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276.: To THOMAS CADELL - 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.


276.

To THOMAS CADELL

MS., GUL Gen. 1035/1780; Economic Journal xxxiii (1923), 427–8; Scott 374–6 (facsim.)

Edinburgh, 15 Mar. 1788

Dear Sir

You have very great reason to wonder at my long silence. The weak state of my health and my atendance at the Custom house, occupied me so much after my return to Scotland, that tho’ I gave as much application to study as these circumstances would permit, yet that application was neither very great, nor very steady, so that my progress was not very great. I have now taken leave of my Colleagues for four months and I am at present giving the most intense application. My subject is the theory of moral Sentiments to all parts of which I am making many additions and corrections.1 The chief and the most important additions will be to the third part, that concerning the sense of Duty and to the last part concerning the History of moral Philosophy. As I consider my tenure of this life as extremely precarious, and am very uncertain whether I shall live to finish several other works which I have projected and in which I have made some progress,2 the best thing, I think, I can do is to leave those I have already published in the best and most perfect state behind me. I am a slow a very slow workman, who do and undo everything I write at least half a dozen of times before I can be tolerably pleased with it; and tho’ I have now, I think, brought my work within compass, yet it will be the month of June before I shall be able to send it to you. I have told you already, and I need not tell you again, that I mean to make you a present of all my Additions. I must beg, therefore, that no new edition of that book may be published before that time.

I should be glad to know how the sale of my other book goes on.

I am ashamed of the trouble I have so often given you about the Philosophical transactions. The second part of 1787 is now due to me; and the first part of 1788, if it is yet published, I should be much obliged to you if you could find a clever way of sending them to me.

Remember me most affectionately to Strahan, and believe me to be

My Dear Sir Most affectionately yours,

Adam Smith

[1 ]TMS ed. 6; the additions were sent to the printer Dec. 1789, and the book appeared in 2 vols. before Smith’s death, 17 July 1790.

[2 ]See Letter 248 addressed to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, dated 1 Nov. 1785, n. 5.