I heartily congratulate you
upon the triumphant manner in which the East India Bill has
been carried through the Lower House. I have no doubt of
its passing through the Upper House in the same manner. The
decisive judgment and resolution with which Mr. Fox has
introduced and supported that Bill does him the highest
honour.--I ever am, with the greatest respect and esteem,
dear sir, your most affectionate and most humble servant,

ADAM SMITH.

EDINBURGH, _15th December 1783_.[326]

Fox's East India Bill, of which Smith expresses such unqualified
commendation, proposed to transfer the government of British India
from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to a new board
of Crown nominees. This measure was entirely to Smith's mind. He had
already in the former editions of his book condemned the company
which, as he says, "oppresses and domineers in India," and in the
additional matter which he wrote about the company immediately before
this bill was introduced he declared of them that "no other sovereigns
ever were, or, from the nature of things, ever could be, so perfectly
indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the
improvement or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of
their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater
part of the proprietors of such a mercantile company are and
necessarily must be."

FOOTNOTES:

[322] Lady Minto's _Life of the Earl of Minto_, i. 84.

[323] Add. MSS., 5035.

[324] _Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair_, i. 389.

[325] Mackintosh, _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 17.

[326] _Journals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland_, i. 64.

CHAPTER XXVII

BURKE IN SCOTLAND

1784-1785

Burke had been elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in
November 1783 in succession to Dundas, and he came down to Scotland to
be installed in the following April. He spent altogether eight or ten
days in the country, and he spent them all in the company of Smith,
who attended him wherever he went. Burke and Smith, always profound
admirers of one another's writings, had grown warm friends during the
recent lengthened residence of the latter in London. Even in the
brilliant circle round the brown table in Gerrard Street there was
none Burke loved or esteemed more highly than Smith. One of the
statesman's biographers informs us, on the authority of an eminent
literary friend, who paid