se in the Town
Council who aim at filling the vacancy with a friend will
strenuously object to it, and he himself cannot think of one
who will make a proper substitute. I fancy that the chief
difficulty would be removed if you could offer to supply his
class either as his substitute or his successor, with a
purpose of resigning upon his return. This notion is
entirely my own, and shall never be known to Ferguson if it
appear to you improper. I shall only say that he deserves
this friendly treatment by his friendly conduct of a similar
kind towards poor Russell's family.

Pray what strange accounts are these we hear of Franklyn's
conduct? I am very slow in believing that he has been guilty
in the extreme degree that is pretended, tho' I always knew
him to be a very factious man, and Faction next to
Fanaticism is of all passions the most destructive of
morality. I hear that Wedderburn's treatment of him before
the Council was most cruel without being in the least
blamable. What a pity![235]

Smith's headquarters in London, to which Hume's letters to him were
addressed, was the British Coffee-House in Cockspur Street, a great
Scotch resort in last century, kept, as I have said, by a sister of
his old Balliol friend, Bishop Douglas, "a woman," according to Henry
Mackenzie, "of uncommon talents and the most agreeable conversation."
Wedderburn founded a weekly dining club in this house, which Robertson
and Carlyle used to frequent when they came to town, and no doubt
Smith would do the same, for many of his Scotch friends belonged to
it--Dr. William Hunter, John Home, Robert Adam the architect, and Sir
Gilbert Elliot. Indeed, though men like Goldsmith, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Garrick, and Richard Cumberland were members, it was
predominantly a Scotch club, and both Carlyle and Richard Cumberland
say an extremely agreeable one. But during his residence at this
period in London Smith was in 1775 admitted to the membership of a
much more famous club, the Literary Club of Johnson and Burke and
Reynolds at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, and he no doubt
attended their fortnightly dinners. The only members present on the
night of his election were Beauclerk, Gibbon, Sir William Jones, and
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Boswell, writing his friend Temple on 28th April
1776, immediately after the _Wealth of Nations_ was published, says,
"Smith too is