Adam Smith on David Hume's dialogues concerning natural religion : An unnoticed fragment

The discovery of unknown letters by Adam Smith has continued fitfully since 1987, when Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross issued the second edition of their Correspondence of Adam Smith. The following article provides an additional instalment: a letter fragment of 15 May 1779, addressed to Louis-Alexandre (1743–92), duc de La Rochefoucauld. The fragment reads as follows:

Edinburgh 15 May 1779
I take the Liberty to send to the Duke of Rochefoucault a copy of the only work which his late friend, M r Hume, left behind him that was not printed in his Lifetime. I delayed answering the very obliging letter of the Duke till I should be able to accompany my answer something more valuable than itself; and I expected to [interlined: have been] able to do this much
sooner. [deleted: than I have b]

The fragment appears to derive from the collection of autographs
amassed by Dawson Turner (1775–1858), the banker and antiquary, whose trove of manuscripts was auctioned by Puttick and Simpson in 1859. The manuscript of the fragment is attached with glue to a separate sheet of paper, which bears the following inscriptions in an unidentified hand: ‘Dawson Turner | 1795’ and ‘Inserted, | An original Note in the Handwriting of Adam Smith’. The fragment is absent from the most significant inventories of Turner’s manuscript collection: an index of 1844 and a Puttick and Simpson auction catalogue of 1859. The catalogue, but not the index, dockets a single manuscript by Smith: a signature to a bill of exchange, dated 29 March 1790.3 The apparent year of acquisition or donation of the fragment—‘1795’—coincides with Turner’s earliest activities as a collector, but its exact significance is indeterminable.

© The Scottish Historical Review Trust 2021