37.: To LORD SHELBURNE - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]
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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).
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37.
To LORD SHELBURNE
MS., Bowood Libr., Marquess of Lansdowne; Scott 249–50.
Glasgow College, 31 Aug. 1759
My Lord
I wrote to your Lordship about a month ago and directed my Letter to Hanover Square that My Lady Shelburne might see it as it passed to Ireland. In that Letter I gave your Lordship a full detail of the different Articles of expence incurred at Glasgow. I shall not at present repeat them; as your Lordship must undoubtedly by this time have received it. What you Lordship seems chiefly anxious about, the care that is to be taken of the Morals of the two young people you are so good as to recommend to our care, is undoubtedly of far the greatest importance. What I would advise for this purpose is either first, that the Tutor, of whom your Lordship gives so advantageous a character, should, if at all convenient, come along with them: or, secondly, that a Tutor should be appointed them here; or, last of all, they that should be boarded in some of the Proffessors houses who are in the Practise of taking Boarders. The first expedient I look upon as incomparably the Best, nothing being equal to established Authority for the government of young people. The objection against the second, is not only the expence that would attend it which would probably be considerable (as not only a fee of at least twenty or thirty Pounds a year must probably be paid to such a tutor, but to have the proper use of him, he must be boarded along with them) but likewise the extreme difficulty of finding a good one: I think, however, this might be taken care of. The objection against the third expedient is likewise its expensiveness, the board taken by the Proffessors being ten pounds per quarter for each Person. Your Lordship will judge which of these is the most proper expedient.
Your Lordship makes me very vain when you mention the satisfaction you have had in reading the book I lately published, and the engagements you think I have come under to the Public. I can, however, assure your Lordship that I have come under no engagements which I look upon as so sacred as those by which I am bound as a member of this University to do every[thing] in my Power to serve the young people who are sent here to study, such especially as are particularly recommended to my care. I shall expect, whenever they are settled, that your Lordships friends will look upon my house as their home, and that they will have recourse to me in every Difficulty that they meet with in the Prosecution of their studies, and that I shall never regard any application of this kind as an interruption of business, but as the most agreeable and useful business in which I can be engaged.
I shall soon have occasion for a remittance from your Lordship. The fifty Pounds left here by Lord Fitzmaurice are now spent, and I am now about thirty Pounds in advance. I shall send your Lordship upon the sitting down of the College a full account of every article of the former years expence. The chief articles have been fees to different Masters, two suits of Cloaths, a suit of mourning and a summer suit of fustian, Books and some other necessaries. His allowance for Pocket is a guinea per month. I am with the greatest respect
My Lord Your Lordships most Obliged, most Obedient and most humble Servant
Adam Smith
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