n of Snell's estate
as to Coleburn farm, and the affair of the Prebends of Lincoln; and to
get all particulars about the L500 costs in the Snell lawsuit with
Balliol, which had to be paid to the University. Those documents were
delivered, on the 27th of August, to Smith _in praesentia_, and then on
the 15th of October, after his return, he reported what he had done,
and produced a certificate, signed by the Secretary to the Treasury,
finding that the University had in the four years specified and the
years preceding expended above their revenue the sum of
L2631:6:5-11/12. I mention all these details with the view of showing
that during Smith's residence in Glasgow the University had a variety
of important and difficult business to transact in London, which they
would be always glad to get one of their own number to attend to
personally on the spot, and that as Smith was never asked to transact
any of this business for them except in 1761, it may almost with
certainty be inferred that he never was in London on any other
occasion during his connection with that University.

Now this journey to London in 1761 is memorable because it constituted
the economic "road to Damascus" for a future Prime Minister of
England. It was during this journey, I believe, that Smith had Lord
Shelburne for his travelling companion, and converted the young
statesman to free trade. In 1795 Shelburne (then become Marquis of
Lansdowne) writes Dugald Stewart: "I owe to a journey I made with Mr.
Smith from Edinburgh to London the difference between light and
darkness through the best part of my life. The novelty of his
principles, added to my youth and prejudices, made me unable to
comprehend them at the time, but he urged them with so much
benevolence, as well as eloquence, that they took a certain hold
which, though it did not develop itself so as to arrive at full
conviction for some few years after, I can truly say has constituted
ever since the happiness of my life, as well as the source of any
little consideration I may have enjoyed in it."[120]

Shelburne was the first English statesman, except perhaps Burke, who
grasped and advocated free trade as a broad political principle; and
though his biographer, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, attributes his
conversion to Morellet, it is plain from the letter to Stewart that
Morellet had only watered, it was Smith that sowed.

It is important, therefore, to fix if possible the date of this
interesting j