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183.: 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.


183.

From ADAM FERGUSON

  • Address: To Adam Smith Esqr at Mr Home’s in Suffolk Street, London

MS., GUL Gen. 1035/154; Scott 273.

Edinburgh, 12 Apr. 1777

My Dear Smith,

I heard from Mr Chalmer1 of your being again intangled in my disagreeable affairs2 and have since received your own letter3 inclosing one from My Lord Stanhope to you. I have been greatly at a loss on this occasion for want of my usual Counsellor Mr Davidson. After mature consideration it appears to my friends here as well as to myself that a requisition to produce the original of Earl Stanhopes letter to me dated at Paris Aprile 6th 1774 may be a matter of Course in Business But that it may proceed likewise from some degree of suspicion that my Copie of this Letter particularly that transcribed in my own hand writeing and sent to the Earl of Chesterfield in January last is not exact. That if the original letter were by any Accident lost the suspicion might produce Insinuations of which I should in that case have no direct refutation. And that in this View of the matter I ought not to expose this letter to any Avoidable Accident whatever. If My Lord Chesterfield declare his Intention in case my Copy is verifyed by the original, to fulfill the condition which will Relieve My Lord Stanhope of his Obligation, I will if he give me leave without loss of time go to London and wait upon his Lordship with the original Letter. In the meantime I send by this post Copys of this and two other letters from My Lord Stanhope to me Collated and Attested by a Notary Public and By The Lord Provost of Edinburgh In hopes that this may be sufficient. These Copys go in a Packet to Mr Chalmer who will communicate them to you and otherwise employ them for any purpose they can Serve. I return you with this Lord Stanhopes letter to yourself and send to His Lordship the Copy he desires in my own hand writeing very sorry any difficulty should hinder me from sending the Originall.

I am My Dear Smith Your most affectionate and most humble servant

Adam Ferguson

[1 ]James Chalmer, London attorney and Ferguson’s agent; his chambers were in St Albans Street.

[2 ]Connected with the financial arrangements for Ferguson’s tour of the Continent with the Earl of Chesterfield 1773–5, and his withdrawal from teaching Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh at this time.

[3 ]Not traced. Smith met Stanhope at Geneva in 1765, and subsequently recommended Ferguson as a tutor for Chesterfield.