he London College of Physicians, and they
suggest the appointment of a royal commission of inquiry if Government
is not prepared for immediate action.

The Duke of Buccleugh sent the memorial for the consideration of Adam
Smith, and asked him to write to Cullen his views on the subject.
Smith thought that it was not very practicable in any event for the
public to obtain a satisfactory test of medical efficiency, that it
was certainly not practicable if the competition by the private
teachers were suppressed, that otherwise the medical examination might
become as great a quackery as the medical degree, and that the whole
question was a mere squabble between the big quack and the little one.
He unfolds his views in the following letter:--

DEAR DOCTOR--I have been very much in the wrong both to you
and to the Duke of Buccleugh, to whom I certainly promised
to write you in a post or two, for having delayed so long to
fulfil my promise. The truth is that some occurrences which
interested me a good deal, and which happened here
immediately after the Duke's departure, made me forget
altogether a business which, I do acknowledge, interested me
very little.

In the present state of the Scotch universities I do most
sincerely look upon them as, in spite of all their faults,
without exception the best seminaries of learning that are
to be found anywhere in Europe. They are perhaps, upon the
whole, as unexceptionable as any public institutions of that
kind, which all contain in their very nature the seeds and
causes of negligency and corruption, have ever been or are
ever likely to be. That, however, they are still capable of
amendment, and even of considerable amendment, I know very
well, and a Visitation (that is, a Royal Commission) is, I
believe, the only proper means of procuring them this
amendment. Before any wise man, however, would apply for the
appointment of so arbitrary a tribunal in order to improve
what is already, upon the whole, very well, he ought
certainly to know with some degree of certainty, first, who
are likely to be appointed visitors, and secondly, what plan
of reformation those visitors are likely to follow; but in
the present multiplicity of pretenders to some share in the
prudential management of Scotch affairs, these are two
points which, I apprehend, neither