you will excuse me though guilty of an indiscretion; at least if you do not, you will not judge others as you would desire to be judged yourself; for I am very sure a like motive would carry you to be guilty of a greater.

I would have waited on you when you was last in Scotland had the College allowed me three days’ vacation; and it gave me real uneasiness that I should be in the same country with you, and not have the pleasure of seeing you.  Believe it, no man can more rejoice at your late success,[76] or at whatever else tends to your honour and prosperity, than does, Sir, your ever obliged and very humble servant,

     ADAM SMITH.

     Glasgow, 19th January 1752, N.S.[77]

Pulteney abandoned the law in which Smith prophesied eminence for him, but he was happily not cured entirely of his sincerity by his subsequent experience, for it was greatly from that quality that he derived the weight he enjoyed in the House of Commons.  His contemporary in Parliament, Sir John Sinclair, says Pulteney’s influence arose from the fact that he was known to be a man who never gave a vote he did not in his heart believe to be right.  Having no taste for display, he lived when he had L20,000 a year about as simply as he did when he had only L200, and on that account he is sometimes accused of avarice, though he was constantly doing acts of signal liberality.

Smith’s chief friend in Edinburgh was David Hume.  Though their first relations were begun apparently in 1739, they could not have met much personally before Smith’s settlement in Glasgow.  For when Smith came to Edinburgh in 1748 Hume was abroad as secretary to General St. Clair in the Embassy at Vienna and Turin, and though he left this post in 1749, he remained for the next two years at Ninewells, his father’s place in Berwickshire, and only settled in Edinburgh again just as Smith was removing to Glasgow.  He would no doubt visit town occasionally, however, and before Smith was a year in Glasgow he had already entered on that correspondence with the elder philosopher which, beginning with the respectful “dear sir,” grew shortly into the warmer style of “my dearest friend” as their memorable and Roman friendship ripened.  Hume never paid Smith a visit in Glasgow, though he had often promised to do so, but Smith in his runs to Edinburgh spent always more and more of his time with Hume, and latterly at any rate made Hume’s house his regular Edinburgh home.

In 1752 Hume had already taken Smith as one of his literary counsellors, and consulted him about the new edition of his Essays, Moral and Political, and his historical projects, and I may be permitted here and afterwards to quote parts of Hume’s letters which throw any light on Smith’s opinions or movements.

On the 24th of September 1752 he writes—­