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28.: To LORD FITZMAURICE - 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.


28.

To LORD FITZMAURICE1

  • Address: To Lord Fitzmaurice at the Earl of Shelburnes house Hanover Square, London.

MS., Bowood Libr., Marquess of Lansdowne; Scott 241–2.

Glasgow College, 21 Feb. 1759

My Lord,

I give you the trouble of This Letter, tho I have nothing particular to inform you of besides what I told you in my last, that Mr Fitzmaurice2 attends all his classes with the most exact punctuality and gives more application to his studies than could reasonably be expected. I find him perfectly tractable and docile in every respect and I heartily wish that we may give the same satisfaction to him which he gives to all of us. I find he is so far advanced in the Greek language that it will not be difficult to carry him on and if he continues to be as regular as at present, I believe, I can promise, that against this time twelve–month he will be able to read it with ease. He masters all that he is about at present so easily that I intend in about a month hence he should begin to learn Algebra and Arithmetic with the Proffessor of Mathematics.

This country is so barren of all sorts of transactions that can interest anybody that lives at a distance from it that little entertainment is to be expected from any correspondence on this Side the tweed. Our epistles to our friends at the capital commonly consist more in enquiries than in information. I must therefore put your Lordship in mind of the promise you was so good as to make to me of some times letting me hear from you of what passes in the Great World, either at home or abroad. I hear there is no faction in parliament, which I am glad of. For tho’ a little faction now and then gives spirit to the nation the continuance of it obstructs all public business and puts it out of the power of [the] best Minister to do much good. Even Sir Robert Walpoles administration would, I imagine have been better had it not been for the violence of the opposition that was made to him, which in its beginnings had no great foundation. There is at present so little noise made about our own affairs that the Portuguese Conspiracy takes up a good part of the attention of this part of the world. I see this day in the newspapers an abstract of the evidence or rather of the facts for which these unhappy noblemen have been condemned.3 In the end of it they found a great deal upon the presumptions of law which were against them which, as no other evidence is particularly specified, makes me fear that this horrid execution has been a little precipitate. For want of some thing else to write to your Lordship I am obliged to talk to you of subjects you must not only know much better than I, but which you must be quite sick of.

I am with the greatest regard Your Lordships most Obedient and most Humble Servant,

Adam Smith

[1 ]Sir William Petty, Viscount Fitzmaurice, later 2nd Earl of Shelburne.

[2 ]Hon. Thomas Petty–Fitzmaurice, bro. of Viscount Fitzmaurice.

[3 ]The conspiracy of 3 Sept. 1758 was crushed by the Marquis de Pombal, Prime Minister, with singular ferocity: the Duke of Aveiro and Marquis of Tavora were broken alive on the wheel: the Duke’s sons and a son–in–law were strangled; and Tavora’s wife was beheaded.