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162.: 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.


162.

To [WILLIAM STRAHAN]

MS., Yale University Libr.; unpubl.

Edinburgh, 6 July 1776

Dear Sir

Mr Hume arrived here on Wednesday last, by no means in the state in which I could have wished to have seen him. His spirits, however, continue perfectly good; and his complexion, I think, is clearer than when I saw him at Morpeth; But his strength, I am afraid, is a good deal wasted so that he cannot now bear the jolting of a Post chaise upon our rough roads. He desired me to write to him under your cover when he was in England. I accordingly did so; but he has never received my letter.1 I wish you would still send it to him; because, I think, he takes my supposed neglect unkindly.

Who is this Arnold, the new sub–preceptor to the princes? I do not remember to have heard of him. And what was the cause of so unexpected a revolution in that very important department of the Kings Household?2 The cause of Lord Bruces resignation I know.3

I have drawn upon Cadell; but I have yet had no letter from him. I ever am

My Dear Sir Most faithfully and sincerely Yours

Adam Smith

Direct for me to the care of Mr John Balfour Bookseller. There is good sense, and learning, and philosophy in Campbells Book:4 But it is so unfashioned that I am afraid you will not be a great gainer by it. Remember me to Mrs and Miss Strahan and all the rest of the family.

[1 ]Presumably Letter 161 addressed to Hume, dated 16 June 1776.

[2 ]The Earl of Holderness, governor to the children of George III, had a lengthy quarrel with Cyril Jackson, the sub–preceptor. The latter was dismissed and the former resigned. The new sub–preceptor was the Revd. William Arnold (d. 1802).

[3 ]Thomas Bruce Bruce–Brudenell (later Brudenell–Bruce: 1729–1814; 2nd Baron Bruce, 1747; cr. Earl of Ailesbury 10 June 1776) and Bishop Hurd kissed the King’s hands on 31 May 1776 as governors of the royal children. Two days later Lord Bruce resigned: ‘This day I saw the Bishop of Litchfield who brought me the melancholy news that some difficulties from Lady Bruce has so agitated her husband that he was come to acquaint me from him that he could not think of being governor to my children’ (George III to North, 2 June 1776: Geo. III Corr. iii. 370). Bruce was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Montagu. See Walpole, Corr. xxiv. 217–18.

[4 ]George Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, published by Strahan in 1776.