“In the book which I am now preparing for the press, I have treated fully and distinctly of every part of the subject which you have recommended to me; and I intended to send you some extracts from it; but upon looking them over I find that they are too much interwoven with other parts of the work to be easily separated from it. I have the same opinion of Sir James Steuart’s book[26] that you have. Without once mentioning it, I flatter myself that any fallacious principle in it will meet with a clear and distinct confutation in mine.... My book would have been ready for the press by the beginning of this winter, but interruptions occasioned partly by bad health, arising from want of amusement and from thinking too much upon one thing, and partly by the avocations above mentioned, will oblige me to retard its publication for a few months longer.” It appears that Pulteney had recommended the Directors of the East India Company to appoint Smith as a commissioner to examine their administration and accounts. Smith says he is much honoured and obliged: “You have acted in your old way, of doing your friends a good office behind their backs, pretty much as other people do them a bad one. There is no labour of any kind which you can impose upon me which I will not readily undertake.” He believes he is in agreement with Pulteney as to the proper remedy for the disorders of the coin in Bengal. The commission, however, was not appointed. No reforms worth mentioning were made, and the _Wealth of Nations_ teems with severe criticisms of the Company.[27] A month after this letter to Pulteney, Hume drafts a little programme for the completion and publication of the work, evidently in reply to one of Smith’s dilatory notes: “I should agree to your reasoning if I could trust your resolution. Come hither for some weeks about Christmas; dissipate yourself a little; return to Kirkcaldy; finish your work before autumn; go to London; print it; return and settle in this town, which suits your studious, independent turn even better than London. Execute this plan faithfully, and I forgive you.”