Adam Smith, Commissioner (part 13)

The next document in my sample of Adam Smith letters is Order #134, which is dated __ Dec. 1784 (the day is cut off from my copy of this document) and is signed by Adam Smith (top signature), Basil Cochrane (middle), and David Reid (bottom). This order involves a disputed bounty on contraband gin (“Geneva”) as well as a series of decade-old expenditures made to three customs officers at the Port of Inverness: [*] “The Solicitor having by his Memorial of the 29th of September 1770, laid before us a Precognition [**] taken at Dornoch in December 1771, which had been put into his hands by the late Collector at your Port, relative to the Seizure of Geneva [Dutch gin] mentioned in Return No. 762 dated 11 June 1772, the right to which was disputed by Mr. George Houston then Landsurveyor, and Mr. Gilchrist Supervisor of Excise; “We direct you to call upon the then Collector to say in whose hands the Officer’s Share of the said Geneva is, which by the Report of the Register of Seizures of the…

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