Political free trade : the Lectures on jurisprudence and the Wealth of nations

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FACULTY WORKING
PAPER NO. 89-1537

Political Free Trade?:

The Lectures on Jurisprudence

and the Wealth of Nations

Salim Rashid

College of Commerce and Business Administration
Bureau of Economic and Business Research
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

http://www.archive.org/details/politicalfreetra1537rash

BEBR

FACULTY WORKING PAPER NO. 89-1537

College of Commerce and Business Administration

University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign

February 1989

Political Free Trade?: The Lectures on Jurisprudence
and the Wealth of Nations

Salim Rashid, Professor
Department of Economics

ABSTRACT

The arguments for Free-Trade presented in the earlier Lectures do
not coincide with those provided in the Wealth of Nations. It is
argued that these differences may tell us about the possible influence
of the Physiocrats as well as Adam Smith's political leanings.

POLITICAL FREE TRADE?: THE LECTURES ON JURISPRUDENCE
AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

That the argument for Free Trade in the Lectures on Jurisprudence
differs in significant ways from that in the Wealth of Nations is a
point that appears to have escaped notice so far. Two different argu-
ments for Free Trade are given in the Lectures and neither of them is
quite the argument later provided in the Wealth of Nations. In view
of the importance of Free Trade both In the history of economics as
well as in Adam Smith's own conceptual scheme it is worth examining
this difference more closely. After describing the axiomatic basis
for Free-Trade, as developed primarily in Book. IV of the Wealth of
Nations , in the rest of the Introduction, section II goes on to quote
from the Lectures on Jurisprudence to illustrate how the argument
there differs from that in the Wealth of Nations. Section III con-
siders the possible significance of the change in argument, which
moves us away from the utilitarian framework of the "Mercantilist"
literature towards the economic aspects of the natural-law tradition
of moral philosophers, while Section IV considers how the change in
argument may have Influenced the perception of Smith as a
"politician." The argument in the Wealth of Nations, it will be re-
called, is based on three axioms.

Al. Individuals wish to maximize wealth.

A2. Individuals know better than governments how to maximize
their own wealth.

A3. National wealth is the sum of individual wealth.
Al and A2 establish that a policy of non-interference will make indi-
viduals richest, while A3 makes this policy socially optimal also. So

-2-

far, the axioms establish that leaving a people free to trade is the

best way to enrich them. To apply it to international trade, we need

to add

A4. In international affairs, nations are to be treated as
individuals.

By means of A4 a conclusion which had been widely accepted for

domestic trade was projected into international trade. The reader

will recall how something very much like A4 is to be found in Dudley

3
North's Discourse on Trade, and one is tempted to think of the influ-
ence of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and the school of distinguished
seventeenth century theorists of international law. Francis Hutcheson
was the most prominent teacher of these doctrines in Britain and Smith
no doubt imbibed a great deal from them. Nonetheless, the case for
free trade in the Lectures is not unfolded in axiomatic fashion, and
does not reflect these moral philosophers.

Before turning to the economic arguments of the Lectures , it may
be useful to provide some illustrations of the earlier use of personal
relations in giving a basis for international relations. The follow-
ing are taken from the systematic and scholarly exposition of Richard
Zouche (1650)4

To community in time of peace belongs also owner-
ship... and such ownership, in movable goods, is
acquired generally by the same modes as among pri-
vate persons.

There is due between different princes or peoples a
right of civil convention, by virtue of which they
bind themselves , as do private persons.

As lawsuits arise from wrongs and injuries between
private persons, so wars arise between those
[peoples] who have no judge. [emphasis added]

-3-

II. There are actually two different arguments for free trade in the
Lectures. The first one develops the therae that wealth and abundance
are the same and things that are abundant must be cheap. In the

quotes that follow from the Lectures it is important to note that
"natural price" as used by Smith has no necessary relationship with

natural-law and is simply Smith's way of describing the remuneration

necessary to attract and keep someone at any given job.

Whatever policy tends to raise the market price
above the naturall one diminishes publick opulence
and naturall wealth of the state. For dearness and
scarcity, abundance and cheapness, are we may say
synoniraous terras. For whatever abounds much will be
sold to the inferior people, whereas what is scarce
will be sold to those only of superior fortune, and
the quantity will consequently be small. So far
therefore as any thing is a convenience or necessary
of life and tends to the happiness of mankind, so
far is the dearness detrimentall as it confines the
necessary to a few and diminishes the happiness of
the inferior sort. Whatever therefore raises or
keeps up the price of them diminishes the opulence
and happiness and ease of the country.

On the basis of this argument, monopolies, which raise market price

above natural price, are seen to be detrimental to economic welfare.

The market price can also be below the natural price due to a

bounty. In this case, more workers are attracted into the favored

industry. Since this influx of workers means a loss of workers from

other industries — an implicit use of "full employment" and explicit

use of the wages-fund model — the value of aggregate produce is said to

be lower. This part of the argument is developed more through example

than through a chain of reasoning.

The price of grass being raised, butcher's meat,
in consequence of its dependence upon it, must be
raised also. So that if the price of corn is dimin-
ished, the price of other commodities is necessarily

-4-

raised. The price of corn has indeed fallen from 42
to 35, but the price of hay has risen from 25 to near
50 shillings. As the price of hay has risen, horses
are not so easily kept, and therefore the price of
carriage has risen also. But whatever encreases the
price of carriage diminishes plenty in the market.
Upon the whole, therefore, it is by far the best
police to leave things to their natural course, and
allow no bounties, nor impose taxes on commodities.

The second argument starts with the premise that all voluntary

exchange is mutually advantageous. It is embedded within a detailed

attack on the principle that opulence consists of money.

The bad idea of publick opulence consisting in
money has been productive of other bad effects.
Upon this principle most pernicious relations have
been established. These species of commerce which
drain us of our money are thought dissadvantageous
and these which increase it beneficial; therefore
the former are prohibited and the latter encour-
aged.

All commerce that is carried on betwixt any two
countries must necessarily be advantageous to both.
The very intention of commerce is to exchange your
own commodities for others which you think will be
more convenient for you. When two men trade be-
tween themselves it is undoubtedly for the advan-
tage of both. The one has perhaps more of one
species of commodities than he has occasion for, he
therefore exchanges a certain quantity of it with
the other, for another commodity that will be more
useful to him. The other agrees to the bargain on
the same account, and in this manner the mutual com-
merce is advantageous to both. The case is exactly
the same betwixt any two nations. [emphasis added]

After this explicit identification of the principles guiding two-
person and two-nation trade there follows an argument that, since rich
men gain more than poor men when they trade, rich nations will gain

Q

more than poor nations when they trade.

In general we may observe that these jealousies and
prohibitions are most hurtfull to the richest
nations, and that in proportion as a free commerce

-5-

would be advantageous. When a rich man and a poor
man deal with one another, both of them will in-
crease their riches, if they deal prudently, but
the rich man's stock will increase in a greater
proportion than the poor man's. In like manner,
when a rich and a poor nation engage in trade the
rich nation will have the greatest advantage, and
therefore the prohibition of this commerce is most
hurtful to it of the two. All our trade with
France is prohibited by the high duties imposed on
every French commodity imported. It would however
have been better police to encourage our trade
with France. [emphasis added]

After some further description of the silliness of the system which

9
identifies money and wealth, Smith concludes:

From the above considerations it appears that
Brittain should by all means be made a free port,
that there should be no interruptions of any kind
made to forreign trade, that if it were possible
to defray the expences of government by any other
method, all duties, customs, and excise should be
abolished, and that free commerce and liberty of
exchange should be allowed with all nations and
for all things.

The first argument provided in the lectures has a modern ring in
that a demand-supply framework is (implicitly) used to evaluate the
costs of economic policy; the second argument, on the other hand, has
a definite axiomatic ring to it — all free exchange is mutually
beneficial — but it does not quite tell us how to make the transition
to the growth of national wealth. The first argument may be con-
sidered a "cost-benefit" or utilitarian approach, while the second one,
although noticing the benefits of freedom, flows more easily from a
natural rights framework. Before proceeding to discuss the possible
implications of the change in argument, it is worth noting Keynes'
view that there was a general presumption that the two methods would
lead to the same conclusion.

-6-

Suppose that by the workings of natural laws indi-
viduals pursuring their own interests with
enlightenment in conditions of freedom always tend
to promote the general interest at the same time!
To the philosophical doctrine that government has
no right to interfere, and the divine that it has
not need to interfere, there is added a scientific
proof that its interference is inexpedient. This
is the third current of thought, just discoverable
in Adam Smith who was already in the main to allow
the public good to rest on "the natural effort of
every individual to better his own condition," but
not fully and self-consciously developed until the
nineteenth century begins. The principle of
laissez-faire had arrived to harmonise individual-
ism and socialism, and to make at one Hume's egoism
with the greatest good of the greatest number.

Nonetheless, the potential for a conflict was clearly stated by
11

Bentham.

I have not . . . any horror, sentimental or
anarchical, of the hand of government. 1 leave it
to Adam Smith, and the champions of the rights of
man (for confusion of ideas will jumble together
the best subjects and the worst citizens upon the
same ground) to talk of invasions of natural
liberty, and to give as a special argument against
this or that law, an argument the effect of which
would be to put a negative upon all the laws.

-7-

III. Why did Smith change the nature of the arguments for free trade
in the period between the Lectures and the Wealth of Nations? Let us
first note the internal weakness of the argument based on differences
in market and natural price. The link between cheapness and abundance
is flawless and the argument against having market prices higher than
natural prices a valid conclusion therefrom. However, the claim that
bounties actually hurt is not clearly developed. Instead of focussing
upon the inefficiency of taxing people to pay for the bounty, Smith
goes on to talk about grass and fodder and so on. The inconclusive-
ness of the argument probably struck him during the composition of the
Wealth of Nations. Secondly; it should be noted that the utilitarian
approach to free trade did not entirely disappear from the Wealth of
Nations. The analysis of scarcities in Book IV provides a curious

example where a conclusion as strong as that of a natural rights argu-

12
raent is drawn from a "cost benefit" analysis. Thirdly, it has been

noted that Smith's price theory in the Lectures , but not in the Wealth

13
of Nations, is based upon labor as the only cost of production.

Could the move to incorporate non-labor costs have convinced Smith
that the contrast between market price and natural price was in-
adequate for his purposes? By rejecting an argument based on prices
and taking up one based on the benefits of freedom, Smith is moving
towards the Pufendorf-Hutcheson legacy over time. As the cost-
benefit approach can lead to a defense of intervention — witness
Bentham's Defense of a Maximum — there is the possibility that Smith
wished to minimize any exceptions to free trade.

-8-

If it is indeed true that Smith altered one of his main arguments

against government interference between the Lectures and the Wealth of

Nations , could the change have had something to do with the Physiocrats?

This is a connection that has been raised and dismissed often. In

past discussions of Physiocratic influence, such as that of Edwin

Cannan, most attention has been drawn to the insertion of a theory of

distribution in the Wealth of Nations. Perhaps this is due to Dugald

Stewart's claim, in his Account of Smith's life, that Smith was in

possession of his principal free-trade results by 1755. However, in

the quote accompanying this claim, there are only results, such as

the beneficience of free trade, but no proofs.

Little else is required to carry a state to the
highest degree of affluence from the lowest
barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable
administration of justice; all the rest being
brought about by the natural course of things. All
governments which thwart this natural course, which
force things into another channel, or which en-
deavour to arrest the progress of society at a
particular point, are unnatural, and, to support
themselves, are obliged to be oppressive and
tyrannical . . .

Smith's membership in a society which awarded premiums, the Edinburgh

Society, provides some circumstantial grounds for believing that Smith

was not quite seen as an ardent supporter of "Free-Trade" until after

his professorial days. The prevailing contrary impression is probably

due to John Rae's claim that

In his [Smith's] lectures on jurisprudence and
politics he had taught the doctrine of free trade
from the first, and not the least remarkable result
of his thirteen years work in Glasgow was that
before he left he had practically converted that
city to his views

-9-

A careful consideration of the self-interest of the (protected) trade
of Glasgow merchants would lead us to think otherwise. While this

claim of Rae's has been repeated by various scholars, Rae himself

1 f\
contradicts it 30 pages later.

those Glasgow merchants . . . are not necessarily
free-traders because they want free import of raw
materials. That was advocated as strongly from the
old mercantilist standpoint as it is now from the
free-trade one.

How are we to tell whether Smith was able to justify his conclusion in
the quote provided by Dugald Stewart? The existence of a different
argument in the Lectures suggests that Smith may have begun from a
natural rights basis in the 1750s, abandoned it for about a decade,
and then returned to it again. Whether or not the return was stimu-
lated by the Physiocrats we do not know. When Stewart first discussed
Smith's priority on this issue, in 1793, he was convinced of Smith's
independent discovery of free trade. The Lectures on Political
Economy, delivered by Stewart between 1798 and 1810, are not as clear
on this point and in these lectures Stewart even suggests that Smith
was a popular version of Physiocratic ideas. There have been similar
"underground" comments on the Physiocrat-Smith connection in the
literature, but few detailed arguments. Mogens Boserup writes, in his
book of readings, that he has chosen extracts from Smith in order to
illustrate the fact that Smith "may be understood as a successor of
the Physiocratic school." Hans Breras makes a more pointed remark,
"Much of what Smith had to say had been said before — but in French.
Academic etiquette of his day demanded no acknowledgements, and he
offered none." In view of the fact that the early perception of Smith

-10-

in Germany was as a Physiocrat, this is perhaps an issue worth

*j , • 17
reconsideration.

-11-

IV. The attraction of the approach eventually adopted in the Wealth
of Nations is its close link with natural rights arguments and politi-
cal radicalism. The fact that Smith had placed human labor as the
primary agent for creating wealth no doubt helped this link. Smith's
sympathy for laborers and farm workers and his hostility towards
masters and landlords has long been noted. Combined with the general
emphasis on liberty (one recalls the radical stress on liberty given
by his old teacher, Hutcheson) , the ideas would appear as a powerful

dissolvent of traditional ideas, especially in Europe, a fact appre-

18
ciated by such commentators as Charles Ganilh and Adolphe Blanqui

Wealth, produced by labour — restores man to his
primitive dignity, through the sentiment of his
independence, through his obedience to laws common
to all, and his sharing in the benefits of society
in proportion to his services (Ganilh)

there were no longer any sterile occupations, since
every body was capable of giving things an exchange
value, by means of labor. What an encouragement to
men ill-favored by fortune and to those who did not
expect the boon of an inheritance! (Blanqui)

It is a noticeable feature of Smith's analysis that he takes the

possibility of harmful effects due to a violation of natural rights to

be sufficient grounds for believing that harm actually does occur.

The Laws of Settlement are a case in point.

The link between natural-rights economics and political radicalism

would have been evident to contemporaries and it perhaps explains the

fact that the first Parliamentary reference to the Wealth of Nations

was made by someone ignorant of economics, by Charles James Fox, a

19
reference that helped to bolster sales considerably. Subsequently,

we find some early favorable references to Smith in William Godwin and

-12-

Tom Paine, while one of Smith's earliest admiring editors, Jeremiah
Joyce, also provides evidence of being a political radical by his
sharp criticism of that instrument of tyranny — the national debt.
Another admirer of Adam Smith, Thomas Archard, wrote a pamphlet
defending the suppression of the French Nobility. Lord Lauderdale,
later a sharp critic, was a radical in his youth, when he is said to
have "worshipped" Smith. The point is further strengthened by Lord
Cockburn's comment that Smith's death was ignored by all except the
political youth of Scotland. In 1793 the Marquis of Lansdowne even
went so far as to claim that the ideas of the French Revolution were
not new but had in fact been propounded earlier by such respectable
British authors as Adam Smith and Dean Tucker. Dugald Stewart stated
that people who once associated with Adam Smith, felt embarrassed
about any association with "liberal" principles in the wake of the

French Revolution. John Rae has provided a perceptive statement of

20
the political impact of Free Trade ideas in the 1790s.

By French principles the public understood, it is
true, much more than the abolition of all commercial
and agrarian privilege which was advocated by Smith,
but in their recoil they made no fine distinctions,
and they naturally felt their prejudices strongly
confirmed when they found men like the Marquis of
Lansdowne, who were believers in the so-called
French principles and believers at the same time
in the principles of Adam Smith, declaring that the
two things were substantially the same.

Nor should this entirely surprise us. That Adam Smith had a par-
tiality for radicalism is evidenced by his admiration for both

21
Rousseau and Voltaire,

-13-

Voltaire set himself to correct the vices and
follies of mankind by laughing at them, and some-
times by treating them with severity, but Rousseau
conducts the reader to reason and truth by the
attractions of sentiment and the force of convic-
tion. His "Social Compact" will one day avenge
all the persecutions he suffered.

Janes Seattle criticized David Hume's skepticism in his Essay on Truth

and later wrote to Lady Wortley Montagu that even though he had known

Smith well once, after the publication of the Essay on Truth — "nous

22

avons changez tout cela.""

The early supporters of Free Trade in English economic thought
were almost certainly motivated by political considerations — in that
free trade with France, the traditional enemy, was a part of the Tory
agenda. With the rise of Sir Robert Walpole, however, the Whigs began
to cautiously adopt the same "Tory" attitudes towards trade with
France. Philosophically speaking, the attitudes of the natural rights
school were far more consonant with the writers of Cato's Letters or
the Commonweal thmen surrounding Lord Molesworth. The attitudes that
encouraged the philosophy of laissez-faire had considerable roots in
liberal religious and political thought, as noted by Jacob Viner and
M. L. Myers." Ashley's influential view that Smith's contribution lay
in making a Tory doctrine, Free Trade, acceptable to Whigs is liable
to misinterpretation unless one recognizes that the underlying reasons
for the same policy had changed considerably. It is no accident that

both John Locke and, a half century later, Bishop Law, embody the same

24
complex of political and theological notions. When Francis Horner

refused to make public his criticisms of the Wealth of Nations because

the good effects of that book were yet to be spread further he may

•14-

well, as a staunchly liberal Whig, have had the politico-economic

impact in mind. The attitude is more explicit in John Stuart Mill's

?5
stated reason for adhering to laissez-faire in 1833.*"

In the meantime that principle, like other negative
ones, has work to do yet, work mainly of a destroy-
ing kind, and I am glad to think it has strength
enough to finish that after which it must soon
expire; peace be with its ashes when it does expire,
for I doubt much- if it will reach the resurrection.

Insofar as the movement towards a philosophic basis for free trade had
socio-political origins, Smith supports the thesis of Leo Rogin that

"new systems first emerge in the guise of arguments in the context of

j i c m26
social reform.

Finally, it is worth reiterating that Smith is by no means so

strongly a free trader in his Lectures , as in the Wealth of Nations.

Emphasis does a lot in an argument, and the emphasis on free trade in

the Lectures , relative to all the other matter there, even within the

economic sections alone, is not as strong as it subsequently became in

the Wealth of Nations. If we add to this the fact, already noted by

the editors of the Lectures , that the Lectures take a more positive

view of government, as well as the fact that the Lectures accept some

common beliefs, such as the backward bending supply curve of labor and

the validity of "balance-of-employment" arguments, it would appear

that Smith's classroom lectures were not as revolutionary when deliv-

27
ered as they appeared to be with hindsight. Smith's friends were

not engaging in repetitious praise when they greeted the Wealth of

Nations as a system, as though this were an aspect of Smith hitherto

28
undeveloped. They knew well a professor of philosophical history,

-15-

whose economic interpretations gave them considerable pride, but the

99
author of an axiomatic basis for free-trade was a revelation."

-16-

Notes

W. Mitchell, Types of Economic Theory (New York 1967), I, 60-64.
This interpretation is repeated by several authors, e.g., A. K.
Chaudhuri, The Wealth of Nations (Calcutta: World Press, 1967). Some
early critics noted clearly the nature of Smith's axioms, e.g., W. J.
Mickle in his Introduction to the Lusiad, as described by Jacob Viner
in his Introduction to John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (New York: Kelley,
1965), 73.

2
I have not been able to find the explicit use of A4 (below) in the

literature. Its effect depends upon an ambiguity between the wealth

of all nations and that of individual nations. "International law Is

on the whole an analogical extension of the laws of justice, much as

in Grotius," writes Knud Haakanssen, "What Might Properly Be Called

Natural Jurisprudence," in The Origins and Nature of the Scottish

Enlightenment, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (John Donald,

Edinburgh, 1982), 208.

3
Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade (London: 1691), reprinted

(1971) by Johnson Reprint Corporation. The Preface claims to quote

North on this point and North himself expresses such sentiments on

p. 14.

4
R. Zouche, An Exposition ... of Law between Nations trans. J. L.

Brierly (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1911), 8, 23, 27. For

Pufendorf, see De Officio Hominis. . . (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1927), 108.

Lectures on Jurisprudence ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G.
Stein (Oxford: 0. U. P. 1978), 362. As I have been unable to detect
any significant differences between the two extant accounts of the
Lectures , I have used them interchangably.

There is no matter directly bearing on my topic in R. F.
Teichgraber, Free Trade and Moral Philosophy (Durham: Duke U. P.,
1986), or in Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics (Cambridge, 1983),
even though we are all agreed on giving Smith's political views
greater prominence.

6rt

Op.

cit. ,

499.

7„

Op.

cit. ,

511.

80p.

cit. ,

512.

9^
Op.

cit. ,

514.

As quoted by R. Kanth, Political Economy and Laissez Faire (New
Jersey 1986), 25. This book provides a welcome change In its reasser-
tion of the politics in Political Economy.

-17-

W. Stark, ed. Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings (London 1954),
vol. 3, 257-58.

12

Smith's arguments were applied, with some vehemence, by Edmund

Burke, Thoughts and Details on the Scarcity (London 179 5).

The tension between the "natural law" and the "utilitarian" argu-
ments continued throughout classical economics. Bentham, for example,
first refined the "natural law" argument and then the "utilitarian"
one, whereas J. S. Mill did the reverse. E. F. Paul, Moral Revolution
and Economic Science (Greenwood Press, 1979). P. Schwartz, The New
Political Economy of J. S. Mill (Duke U.P., 1972).

13

M. Bowley, Studies in the History of Economic Thought before 1370

(London: MacMillan, 1973), 108, 121.

14

That the Lectures clearly demonstrate Smith's philosophical

sources is also emphasized in E. Pesciarelli, "On Adam Smith's Lectures
on Jurisprudence," Scottish Journal of Political Economy (Feb. 1986),
33, 1, 74-85.

E. Cannan, introduction to the Wealth of Nations (New York,
1397), xxxix. Collected Works of Dugald Stewart (Edinburgh 1372), X,
68.

■I C.

John Rae, Adam Smith, op. cit . , 119, 60, 92.

17Collected Works of Dugald Stewart (Edinburgh 1858-1873), VIII,
306. M. Boserup, Peres Egne Ord (Copenhagen). H. Brems, "Frequently
Wrong, but Rarely in Doubt," Challenge (Nov. -Dec, 1987), 55. I am
grateful to Hans Brems for the translation of Boserup' s Danish original.
K. Tribe, Governing Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1988), chs.
6 and 7 .

18

Much of the evidence on this point has been gathered in Eli

Ginzberg, The House of Adam Smith (New York 1930).

Charles Ganilh, An Inquiry into the Various Systems of Political
Economy (New York; Kelley reprint; 1966), 46.

Adolphi Blanqui, History of Political Economy in Europe (New York,
1880), 386.

19

John Rae wishes to minimize the impact of the reference to the

Wealth of Nations by Fox, but Homer Vanderblue shows that Smith's
publisher did take the Impact of Fox's favorable reference quite
seriously. Fox himself was otherwise ignorant of economics. John
Rae, Adam Smith (London: 1895), 289. Homer Vanderblue, Adam Smith
and the Wealth of Nations (Boston, 1936), 5. "It was far from refor-
mers' minds to make government stronger and more centralized. Most,
like Tom Paine and William Godwin, thought there was a surfeit of
government already and aimed to fumigate the state of its leeches."
Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1982).

-18-

20

Rae, op_. cit. , 292.

21

op. cit. , 372. Smith is said to have spoken of both Rousseau

and Voltaire "with a kind of religious respect."

22

Beattie's letter is in the Huntington Library, California. For

Smith's continuing serviceability to radical causes see W. Stafford,

Socialism, Radicalism and Nostalgia (Cambridge; C.U.P. 1987) and N. W.

Thompson, The People's Science (Cambridge; C.U.P. , 1984). Michael

Perelman has gathered together a fair amount of evidence showing how

resentful Smith was at having to be beholden to his social superiors.

"Adam Smith and Social Relations," presented at the History of

Economics Society meetings (Boston 1987). He has also noted Smith's

radicalism was more petit bourgeois than working-class.

?3

W. J. Ashley, "The Tory Origin of Free Trade Policy," Quarterly

Journal of Economics (July 1897). Ashley's views are repeated by

E. R. A. Seligman in his Introduction to The Wealth of Nations (New

York, 1910). P. Langford, The Excise Crisis (Oxford: 1975); C.

Robbins , The Eighteenth Century Common Wealth Man (Harvard: 1959);

M. L. Myers, The Soul of Modern Economic Man (Chicago: 1983);

J. Clarke, English Society 1660-1832 (Cambridge 1985).

24

"By the end of the [eighteenth] century there was often to be

found the combination of a thirst for knowledge with a critical and

realistic attitude to politics and religion," J. H. Plumb, "Reason and

Unreason in the Eighteenth Century," in Some Aspects of Eighteenth

Century England ed M.E. Novak (UCLA 1971), 15. It is also of interest

to note how some well-known industrialists, such as William Strutt,

were strong radicals. Margaret C. Jacob, "Scientific Culture in the

Early English Enlightenment: Mechanisms, Industry and Gentlemanly

Facts," in A. C. Kors and P. Korshin, eds., Anticipations of the

Enlightenment in England, France and Germany (Univ. of Penn.,

Philadelphia, 1987), 134-164.

25

As quoted by D. H., MacGregor, Economic Thought and Policy

(Oxford 1949), 70.

?6

L. Rogin, The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory (London

1950), xiii. This point of view has also been upheld by many scholars

in dealing with social philosophies, e.g., M. Cowling, "The Use of

Political Philosophy in Mill, Green and Bentham," Historical Studies,

5, (London 1965), 141-152.

27

The treatment of Banking is the only exception I can think of.

Perhaps the Scottish banking problems of the early 1760' s are respon-
sible for Smith's caution on this issue.
Lectures , op. cit. , 535 and 540.

28

R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, Adam Smith (New York: St.

Martins, 1982).

-19-

29

The example of John Millar serves to strengthen one part and

weaken another part of the thesis of this paper. Millar's reaction to
the program of free trade in the Wealth of Nations clearly shows that
he found Smith's espousal of this program to be a novelty.

"... notwithstanding all the pains he has taken, there are many
of his positions which 1 find great difficulty in admitting — and some-
where 1 am not sure in what latitude he means to establish them. In
particular, his great leading opinion concerning the unbounded freedom
of trade. I have but a vague notion how far it is true, or how far he
meant to say it ought to be carried." As quoted by T. Hutchison,
Before Adam Smith (London, 1988), 412.

On the other hand, Millar himself was the strongest advocate of
liberal politics in the Scottish Enlightenment.

D/432

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