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158.: To [WILLIAM STRAHAN] - 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.


158.

To [WILLIAM STRAHAN]

MS., Huntington Libr., San Marino, California; unpubl.

Kirkcaldy, 3 June 1776

Dear Sir

I have very little to say to you besides what I have said to Mr Cadell in the enclosed to which I refer.1 In business I consider him and you as the same person.

From this obscure and remote part of the country there is nothing to write you about except, the worst of all subjects, ones self. And even upon that subject I have nothing to say except that I am in perfect health and that I found my mother as much so as it is possible for anybody to be who is past eighty.

The American Campaign has begun awkwardly.2 I hope, I cannot say that I expect, it will end better. England, tho’ in the present times it breeds men of great professional abilities in all different ways, great Lawyers, great watch makers and Clockmakers, etc. etc., seems to breed neither Statesmen nor Generals. A letter from you, with your opinion upon the State of the times, will be a great comfort.3 I ever am

My Dear Sir, Most faithfully & affectionately yours

Adam Smith

[1 ]The enclosures to Cadell have not been traced but presumably were a bill and a communication about the sale of WN. See Letter 160 from Strahan, dated 10 June.

[2 ]At the beginning of 1776, General Howe was forced to evacuate Boston and retire to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

[3 ]Strahan’s views on politics and his reports of parliamentary debates were highly regarded. Hume wrote in 1770: ‘Nothing could be more agreeable than your political Intelligence. I have always said, without Flattery, that you may give Instructions to Statesmen’ (HL ii. 224). Originally well–disposed through friendship with Franklin to favour the American colonists, he came to take the British Government’s side with increasing partiality after becoming an M.P. in 1774. By 1775 he could write to Hume: ‘I am entirely for coercive methods with these obstinate madmen. Why should we suffer the Empire to be so dismembered without the utmost exertions on our part? . . . Not that I wish to enslave the colonists . . . but I am for keeping them subordinate to the British legislature’ (HP ii. 490–1).