(Author’s note: below is Part 2 of 3 of my series of blog posts on Adam Smith’s first visit to Paris.)

I take this first opportunity, after my arrival in this Place [Paris], which was not till yesterday to resign my Office into the hands of Your Lordship, of the Dean of Faculty, of the Principal of the College and of all my other most respectable and worthy collegues. Into Your and their hands therefor I do hereby resign my Office of Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow and in the College thereof, with all the emoluments Privileges and advantages which belong to it. I reserve however my Right to the Salary for the current half year which commenced at the 10th of October for one part of my salary and at Martinmass last for another; and I desire that this Salary may be paid to the Gentleman who does that part of my Duty which I was obliged to leave undone, in the manner agreed on between my very worthy Collegues and me before we parted. I never was more anxious for the Good of the College than at this moment and I sincerely wish that whoever is my Successor may not only do Credit to the Office by his Abilities but be a comfort to the very excellent Men with whom he is likely to spend his life, by the Probity of his heart and the Goodness of his Temper.

Adam Smith’s letter of resignation dated 14 Feb. 1764

We know two things for sure about Smith’s first visit to Paris in February 1764. One is that it was a short visit, for less than two weeks after arriving in the French capital, Smith and his pupil Duke Henry proceeded to Toulouse in the south of France, where they lived and travelled for most of the next 18 months. (See generally Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave 2020.)

The other thing we know is that Smith resigned his professorship on his first full day in the City of Light: Valentine’s Day, 14 Feb. 1764. On that fateful day, Smith wrote a letter addressed to one of his former students, Thomas Miller (Ross 1995, p. 148), who was the Lord Rector of Glasgow University from 1762 to 1764. (See Letter #81, note 1, in Mossner & Ross 1987.) In this letter, Smith does two things: (1) he officially resigns his professorship for good (previously, he had taken a temporary leave of absence), and (2) he asks that the remainder of his salary go to Thomas Young, another former student of Smith’s, who had taken over smith’s moral philosophy lectures when Smith had first taken his leave of absence in the fall of 1763.

Why did Smith decide to resign his prestigious professorship instead of just extending his temporary leave of absence? Whatever his reasons, having resigned his professorship on 14 February, Smith remained in Paris for less than a fortnight. Did he take notice during this short interval of one of the most pressing topics of public controversy at the time?

To be continued …