The last document (for now) in my sample of signed Adam Smith letters is Order #145, which like the previous order (#144) is also dated 30 December 1784 and signed by Basil Cochrane (top signature), Adam Smith (middle), and James Edgar (bottom). This order involves another more-or-less routine personnel matter:
“Having received your Letter of the 23d instant, inclosing the Memorial of Mr. Duncan Douglas [,] warranted to be a Landwaiter & Searcher at your Port, praying for the reasons therein set forth, that he may be instructed at Inverness. We acquaint you [with] the Information of Mr. Douglas that on the 16th instant, we directed the Collr. & Comptroller of Aberdeen to put him under the Care of the Landsurveyor and Landwaiter in order to [obtain] his Instruction and Qualification for the Office of a Landwaiter & Searcher at Inverness for which he is warranted and that this departure from the established Rule (Leith & Port Glasgow being the regular Instructing Ports) was owing to the ill health of Mr. Douglas and to the great inconvenience to which he would be put by being obliged to travel to those ports.”
Again, what in the Devil is going on here? In summary, an individual by the name of Duncan Douglas has received a formal Treasury warrant appointing him to the post of Landwaiter and Searcher [1] at the Port of Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland, but before taking up his new post Douglas has to undergo some on-the-job training (“instruction”) at one of Scotland’s major ports (“Leith & Port Glasgow”) and obtain a certificate of qualification. [2]
Ordinarily, a newly warranted officer like Douglas would be required to train in one of the designated “regular Instructing Ports” in Edinburgh (Leith) or the Clyde (Port Glasgow), the two largest and busiest ports in Scotland. But owing to his ill health and the hardship of traveling all the way from Inverness to Leith or Port Glasgow, Douglas has submitted a “memorial” or request (forwarded by his superiors at Inverness to the Board of Customs on 23 Dec.) asking to be trained locally at Inverness.
As it happens, the board had already addressed this matter and had approved a compromise solution in a previous order dated December 16, allowing Douglas to complete his training at an outport closer to his home, i.e. Aberdeen instead of Inverness. Why did the commissioners refuse Douglas’s request to be trained at Inverness? Most likely because Inverness was too small an outport to provide comprehensive instruction or lacked the requisite supervisory personnel. Instead, the commissioners authorizes a pragmatic compromise solution.
[1] Recall from a previous post (see here, for example) that Landwaiters and Searchers were frontline customs officers responsible for supervising the landing and shipping of goods, checking goods against the merchant’s entry warrants, and preventing smuggling or under-valuation. (See generally Elizabeth E. Hoon, The Organization of the English Customs System, 1696-1786 (reprint ed.), A. M. Kelley (1968), available here.)
[2] Because the duties of Landwaiters required technical proficiency in weighing and measuring cargo, bookkeeping, and calculating statutory tariffs and duties, new appointees like Douglas could not simply step into the role without formal training and certification. (See, e.g., Hoon, op. cit., pp. 204-207.)
