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94.: To CHARLES TOWNSHEND - 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.

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94.

To CHARLES TOWNSHEND

  • Sir William Fraser, Scotts of Buccleuch, Edinburgh, 1878, ii. 405; Rae 222–4.

Compiègne, Wednesday, 5 o’clock afternoon, 26 Aug. 1766

Dear Sir,

It is, you may believe, with the greatest concern that I find myself obliged to give you an account of a slight fever from which the Duke of Buccleugh is not yet entirely recovered, tho’ it is this day very much abated. He came here to see the camp and to hunt with the King and the Court. On Thursday last he returned from hunting about seven at night very hungry, and eat heartily of a cold supper, with a vast quantity of sallad, and drank some cold punch after it. This supper, it seems, disagreed with him. He had no appetite next day, but appeared well and hearty as usual. He found himself uneasy in the field, and returned home before the rest of the company. He dined with my Lord George Lennox, and, as he tells me eat heartily. He found himself very much fatigued after dinner, and threw himself upon his servant’s bed. He slept there about an hour, awaked about eight at night in a good deal of disorder. He vomited, but not enough to relieve him. I found his pulse extremely quick; he went to bed immediately and drank some vinegar whey, quite confident that a night’s rest and a sweat, his usual remedy, would relieve him. He slept little that night but sweat profusely. The moment I saw him next day (Sunday) I was sure he had a fever, and begged of him to send for a physician. He refused a long time, but at last, upon seeing me uneasy, consented. I sent for Quenay,1 first ordinary physician to the King. He sent me word he was ill. I then sent for Senac;2 he was ill likewise. I went to Quenay myself to beg that, notwithstanding his illness, which was not dangerous, he would come to see the Duke. He told me he was an old infirm man, whose attendance could not be depended on, and advised me, as his friend, to depend upon De la Saone,3 first physician to the Queen. I went to De la Saone, who was gone out and was not expected home till late that night. I returned to Quenay, who followed me immediately to the Duke. It was by this time seven at night. The Duke was in the same profuse sweat which he had been in all day and all the preceding night. In this situation Quenay declared that it was improper to do anything till the sweat should be over. He only ordered him some cooling ptisane4 drink. Quenay’s illness made it impossible for him to return next day (Monday) and De la Saone has waited on the Duke ever since, to my entire satisfaction. On Monday he found the Duke’s fever so moderate that he judged it unnecessary to bleed him. . . . To–day, Wednesday, upon finding some little extraordinary heat upon the Duke’s skin in the morning, he proposed ordering a small quantity of blood to be taken from him at two o’clock. But upon returning at that hour he found him so very cool and easy, that he judged it unnecessary. When a French physician judges bleeding unnecessary, you may be sure that the fever is not very violent. The Duke has never had the smallest headach, nor any pain in any part of his body: he has good spirits: his head and his eyes are both clear: he has no extraordinary redness in his face: his tongue is not more foul than in a common cold. There is some little quickness in his pulse: but it is soft, full, and regular. In short, there is no one bad symptom about him: only he has a fever and keeps his bed. . . . De la Saone imagines the whole illness owing to the indigestion of Thursday night, some part of the undigested matter having got into his blood, the violent commotion which this had occasioned had burst, he supposes, some small vessel in his veins. . . . Depend upon hearing from me by every post till his perfect recovery: if any threatening symptom should appear, I shall immediately despatch an express to you; so keep your mind as easy as possible.5 There is not the least probability that any such symptom ever will appear. I never stirr from his room from eight in the morning till ten at night, and watch for the smallest change that happens to him. I should sit by him all night too, if the ridiculous, impertinent jealousy of Cook,6 who thinks my assiduity an encroachment upon his duty, had not been so much alarmed as to give some disturbance even to his master in his present illness.

The King has enquired almost every day at his levée of my Lord George and of Mr. De la Saone, concerning the Duke’s illness. The Duke and Dutchess of Fitzjames,7 the Chevalier de Clermont,8 the Comte de Guerchy,9 etc. etc., together with the whole English nation here and at Paris, have expressed the greatest anxiety for his recovery. Remember me in the most respectful manner to Lady Dalkeith, and believe me to be with the greatest regard, Dear Sir, Your most obliged and most humble servant,

Adam Smith.

[1 ]François Quesnay (1694–1774), physician and economist: see his article on ‘Fermiers’ for the Encyclopédie and Tableau oeconomique (1758); to come were the pieces in Ephémérides du citoyen (1767), published as Physiocratie, 2 vols. (1767). He gave a copy of the latter work to Smith (Bonar 153), and Smith would have returned the compliment by dedicating WN to Quesnay had he lived until 1776. Dugald Stewart had this story from Smith himself: see his ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’, Works of Smith (1811–12), v. 470. Smith praised Quesnay in WN (IV.ix.27): ‘the very ingenious and profound author of this [physiocratic] system’, but thought of it as entirely speculative: ‘that system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country has, so far as I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in France’ (IV.ix.2: viz, the physiocrats: Quesnay, Mirabeau, and Mercier de la Rivière). Hume took a more vehement line. In 1769 he expressed surprise that Turgot would ‘herd’ with the physiocrats, and incited the Abbé Morellet to attack them in his Dictionnaire du commerce: ‘I hope that in your work you will thunder them, and crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and ashes! They are, indeed, the set of men the most chimerical and most arrogant that now exist, since the annihilation of the Sorbonne’ (HL ii. 205). See also, WN IV.ix.38.

[2 ]Jean–Baptiste Senac (1693–1770), premier physician to Louis XV from 1752.

[3 ]Not traced.

[4 ]A slightly medicinal concoction, originally barley–water.

[5 ]Smith’s solicitude (witness the next letter also) on this occasion, and for the Duke’s brother on 15 Oct. (Letter 97 addressed to Lady Frances Scott), resembles that for his former pupil the Hon. Thomas Fitzmaurice; see the letters of 1759–60 to Lord Shelburne.

[6 ]The Duke’s servant.

[7 ]The duc de Fitzjames was commandant of Languedoc.

[8 ]Not traced.

[9 ]Claude–Louis–François de Régnier (1715–67), comte de Guerchy, French Ambassador to England, 1763–7; exceedingly popular in London.