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9.: To WILLIAM CULLEN - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


9.

To WILLIAM CULLEN1

Thomson i. 605; Rae 44.

Edinburgh, 3 Sept. 1751

Dear Sir

I received yours this moment. I am very glad that Mr Craigie has at last resolved to go to Lisbon.2 I make no doubt but he will soon receive all the benefit he expects, or can wish, from a warmer climate. I shall, with great pleasure, do what I can to relieve him of the burden of his class. You mention Natural Jurisprudence and Politics as the parts of his lectures, which it would be most agreeable for me to take upon me to teach.3 I shall willingly undertake both. I should be glad to know when he sets out for Lisbon, because, if it is not before the 1st of October, I would endeavour to see him before he goes, that I might receive his advice about the plan I ought to follow. I would pay great deference to it in every thing, and would follow it implicitly in this, as I shall consider myself as standing in his place and representing him. If he goes before that time, I wish he would leave some directions for me, either with you or with Mr Leechman,4 were it only by word of mouth.

I am, dear Doctor, most faithfully yours

A. Smith

[1 ]William Cullen (1710–90) medical scientist and teacher: educ. at Glasgow University and Edinburgh (under Alexander Monro, Primus, 1734–6); in practice at Hamilton, 1736–44; removed to Glasgow, 1744 and from 1746 lectured there on Medicine, Materia Medica, Botany, and Chemistry; Professor of Medicine, Glasgow 1751; jt. Professor of Chemistry, Edinburgh 1755, sole Professor 1756; Professor of the Practice of Physic, Edinburgh 1773. His most famous patient, David Hume; his most distinguished pupils, William Hunter the anatomist and Joseph Black the chemist.

[2 ]Thomas Craigie (d. at Lisbon, 27 Nov. 1751), Professor of Moral Philosophy and successor to Francis Hutcheson.

[3 ]Francis Hutcheson had taught jurisprudence and government as part of the moral philosophy course which Smith took at Glasgow.

[4 ]William Leechman (1706–85) graduated in 1724 from Edinburgh and about 1727 became tutor to William Mure of Caldwell. He was ordained in 1736 and became Professor of Divinity at Glasgow in 1743. In 1761 he became Principal, having served as Vice–Rector from 1756. Among his writings was an introduction to Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy (1755) drawing attention to its empirical bias.