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298.: To JOHN BRUCE - 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.


298.

To JOHN BRUCE

  • Address: Mr Professor Bruce, Pater Row

MS., SRO Hamilton Bruce 104/71; unpubl.

Dear Sir

I have a good deal of private business upon my hands at present which will occupy me the greater part of to–morrow forenoon and the two following adjourment days. May I therefore beg leave to adjourn our proposed meeting till to–morrow Se’nnight when I shall be compleatly ready for you.

I ever am yours entirely

Adam Smith

[1 ]The letter is undated, but 1780 is the likely year because (a) the perpetual calendar reveals that 7 Sept. fell on a Thursday in 1780 and 1786; and (b) 1786 is ruled out because Bruce was absent from Edinburgh much of that year, acting as a travelling tutor: see Letter 259 addressed to the Abbé Morellet, dated 1 May 1786, concerning Bruce’s visit to Paris. The reference to ‘adjour[n]ment days’ suggests that the letter was written after 1778 when Smith became a Commissioner of Customs.