a
crusade against the House of Bourbon, and "to emancipate the colonies
both in the West Indies and on the continent of America for the
general interest of all nations." The price he was prepared to offer
these powers for their adhesion was to be a share in the colonial
commerce of England, and the acquisition of some of the French and
Spanish colonial dependencies for themselves. Sinclair sent his
pamphlet to Smith, apparently with a request for his opinion on the
advisability of translating it for the conversion of the powers, and
he received the following reply. I may add that I have not been able
to see this pamphlet, but that it is evidently not the pamphlet
entitled "Impartial Considerations on the Propriety of retaining
Gibraltar," as Sinclair's biographer supposes; for in the former
pamphlet Sinclair is advocating not only a continuance, but an
extension of the war, whereas in the latter he has come round to the
advocacy of peace, and instead of contemplating the deprivation of
France and Spain of their colonies, he recommends the cession of
Gibraltar as a useless and expensive possession, using very much the
same line of argument which Smith suggests in this letter. Smith's
letter very probably had some influence in changing his views, though
it is true the idea of ceding Gibraltar was in 1782 much favoured by a
party in Lord Shelburne's government, and even by the king himself.

Smith's letter ran thus:--

MY DEAR SIR--I have read your pamphlet several times with
great pleasure, and am very much pleased with the style and
composition. As to what effect it might produce if
translated upon the Powers concerned in the Armed
Neutrality, I am a little doubtful. It is too plainly
partial to England. It proposes that the force of the Armed
Neutrality should be employed in recovering to England the
islands she has lost, and the compensation which it is
proposed that England should give for this service is the
islands which they may conquer for themselves, with the
assistance of England indeed, from France and Spain. There
seems to me besides to be some inconsistency in the
argument. If it be just to emancipate the continent of
America from the dominion of every European power, how can
it be just to subject the islands to such dominion? and if
the monopoly of the trade of the continent be contrary to
the rights of mankind, how can