It is worth while here to note Smith’s steady devotion to Fox and Burke, who represented the Rockingham branch of the Whig party. He was faithful found among innumerable false, for he approved alike of Fox’s resignation in 1782 rather than serve under Shelburne, and of his fatal coalition with Lord North in the following year.[45] It may seem strange to those who think of Adam Smith only as the founder of free trade that he should have been a Foxite, and especially that he should have remained one in the last decade of his life, when commercial questions were uppermost, and when Shelburne first, and then Pitt, set themselves to translate the _Wealth of Nations_ into laws and treaties. But, as we have tried to show, he never allowed economical considerations to weigh in the scale with political liberty; and the clue to his distrust of Shelburne and Pitt is his dislike of the King as a corrupter of politics, and of the Court as a corrupter of morals. Shelburne and Pitt exalting the King and the executive would have depressed the House of Commons. Rockingham, Fox, and Burke sought manfully, and not unsuccessfully, so to maintain and glorify constitutional usages as to check and limit the power of the King. This single consideration was enough to determine the allegiance of a truly republican heart. Burke, moreover, was in every way a sympathetic figure. His measure of economical reform had docked the resources of patronage, and sensibly relieved the burdens of the taxpayer. And his views about commercial liberty coincided with Smith’s own. About this time a happy chance brought the two friends together. In the autumn of 1783 Burke was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and early in the following April, during the general election which overwhelmed the Whigs, Burke, having saved his own seat at Malton, paid a visit to Scotland. He stayed a few days in Edinburgh, and then, accompanied by Adam Smith, Lord Maitland,[46] and others, went on to Glasgow to be installed in his new office. On the day of their arrival (Friday, April 9) they supped with that stalwart Whig, John Millar, the Professor of Law. On Sunday, Smith and Maitland took Burke to see Loch Lomond, and made their way back by Carron to Edinburgh, which they reached on the following Wednesday. Next day Burke, with a company of Smith’s Edinburgh friends, dined at Panmure House. On Friday the great orator returned to England extremely pleased by his reception in Scotland, and leaving behind him many friends and admirers. One of these has preserved some particulars of the visit. “Smith, Dugald, and I,” wrote Dalzel, “had more of his company than anybody in this country, and we got a vast deal of political anecdote from him and fine pictures of political characters both dead and living.” Burke advised Lord Maitland, if he had ambition and wanted office, to abandon the Whig party. “Shake us off: give us up.” Smith said cheerfully that “in two years things would come about