All these external marks of enterprise and progress indicated the truth of another of Smith’s sayings, that a few spirited merchants are a much better thing for a town than the residence of a court. According to Sir John Dalrymple, the three leading merchants of that time were together worth a quarter of a million of money. Measured by modern standards these are petty figures; but Mr. Rae says that commercial men in Glasgow still look back to John Glassford and Andrew Cochrane as perhaps the greatest merchants the Clyde had ever seen. Cochrane, who was Provost when the Young Pretender paid his unwelcome visit, founded a weekly club, the express design of which, according to Dr. Carlyle, was to inquire into the nature and principles of trade. Smith, who joined the club, became intimate with Cochrane, and afterwards, in Dr. Carlyle’s words, “acknowledged his obligations to this gentleman’s information when he was collecting materials for his _Wealth of Nations_.” The junior merchants, adds the Doctor, who flourished after Cochrane, “confess with respectful remembrance that it was Andrew Cochrane who first opened and enlarged their views.” In _Humphrey Clinker_ he is described as “one of the first sages of the Scottish Kingdom.” Dugald Stewart, who drew his information from James Ritchie, an eminent merchant of Glasgow, tells us that Smith’s intimacy with its most respected inhabitants gave him the commercial information he needed; and he adds: “It is a circumstance no less honourable to their liberality than to his talents, that notwithstanding the reluctance so common among men of business to listen to the conclusions of mere speculation and the direct opposition of his leading principles to all the old maxims of trade, he was able before he quitted his situation in the University to rank some very eminent merchants in the number of his proselytes.” That Provost Cochrane and his brethren were well inclined to these doctrines is probable, as they suffered severely from the duties on American iron; and that interest in economic subjects was strong is proved by the printing of several important books at Glasgow about this time. The merchants were, however, much under the influence of an economist of the old school, Sir James Steuart, who lived in the neighbourhood, and the progress of Smith’s opinions was more rapid in the University. It was the students, as Dugald Stewart tells us, “that first adopted his system with eagerness and diffused a knowledge of its fundamental principles over this part of the kingdom.”