JAMES’S COURT, 20th August 1769.

DEAR SMITH—­I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkaldy from my windows, but as I wish also to be within speaking terms of you, I wish we could concert measures for that purpose.  I am miserably sick at sea, and regard with horror and a kind of hydrophobia the great gulf that lies between us.  I am also tired of travelling as much as you ought naturally to be of staying at home.  I therefore propose to you to come hither and pass some days with me in this solitude.  I want to know what you have been doing, and purpose to exact a rigorous account of the method in which you have employed yourself during your retreat.  I am positive you are in the wrong in many of your speculations, especially when you have the misfortune to differ from me.  All these are reasons for our meeting, and I wish you would make me some reasonable proposal for that purpose.  There is no habitation on the island of Inchkeith, otherwise I should challenge you to meet me on that spot, and neither of us ever to leave the place till we were fully agreed on all points of controversy.  I expect General Conway here to-morrow, whom I shall attend to Roseneath, and I shall remain there a few days.  On my return I expect to find a letter from you containing a bold acceptance of this defiance.  I am, dear Smith, yours sincerely.[213]

Smith seems to have made such progress with his work in the two years of what Hume here calls his retreat at Kirkcaldy that in the beginning of 1770 there was some word of his going up with it to London for publication.  For on the 6th of February Hume again writes him:  “What is the meaning of this, dear Smith, which we hear, that you are not to be here above a day or two on your passage to London?  How can you so much as entertain a thought of publishing a book full of reason, sense, and learning to those wicked abandoned madmen?"[214]

He had probably completed his first draft of the work from beginning to end, but he kept constantly amplifying and altering parts of it for six years more.  He did not go to London in 1770, if he ever contemplated doing so, but he came to Edinburgh and received the freedom of the city in June.  He seems to have received this honour for the merits of the Duke of Buccleugh rather than for his own.  For the entry in the minutes of the Council of 6th June 1770 runs thus: 

“Appoint the Dean of Guild and his Council to admit and receive their Graces the Duke of Buccleugh and the Duke of Montagu in the most ample form, for good services done by them and their noble ancestors to the kingdome.  And also Adam Smith, LL.D., and the Reverend Mr. John Hallam to be Burgesses and Gild Brethren of this city in the most ample form.

     (Signed) JAMES STUART, Provost.”

The Duke of Montagu was the Duke of Buccleugh’s father-in-law, and the Rev. Mr. John Hallam—­afterwards Dean of Windsor, and father of Henry Hallam, the historian—­was the Duke’s tutor at Eton, as Adam Smith was his tutor abroad.  The freedom was therefore given to the Duke of Buccleugh and party.  Smith’s burgess-ticket is one of the few relics of him still extant; it is possessed by Professor Cunningham of Belfast.