With regard to the point raised by Michael Perelman and Rod Hay  
concerning an alleged Smithian desire to rid himself of his Scottish  
accent, recall that Ross makes only an oblique reference to the  
question, commenting in reference to Smith's Edinburgh lectures from  
1748-51 that "his auditors could also find in Smith, from his years of  
being at Oxford, someone with a command of the received standard  
southern English.  Scots were anxious to acquire this skill, to get on  
in an imperial world administered from London," and citing in support  
the Edinburgh Review of 1755 and Gentleman's Magazine of 1790 (Ross,  
Life of Adam Smith, p. 85).  We find no suggestion in Rae's Life  that  
Smith himself consciously sought to improve his English locution (though  
see p. 126 of Ross for conflicting testimony from Smith's auditors on  
his success in that activity), but some support for the claim of a more  
generalized Scottish desire in that regard is found in the Memoirs of  
Francis Horner.  After completing his studies at the Univ. of Edinburgh,  
young Francis was sent by his father to live with the Rev. John Hewlett,  
near London.  In October, 1797, Rev. Hewlett wrote the senior Horner, "I  
have the pleasure to inform you ... that the principal object for which  
your son came to England has been fully accomplished.  He has certainly  
got rid of the Scottish accent and pronunciation, and acquired the  
English so completely as not to be distinguished from a native" (Memoirs  
and Correspondence of Francis Horner, MP, edited by Leonard Horner;  
Boston: Little Brown, 1853, p. 40).   
   
  
Glenn Hueckel