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157.: 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.


157.

From DAVID HUME

  • Address: Dr Adam Smith

MS., RSE ii. 58; HL ii. 317–18.

London, 3 May 1776

My dear Sir

After reflecting more maturely on that Article of my Will by which I left you the Disposal of all my Papers,1 with a Request that you shou’d publish my Dialogues concerning natural Religion, I have become sensible, that, both on account of the Nature of the Work, and of your Situation, it may be improper to hurry on that Publication. I therefore take the present Opportunity of qualifying that friendly Request: I am content, to leave it entirely to your Discretion at what time you will publish that Piece, or whether you will publish it at all. You will find among my Papers a very inoffensive Piece, called My Own Life, which I composed a few days before I left Edinburgh, when I thought, as did all my Friends, that my Life was despaired of. There can be no Objection, that this small piece shoud be sent to Messrs. Strahan and Cadell and the Proprietors of my other Works to be prefixed to any future Edition of them. I am Dear Sir

Your most affectionate Friend and Servant

David Hume

[1 ]The article reads: ‘To my friend Dr Adam Smith, late Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, I leave all my manuscripts without exception, desiring him to publish my Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which are comprehended in this present bequest; but to publish no other papers which he suspects not to have been written within these five years, but to destroy them all at his leisure. And I even leave him full power over all my papers, except the Dialogues above mentioned; and though I can trust to that intimate and sincere friendship, which has ever subsisted between us, for his faithful execution of this part of my will, yet, as a small recompense of his pains in correcting and publishing this work, I leave him two hundred pounds, to be paid immediately after the publication of it.’ (Will dated 4 Jan. 1776, Register of Testaments, H.M. Register House, Edinburgh.)