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184.: 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.


184.

To WILLIAM STRAHAN

  • Address: William Strahan Esqr M.P., New Street, Shoe Lane, London

MS., Liverpool Central Librs.; unpubl.

Dear Sir

By the death of Mr Menzies,1 one of the Commissioners at the board of customs here, I am now a candidate for a seat at that Board. The purpose of this letter is to beg the favour of you to endeavour to get me from the board of treasury the first and best intelligence you can either of my final success or disappointment, or of the probability or improbability of either. You know that I am not apt to be over–sanguine in my expectations; and my mind has not upon the present occasion, lost its usual temper.

I sent this day was se’n’night a very important cancel to Mr Andrew.2 It saves a very great apparent inconsistency between some of the new corrections and a part of the old text as it stood before. I had not observed it till it was shewn to me by a friend. I shall be anxious to know that he has received it and executed it with his usual attention. It is certainly reasonable that I should be at the expence at least of this cancel. Remember me to Mrs and Miss Strahan and to all the rest of your family; Remember me likewise to Mr and Mrs Cadell; and believe me to be ever yours

Adam Smith

[1 ]Archibald Menzies (d. 1777), appointed in 1770 one of the five ‘Commissioners for Managing and Causing to be Levied and Collected His Majesty’s Customs, and Subsidies and other Duties in that part of Great Britain called Scotland, and also the Duties of Excise upon all Salt and Rock Salt Imported or to be Imported into that part of Great Britain called Scotland’, as they were styled in official documents.

[2 ]Andrew Strahan; the ‘cancel’ concerned changes in WN ed. 2 (1778)—see Letter 208 addressed to Andreas Holt, dated 26 Oct. 1780.