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74.: From HENRY HERBERT - 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.


74.

From HENRY HERBERT

MS., GUL Gen. 1035/147; unpubl. (see Scott 68 n. 2)

Aberdeen, 11 Sept. 1763

My Dear Sir

I ought to have wrote before this to have acquainted you with my Direction, I am affraid my negligence may have lost me some Letters, the last I received was at Alloa, I hope none have been sent since that; pray keep those which shall arrive after this till my return; I have seen Dr Reed.1 He is a very sensible man. His Book is in the press and we may expect it out this Winter;2 Campbell3 David Humes Antagonist is an agreable man; I met Lord Marshall4 at Lord Panmures5 and was much taken with him. He imagines Rousseau may come over to Scotland but at present is too ill to travel; Lord Panmures Seat is the finest I have seen since my arrival in Scotland; I leave this Place to morrow. Lord Kames is already gone to Lord Des[k]fords6 at Bamf, I go first to Mr Ferguson of Pitfours7 where I stay a Day or two and from thence to Lord Des[k]fords,

I met Coll Gordon8 at the Ball here; my Compliments to all your Family and beleive me

My Dear Sir Your Affectionate Friend

Hen. Herbert

[1 ]Thomas Reid (1710–96), Professor of Philosophy, King’s College, Aberdeen; appointed Smith’s successor at Glasgow, 1764; chief proponent of the Scottish Common Sense philosophy whose tenets seem to have been developed first by his teacher at Aberdeen, George Turnbull, and his friend Lord Kames; published his Glasgow lectures as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788).

[2 ]An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, published in 1764, made Reid’s reputation, for a time, as a philosopher who answered Hume’s scepticism.

[3 ]George Campbell (1719–96), Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, from 1759; D.D. 1764; Professor of Divinity at Aberdeen 1771; his Dissertation on Miracles (1762), attempted to answer Hume’s ‘Essay on Miracles’ (in Enquiry concerning Human Understanding); his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), was read by Hume on his death–bed.

[4 ]George Keith (? 1692–1778), 10th Earl Marischal of Scotland; took part in Jacobite rising of 1715 and the abortive one of 1719; attainted, fled to the Continent, and entered the service of Frederick the Great, 1745; attainder removed, 1759; befriended Rousseau when Governor of Neuchâtel, then Prussian territory.

[5 ]William Maule (1700–82), 1st Earl of Panmure of Forth, soldier and politician; commanded Royal Scots Fusiliers and Scots Greys; General 1770; M.P. 1735–82; his seat near Carnoustie, Angus, was built c. 1671, according to the plans of John Mylne the Younger (d. 1667), King’s Master Mason in Scotland.

[6 ]James Ogilvy (? 1714–70) agriculturalist; known as Lord Deskford until 1764, when he became 6th Earl of Findlater and 3rd Earl of Seafield (his grandfather holding that title was the last Lord Chancellor of Scotland); friend of Lord Kames, with whom he served on the Boards for the Improvement of Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland and for the Forfeited Estates.

[7 ]James Ferguson (1700–77) of Pitfour; advocate 1722; Dean of Faculty 1760–4; Lord of Session, taking Pitfour as his title, 1764, also Lord Commissioner of Justiciary. When the Earl Marischal decided that he could not live in Scotland and sold part of his estates in 1764, Ferguson was a purchaser, thus acquiring a major political interest in Banffshire and Aberdeenshire. Ramsay of Ochtertyre (i.150) said Ferguson was ‘one of the greatest and most popular lawyers of that period’.

[8 ]Lord Adam Gordon (? 1726–1801) soldier and politician; s. of the 2nd Duke of Gordon; Col. 66th Foot 1762–6; C.–in–C. Scotland 1782; General 1796; M.P. 1754–88.