As I have mentioned the house in which the Wealth of Nations was composed, it may be added that it stood in the main street of the town, but its garden ran down to the beach, and that it was only pulled down in 1844, without anybody in the place realising at the moment, though it has been a cause of much regret since, that they were suffering their most interesting association to be destroyed.  An engraving of it, however, exists.

FOOTNOTES: 

[201] Adams’s Works, ix. 589.

[202] Adams’s Works, iii. 276.

[203] Secretary of the Royal Society.  The letter was probably in acknowledgment of the intimation of his election as Fellow.

[204] Mr. Adams is Adam the architect, and Mrs. Montagu is the well-known Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu of Portman Square, whose hospitable house was a rival to any of the most brilliant salons of Paris.

[205] Hume MSS., R.S.E.  Library.

[206] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 390.

[207] Hume MSS., R.S.E.  Library.

[208] Carlyle’s Autobiography, p. 489.

[209] Sinclair’s Life of Sir John Sinclair, i. 37.

[210] Fraser’s Scotts of Buccleuch, I. lxxxviii., II. 406.

[211] Brougham’s Men of Letters, ii. 219.

[212] Brougham’s Men of Letters, ii. 219.

[213] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 429.

[214] Ibid., ii. 433.

[215] Hume MSS., R.S.E.  Library.  Partially published by Burton.

[216] Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy was published in 1767.

[217] Published by Professor Thorold Rogers in the Academy of 28th February 1885.

[218] Caldwell Papers, iii. 207.

[219] Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. xi.

[220] Ibid., Book IV. chap. vii.

[221] Wealth of Nations, Book IV. chap. vii.

[222] Ibid., Book V. chap. iii.

[223] Ibid., Book V. chap. i.

[224] From the suppression of the Indian supervisorship; see p. 255.

[225] Hume MSS., R.S.E.  Library.

[226] Caldwell Papers, i. 192.

[227] Rogers’ Social Life of Scotland, iii. 181.

[228] Sinclair’s Old Times and Distant Places, p. 9.

CHAPTER XVII

LONDON

1773-1776. Aet. 50-53

In the spring of 1773, Smith, having, as he thought, virtually completed the Wealth of Nations, set out with the manuscript for London, to give it perhaps some finishing touches and then place it in the hands of a publisher.  But his labours had told so seriously on his health and spirits that he thought it not improbable he might die, and even die suddenly, before the work got through the press, and he wrote Hume a formal letter before he started on his journey, constituting him his literary executor, and giving him directions about the destination of the various unpublished manuscripts that lay in his depositories:—­