that nobleman, but he always speaks of you with regard.
I hear that your pupil, Mr. Fitzmaurice, makes a very good figure at
Paris."[130]

Smith was always a stout Whig, strongly opposed to any attempt to
increase the power of the Crown, and cordially denounced Bute and all
his works. He was delighted with the famous No. 45 of the _North
Briton_, published in the April of this very year 1763, and after
reading it exclaimed to Dr. Carlyle, "Bravo! this fellow (Wilkes) will
either be hanged in six months, or he will get Lord Bute
impeached."[131] Shelburne after his resignation in September voted
against the Court in the Wilkes affair, but up till then, at any rate,
his public conduct could not be viewed by a man of Smith's political
principles with anything but the most absolute condemnation, and the
condemnation would be all the stronger because, from personal
intercourse with his lordship, Smith knew that he was really a man of
liberal mind and reforming spirit, from whom he had a right to look
for better things.

When Hume arrived in France the first letter he wrote to any of his
friends at home was to Smith. He had been only a week in the country,
and describes his first experiences of the curious transformation he
then suddenly underwent: from being the object of attack and reproach
and persecution for half a lifetime among the honest citizens of
Edinburgh, he had become the idol of extravagant worship among the
great and powerful at the Court of France.

"During the last days in particular," he says, "that I have been at
Fontainebleau I have _suffered_ (the expression is not improper) as
much flattery as almost any man has ever done in the same time, but
there are few days in my life when I have been in good health that I
would not rather pass over again.

"I had almost forgot in this effusion, shall I say, of my misanthropy
or my vanity to mention the subject which first put my pen in my hand.
The Baron d'Holbach, whom I saw at Paris, told me that there was one
under his eye that was translating your _Theory of Moral Sentiments_,
and desired me to inform you of it. Mr. Fitzmaurice, your old
friend,[132] interests himself strongly in this undertaking. Both of
them wish to know if you propose to make any alteration on the
work, and desire you to inform me of your intentions in that
particular."[133]

Hume's hope of their "not impossible" meeting in Paris was destined to
be gratified sooner than he could have