glasgow as a student it was still poor; when he returned as a professor, its commercial prosperity had fairly begun. Its loyalty to the Hanoverian dynasty had cost it heavily in 1745, but that loyalty is intelligible enough; for the Act of Union which deprived Edinburgh of its Parliament, and of much of its resident aristocracy, opened up the colonial markets to Glasgow, and enabled its enterprising merchants to participate in the profitable monopoly of the American trade. By the middle of the century it was already the emporium for colonial tobacco. A tannery employed several hundred men; linen, copper, tin, and pottery became staple manufactures in the forties; carpets, crape, and silk in the fifties. Gibson, in his history of the town, tells us that after 1750 (when the first Glasgow Bank was opened) “not a beggar was to be seen in the streets.” When he adds that “the very children were busy,” we think of the early history of factories and shudder. “I have heard it asserted,” says Smith in the _Wealth of Nations_ (Book II. chap. ii.), “that the trade of the city of Glasgow doubled in about fifteen years after the first erection of the banks there, and that the trade of Scotland has more than quadrupled since the first erection of the two public banks at Edinburgh.” He will not vouch for the figures, and holds such an effect “too great to be accounted for by the sole operation of this cause,” but says it cannot be doubted that the trade of Scotland did increase very considerably during the period, and that the banks contributed a good deal to this increase.