Hume writes Smith from Edinburgh on the 9th of August 1763 intimating his appointment as Secretary to the English Embassy at Paris, and bidding him adieu.  “I am a little hurried,” he says, “in my preparations, but I could not depart without bidding you adieu, my good friend, and without acquainting you with the reasons of so sudden a movement.  I have not great expectations of revisiting this country soon, but I hope it will not be impossible; but we may meet abroad, which will be a great satisfaction to me."[129]

Smith’s reply has not been preserved, but it seems to have contained among other things a condemnation, in Smith’s most decisive style, of the recent proceedings of his friend Lord Shelburne in connection with various intrigues and negotiations set agoing by the Court and Lord Bute with the view of increasing the power of the Crown in English politics.  That appears from a letter Hume writes Smith from London on 13th September, wanting information about his new chief’s eldest son, Lord Beauchamp, regarding whom he had once heard Smith mention something told by “that severe critic Mr. Herbert,” and to whom Hume was now to act in the capacity of tutor in conjunction with his official duties as Secretary of Legation.  Then after relating the story of Bute’s negotiations with Pitt through Shelburne, and stating that Lord Shelburne resigned because he found himself obnoxious on account of his share in that negotiation, he says:  “I see you are much incensed with that nobleman, but he always speaks of you with regard.  I hear that your pupil, Mr. Fitzmaurice, makes a very good figure at Paris."[130]

Smith was always a stout Whig, strongly opposed to any attempt to increase the power of the Crown, and cordially denounced Bute and all his works.  He was delighted with the famous No. 45 of the North Briton, published in the April of this very year 1763, and after reading it exclaimed to Dr. Carlyle, “Bravo! this fellow (Wilkes) will either be hanged in six months, or he will get Lord Bute impeached."[131] Shelburne after his resignation in September voted against the Court in the Wilkes affair, but up till then, at any rate, his public conduct could not be viewed by a man of Smith’s political principles with anything but the most absolute condemnation, and the condemnation would be all the stronger because, from personal intercourse with his lordship, Smith knew that he was really a man of liberal mind and reforming spirit, from whom he had a right to look for better things.

When Hume arrived in France the first letter he wrote to any of his friends at home was to Smith.  He had been only a week in the country, and describes his first experiences of the curious transformation he then suddenly underwent:  from being the object of attack and reproach and persecution for half a lifetime among the honest citizens of Edinburgh, he had become the idol of extravagant worship among the great and powerful at the Court of France.