ks
in Edinburgh out of thirty survived it, and a large joint-stock bank,
Douglas Heron and Company, started only three years before, for the
public-spirited purpose of promoting improvements, particularly
improvements of land, now seemed to shake all commercial Scotland with
its fall. In this company the Duke of Buccleugh was one of the largest
shareholders, and, liability being unlimited, it was impossible to
foresee how much of its L800,000 of liabilities his Grace might be
eventually called upon to pay. The suggestion that Smith was much
consulted by the Duke and his advisers about this grave business is to
some extent confirmed by the familiarity which he shows with the whole
circumstances of this bank at the time of its failure in the second
chapter of the second book of the _Wealth of Nations_.

The situation for which Pulteney had recommended him to the Court of
Directors of the East India Company was, no doubt, a place as member
of the Special Commission of Supervision which they then contemplated
establishing. In 1772 the East India Company was in extremities; in
July they were nearly a million and a half sterling behind for their
next quarter's payments; and they proposed to send out to India a
commission of three independent and competent men, with full authority
to institute a complete examination into every detail of the
administration, and to exercise a certain supervision and control of
the whole. Burke had already been offered one of the seats on this
commission, but had refused it on finding that Lord Rockingham was
unwilling to part with him; and at the time this letter was written
two of Smith's own Scotch friends, whose names he happens to mention
in the letter--Adam Ferguson and Andrew Stuart, M.P.--were actually
candidates for the places, and had apparently been recently seeing
Pulteney in London on the subject. Pulteney, who had great influence
at the India House, had probably mentioned the names of Smith,
Ferguson, and Stuart to the Court of Directors at the same time, and
if so, that must have been at least two months before Smith wrote this
letter, for Ferguson was in the month of July getting influence
brought to bear on the Edinburgh Town Council to secure their
permission to retain his professorship in the event of his going to
India.[218] Ferguson pushed his candidature vigorously, and went to
London repeatedly about it between July and November, but Smith,
although he would have accepted