essor of Moral
Philosophy in Glasgow University, but he wants here on the _Theory_
nothing but plain Adam Smith, his mind being at this period apparently
averse to making use of his degree even on public and formal
occasions, as it always was to using it in private life. He described
himself on his visiting cards as "Mr. Adam Smith," he was known in the
inner circle of his personal friends as Mr. Smith, and when Dugald
Stewart was found fault with by certain critics for speaking of him so
in his memoirs, he replied that he never heard Smith called anything
else.

But while Smith was superintending the republication of his first
book, he was at the same time using his opportunities in London to
read up at the British Museum, then newly established, or elsewhere,
for his second and greater, of which he had laid the keel in France.
One of the subjects which he was engaged in studying at that time was
colonial administration. He seems to have been discussing the subject
with Lord Shelburne, who was now Secretary of State, and he gives that
statesman the results of his further investigations into at least one
branch of the subject in the following letter, written in the first
instance, like so many others of Smith's extant letters, to do a
service to a friend. He wished to interest Lord Shelburne in the
claims of a Scotch friend, Alexander Dalrymple, for the command of the
exploring expedition which it was then in contemplation to send to the
South Sea, and which was eventually committed to Captain Wallis. This
Alexander Dalrymple was afterwards the well-known Hydrographer to the
Admiralty and the East India Company, to whom the progress of
geographical knowledge lies under deep obligations. He was one of the
numerous younger brothers of Lord Hailes, the Scotch judge and
historian, and having returned in 1765 from thirteen years' work in
the East India Company's service, had devoted himself since then to
the study of discoveries in the South Sea, and arrived at a confident
belief in the existence of a great undiscovered continent in that
quarter. Lord Shelburne would have given him the command of this
expedition had not Captain Wallis been already engaged, and next year
he was actually offered, and had he been granted naval rank, which he
thought essential for maintaining discipline on board ship, he would
have undertaken command of the more memorable expedition to observe
the transit of Venus, which made Captain Cook the m