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149.: From DAVID HUME - 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.


149.

From DAVID HUME

  • Address: To Adam Smith Esqr at the British Coffee–house, Charing cross London

MS., RSE ii. 55; HL ii. 308.

Dear Smith

I am as lazy a Correspondent as you; yet my Anxiety about you makes me write.

By all Accounts, your Book has been printed long ago; yet it has never yet been so much as advertised.1 What is the Reason? If you wait till the Fate of America be decided, you may wait long.

By all accounts, you intend to settle with us this Spring: Yet we hear no more of it: What is the Reason? Your Chamber in my House is always unoccupyed: I am always at home: I expect you to land here.

I have been, am, and shall be probably in an indifferent State of Health. I weighed myself t’other day, and find I have fallen five compleat Stones. If you delay much longer, I shall probably disappear altogether.

The Duke of Bucleugh tells me, that you are very zealous in American Affairs.2 My Notion is, that the Matter is not so important as is commonly imagind. If I be mistaken, I shall probably correct my Error, when I see you or read you. Our Navigation and general Commerce may suffer more than our Manufactures. Shoud London fall as much in its Size, as I have done, it will be the better. It is nothing but a Hulk of bad and unclean Humours. Yours

David Hume

[1 ]WN, published 9 March 1776; advertised in London Chronicle of 5–7 Mar.

[2 ]Presumably Smith was impressing on influential friends such as Wedderburn and Strahan, the views brought out in WN IV.vii.c. and at the conclusion of his book. See Letter 158 addressed to Strahan, dated 3 June 1776; 159 from Wedderburn, dated 6 June; and 160 from Strahan, dated 10 June; also, Appendix B.