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142.: From ADAM FERGUSON - 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.


142.

From ADAM FERGUSON

Small 618.

My Dear Smith,

You see I have taken full benefit of the time you allowed me to form my opinion of this situation,1 and have the pleasure to inform you it is in most material circumstances very agreeable. I was received with great politeness, and continue to be treated with sufficient marks of regard. I have found not only vivacity and parts as I was made to expect, but likewise good dispositions and attachments, servants all of an old standing, and become friends without any improper influence or disorder that I have yet observed. I was made to expect great jealousy of control, and set out with a resolution to employ no other than what a sense of my great regard might give me. It is likely that a person of a different character was expected, and the disappointment, I believe, has had a good effect. My journey hither furnished no adventures worth relating. My Lord Stanhope’s being at Paris gave me access, for the few days I stayed, to some very respectable and agreeable company, in which I was questioned concerning you, particularly by the Duchess D’Enville who complained of your French,2 as she did of mine, but said that before you left Paris she had the happiness to learn your language. I likewise met with your friend, Count Sarsfield, to whom I had great obligations, and if you write I beg that you will thank him, etc. etc.

Adam Ferguson

[1 ]See Letters 138 and 139 from Ferguson, dated 2 Sept. 1773 and 23 Jan. 1774, also Appendix E, Letters c–o.

[2 ]The Abbé Morellet, translator of WN, also said Smith’s French was very bad (Mémoires, i. 127).