An Unpublished Letter from Adam Smith to Sir John Macpherson

Abstract

Fewer than two hundred letters from Adam Smith are extant, surprisingly few for a figure of his time and eminence. This paucity gives even a single additional letter greater interest than it might have from a more prolific correspondent. That printed here, like many of Smith’s, is concerned with patronage and the context is known from other surviving letters. On 7 December 1786, Edmund Burke (1730-97) wrote to Smith on behalf of his close friend and ‘cousin’, William Burke (c. 1728-98), then serving in India as Deputy-Paymaster of the Forces, a position he owed to Edmund. Burke feared that, under the new, reforming administration of Lord Cornwallis (1738-1805), who was on the point of leaving to take up his appointment as Governor-General, William’s position was under threat. Burke therefore asked Smith to write to Colonel Alexander Ross (1742-1827; Cornwallis’s secretary), and ‘any other friends’, on William’s behalf. Smith duly wrote to Ross on 13 December, forwarding the letter to Burke himself. In a covering letter (which does not survive, but the purport of which can be inferred from Burke’s reply of 20 December), Smith offered also to write to Sir John Macpherson (c. 1745-1821) and Sir Archibald Campbell (1739-91). In his reply, Burke made some suggestions about what Smith might say in these letters. Macpherson, a member of the Supreme Council of Bengal, had succeeded as acting Governor-General in February 1785, when Warren Hastings resigned to return to England. Campbell was Governor of Madras. These letters to Macpherson and Campbell were presumed lost. That to Macpherson, however, is preserved among the collection of his papers now in the British Library (Oriental and India Office Collections, MS Eur. F. 291/161). It is addressed ‘Sir John Macpherson | Baronet | Calcutta’ and endorsed ‘Adam Smith | 2d Jan[uar]y 1787 | received 15th August’ and ‘252’ (probably its number in the guard book into which it was formerly pasted). Smith knew Edmund Burke reasonably well, though their friendship has left little trace in the epistolary record. Most recently, they had N O T E S A N D C O M M E N T S 1 3 5