Duke of Buccleugh and
Henry Dundas, Smith continued to be a warm political supporter of the
Rockingham Whigs and a warm opponent of the North ministry. The first
Earl of Minto (then Sir Gilbert Elliot) visited Edinburgh in 1782, and
wrote in his journal. "I have found one just man in Gomorrah, Adam
Smith, author of the _Wealth of Nations_. He was the Duke of
Buccleugh's tutor, is a wise and deep philosopher, and although made
Commissioner of the Customs here by the Duke and Lord Advocate, is
what I call an _honest fellow_. He wrote a most kind as well as
elegant letter to Burke on his resignation, as I believe I told you
before, and on my mentioning it to him he told me he was the only man
here who spoke out for the Rockinghams."[322] This letter is now lost,
but Burke's answer to it remains, and was sold at Sotheby's a few
years ago. Smith must have expressed the warmest approval of the step
Fox and Burke had taken, on the death of the Marquis of Rockingham in
July 1782, in resigning their offices in the Ministry rather than
serve under their colleague Lord Shelburne, and he must have felt
strongly on the subject to overcome his aversion to letter-writing on
the occasion. Fox and Burke have been much censured for their refusal
to serve under Shelburne, inasmuch as that refusal meant a practical
disruption of the Whig party; and Burke could not help feeling
strengthened, as he says he was in his letter, by the approval of a
man like Smith, who was not only a profound political philosopher, but
a thorough and loyal Whig. Notwithstanding his personal friendship
with Lord Shelburne, Smith never seems to have trusted him as a
political leader. We have already seen him condemning Shelburne at the
time of that statesman's first collision with Fox--the "pious fraud"
occasion--and now nineteen years later he shows the same distrust of
Shelburne, and doubtless for the same reason, that he believed
Shelburne was willing to be subservient to the king's designs, and to
increase the power of the Crown, which it had ever been the aim of the
Whigs to limit. Shelburne's acceptance of office, after the king's
positive refusal to listen to the views of the Rockinghams themselves
regarding the leadership of their own party, was probably regarded by
Smith as a piece of open treason to the popular cause, and open
espousal of the cause of the Court.

In those critical times the thoughts of even private citizens brooded
on the arts of war. A