Adam Smith, Commissioner (part 12b)

Nota bene: Here are the previous installments — parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12a — in my multi-part series on Adam Smith’s day-to-day duties as a commissioner of the Board of Customs of Scotland. Order #132 is dated __ Nov. 1784 (the day is cut off from my copy of this document) and is signed by Adam Smith (top signature), Basil Cochrane (middle), and James Buchanan (bottom). In this order, the Board of Customs formally terminates a local customs officer, a land surveyor by the name of Anderson, from the customs service and orders his superiors to confiscate (“call in”) his official Deputation, i.e. his statutory warrant of authority: “Having received your Letter of the 23d. instant [i.e. Nov. 23], enclosing the answers of Mr. Robt. Anderson Landsurveyor at your Port, to a Charge given him by our Order, on your Letter of the 16th. of last Month [Oct. 16], — We upon considering the same, hereby dismiss the said Anderson as incorrigible and unfit to be trusted any longer…

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