Adam Smith was one of the original members of the Poker Club, which gathered in most of the Select Society; but before 1776 he had changed his opinions, for, in the _Wealth of Nations_, he comes to the conclusion that “it is only by means of a well regulated standing army that a civilised country can be defended.” If it relied for its defence on a militia, it would be exposed to conquest. The militia movement is mentioned by Smith in a letter to Strahan (April 4, 1760), in the course of some reflections suggested by the Memoirs of Colonel Hooke. The passage is interesting as a Scotch Whig’s explanation and defence of the disaffection which prevailed north of the Tweed in the early part of the eighteenth century:— “_Apropos_ to the Pope and the Pretender, have you read Hook’s Memoirs? I have been ill these ten days, otherwise I should have written to you sooner, but I sat up the day before yesterday in my bed and read them thro’ with infinite satisfaction, tho’ they are by no means well written. The substance of what is in them I knew before, tho’ not in such detail. I am afraid they are published at an unlucky time, and may throw a damp upon our militia. Nothing, however, appears to me more excusable than the disaffection of Scotland at that time. The Union was a measure from which infinite good has been derived to this country. The Prospect of that good, however, must then have appeared very remote and very uncertain. The immediate effect of it was to hurt the interest of every single order of men in the country. The dignity of the nobility was undone by it. The greater part of the gentry who had been accustomed to represent their own country in its own Parliament were cut out for ever from all hopes of representing it in a British Parliament. Even the merchants seemed to suffer at first. The trade to the Plantations was, indeed, opened to them. But that was a trade which they knew nothing about; the trade they were acquainted with, that to France, Holland, and the Baltic, was laid under new embar[r]assments, which almost totally annihilated the two first and most important branches of it. The Clergy, too, who were then far from insignificant, were alarmed about the Church. No wonder if at that time all orders of men conspired in cursing a measure hurtful to their immediate interest. The views of their Posterity are now very different; but those views could be seen by but few of our forefathers, by those few in but a confused and imperfect manner.” In the same letter he asks to be remembered to Benjamin Franklin (who had lately visited Glasgow), and also to Griffiths, the editor of the _Monthly Review_, which had just paid a handsome tribute to the _Theory_.