prosperous: “As they were altogether independent of the mother city, they were at liberty to manage their own affairs in the way they judged was most suitable to their own interests.” But before the colonial debates of 1767 came on Adam Smith had left London. On March 25th he wrote from Lower Grosvenor Street to Thomas Cadell, one of the partners in Millar’s firm, which combined bookselling with publishing, to ask him to insure four boxes of books for £200, and despatch them to Kincaid, his publisher in Edinburgh.[24] He probably stayed in London till the third of May, when the Duke of Buccleuch was married. He would then pick up his valuable parcels in Edinburgh and go on without delay to Kirkcaldy to rejoin his mother and his cousin, Miss Jane Douglas, from whom he had been separated for more than two years. His first letter to Hume (Kirkcaldy, June 9th) describes his daily life. “My business here is study, in which I have been very deeply engaged for about a month past. My amusements are long solitary walks by the seaside. You may judge how I spend my time. I feel myself, however, extremely happy, comfortable, and contented. I never was perhaps more so in all my life.” He goes on to ask about his friends in London, and wishes to be remembered to all, particularly to Mr. Adams the architect, and to Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. He inquires about Rousseau: “Has he gone abroad, because he cannot contrive to get himself sufficiently persecuted in Great Britain?” He also wants to know the meaning of “the bargain that your ministry have made with the India Company,” and rejoices that they have refused to prolong its charter. At the end of August Smith paid a visit to Dalkeith House to help the newly married couple to entertain their tenants and friends on the occasion of the Duke’s birthday. “The Duke and Dutchess of Buccleugh,” he wrote to Hume on September 15th, “have been here now for almost a fortnight. They begin to open their house on Monday next, and I flatter myself, will both be very agreeable to the people of this country. I am not sure that I have ever seen a more agreeable woman than the Dutchess. I am sorry that you are not here, because I am sure you would be perfectly in love with her. I shall probably be here some weeks.”