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259.: To ABBÉ MORELLET - 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.


259.

To ABBÉ MORELLET

  • Address: A Monsieur, Monsieur L’Abbé Morellet, Paris

MS., University of Illinois Libr.; Scott 298–9.

Edinburgh, 1 May 1786

Dear Sir

After so long an Interruption of our correspondence, I should have been afraid to put you in mind of an old acquaintance, if I had not understood from our most valuable friend, the Marquis of Landsdown,1 that you still did me the honour to remember me with some degree of kindness. It is in consequence of this that I now venture to introduce to your acquaintance my particular friend, Mr John Bruce, Professor of Logic in the University of Edinburgh.2 He accompanies on his travels Mr Dundas, a young gentleman of great modesty and property of manners and of great application to his studies and to all his other duties, the son of the Gentleman who may be considered as our present Minister for Scotland. Give me leave to recommend them both to your advice and protection during whatever stay they may think proper to make in your Capital.

Give me leave to condole with you on the many heavy losses which the Society,3 in which I had so often the Pleasure of seeing you about twenty years ago, have sustained by the death of so many of its greatest ornaments, of Helvetius, of Mr Turgot, of Mademoiselle D’Espinasse, of Mr D’Alembert, of Mr Diderot. I have not heard of Baron D’Holbach these two or three years past. I hope he is happy and in good health. Be so good as to assure him of my most affectionate and respectfull remembrance, and that I never shall forget the very great kindness he did me the honour to shew me during my residence at Paris.4 Excuse this very great freedom, and believe me to be, with the highest respect and esteem, Dear Sir

your most obliged and most obedient Servant

Adam Smith

[1 ]The 2nd Earl of Shelburne was created Marquess of Lansdowne, 6 Dec. 1784.

[2 ]John Bruce (1744–1826), Professor of Logic at Edinburgh, 1774–86; resigned to become travelling tutor to Robert Saunders Dundas (1771–1851), later 2nd Viscount Melville, son of Henry Dundas.

[3 ]The philosophes and ladies of the salons known to Smith as a result of his visits to Paris, 1764–6.

[4 ]D’Holbach no doubt invited Smith to dinners in his house on the rue Royale, Butte St Roche, to meet the leading intellectuals of Paris.