644 MR small's biographical SKETCH OF PROF. ADAM FERGUSON. 



to Paris. I have been near a year Governor-General of India, and four years a 

 Supreme Counsellor, and I have sent you nothing but a little madeira, yet you 

 are the friend next to my heart, and your interests are dearer to me than my 

 own, as they involve the concerns of a numerous family depending on the state 

 of your health. If I have been thus inattentive to your situation, you are 3'our- 

 self the cause, for to you am I indebted for those rules of conduct in my public 

 trusts, which have bound my generosity to your or to my own private interests 

 within narrow limits. You have been occasionally informed of the line pursued 

 by me since I left Europe, the situation in which I found affairs, my labours to 

 retrieve them, and the disbursement of my own income in various attentions to 

 those who were recommended to me, and whom I could not oblige at the public 

 expense. If the line I have pursued was not necessary from its satisfaction to 

 my own mind, the example of it was a sine qua non to enable me, when affairs 

 devolved upon me, to reduce the expenses of this colony about a million sterling 

 per annum, and to silence the cries of thousands who might otherwise have just 

 grounds for charging me with partiality and selfishness. 



" I have followed your maxims in the practice of affairs, — upon perhaps the 

 greatest theatre of affairs, if the greatness of affairs is founded in the numbers of 

 men, and the extent of their interests — the concerns to be extricated or forfeited 

 — the wealth that might have been acquired, and the consequences that might 

 ensue to individuals, tribes, and nations. 



" The events that hinged upon my ideas and conduct four years ago Avere 

 more important than those which I can now influence, though I stand at the head 

 and in absolute charge of all our affairs in India. 



*' It is, my friend, one-and-twenty years since I began under you the rudi- 

 ments of these affairs; and as there is no period of my life that I look to with 

 such a conscious sensation of joy and pride, as that which I passed with you and 

 our noble pupils, so to you is due the account which I can in truth give, and 

 which I am bound to notice to you : It must be interesting to you, and it is for 

 the benefit of our native school, and perhaps of society in general, that I should 

 enable you to know the result, that you might hereafter be the more confirmed 

 in your system. 



" I have amply experienced the truth of three of your favourite positions : — 



" \st. That the pursuits of an active mind are its greatest happiness, when they 

 are directed to good objects, which unite our own happiness with that of oui- 

 friends and the general advantage of society. Hence the first success in the 

 Carnatic ; the subsequent efforts in London ; the return to India ; the visit to 

 Europe in '77 ; the intercourse with men in business ; the friendships of the 

 ministers ; Lord N.'s * selection of me for my trust in 1778. 



" 2d. I have likewise experienced, that he who has not been in contact with 



* Lord North. 



