After seeing the _Wealth of Nations_ through the press, Smith lingered a few weeks in London. He was anxious to persuade Hume to come up and consult the London physicians, but Hume shrank from the journey, and implored his friend to return to Edinburgh. So about the middle of April, Smith and John Home[37] took the coach for Edinburgh. But at Morpeth, where the coach stopped, they saw Hume’s servant at the door of the inn. Hume had changed his mind, and was on his way to see Sir John Pringle. Home returned with Hume to London, but Smith, hearing that his aged mother was ill, went on to Kirkcaldy. Before parting, however, the two friends carefully discussed the question of what should be done with Hume’s papers in the event of his death. From a desire to avoid religious controversy and public clamour, Hume had kept by him unpublished his _Dialogues on Natural Religion_; and he now tried to persuade his friend and literary executor to edit them after his death. But Smith resolutely declined the task. Although he had himself lectured on Natural Religion, he had warily avoided the subject in his own publications. Moreover, he was now hoping to be appointed to an office under the Crown, and such a publication would certainly be prejudicial. Hume argued that these objections were groundless: “Was Mallet anywise hurt by his publication of Lord Bolingbroke? He received an office afterwards from the present king, and Lord Bute, the most prudent man in the world, and he always justified himself by his sacred regard to the will of a dead friend.” And he reminded Smith of a saying of Rochefoucauld, that “a wind, though it extinguishes a candle, blows up a fire.” So he wrote from London at the beginning of May. However, he agreed to leave the question of publication entirely to Smith’s discretion. “By the little company I have seen,” he added, “I find the town very full of your book, which meets with general approbation.” Soon afterwards Hume changed his mind, and made Strahan his literary executor, with instructions to publish the _Dialogues_ within two and a half years.