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286.: To [HENRY DUNDAS] - 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.


286.

To [HENRY DUNDAS]

MS., GUL Gen. 1506; Economic History Review iii (1931), 88–9; Scott 377–8 (facsim.)

Custom–house, Edinburgh, 25 Mar. 1789

My Dear Sir

I need not, I flatter myselfe, inform you at this time, what pleasure, the late happy, (and to my own melancholy and evil boding mind, I acknowledge, unexpected) event, has given to your friends, here and, I will venture to say, to all the real friends of the country. The firmness, propriety and prudence of every part of your young friends conduct must, as long as it is remembered, place him very high in the estimation of every wise and thinking man in the Kingdom.1

It gives me great concern that I am obliged to put you in mind of anything that, at this time of business, can give you any trouble. But there is a very favourable report of the Scots Barons2 lying before the Lords of the treasury for their approbation, upon the petition of the University of Glasgow for a renewal of the Grant of the Archbishopric.3 My Colleagues at Glasgow are besides very anxious about a pension to the Widow of their late friend and assistant in their Labours, Dr Irwin.4 My Colleagues at this board too are equally so about something of the same kind to the Daughter of the late Richard Gardiner,5 who, before her fathers death had got some hopes of somthing of this kind, and she now certainly needs it more than ever. These are the only affairs about which I wish to trouble you; and enough, you will say, of all conscience.

The Earl of Home thinks himself very much obliged to you for your letter which I transmitted him the moment I received it. I have every reason, that good information, (for it is good information only) can give, to expect much good of this young Gentleman. I ever am, with the highest regard Dear Sir

Your most obliged and most affectionate humble Servant

Adam Smith

[1 ]In Nov. 1788 George III had a serious illness that was regarded as insanity. A regency crisis ensued as Pitt (Dundas’s ‘young friend’), hoping that the King would recover, sought to limit the power of the Prince of Wales and Fox insisted on full royal power for the Prince. The King recovered his sanity in Feb. 1789, resumed his power, and thanked his ministers, with Pitt at their head, for their loyalty.

[2 ]Of Exchequer. See Letter 278.

[3 ]In 1697 or 1698, King William III granted a tack (lease) of the Archbishopric of Glasgow to fund a gift to the University of £300 a year, and this tack was renewed for about 125 years by later sovereigns.

[4 ]William Irvine (d. 1787); M.D., 1766; lectured at Glasgow University on Materia Medica from 1765, and on Chemistry from 1769; associated with Joseph Black in some of his experiments. In 1825, the Faculty granted an annuity of £50 to his widow.

[5 ]Not traced.