Francis W. Hirst

“ The impartial spectator becomes more and more our ideal man, and we come to pay more homage to his still small voice than to the judgment of the world. The pangs of conscience are far more terrible than the condemnation of the market-place. Praiseworthiness comes to be better than praise; blameworthiness comes to be worse than blame. The true hell is the hell within the breast; the worst tortures are those that follow the sentence of the impartial spectator. One feature in the phenomena of sympathy, which Smith points out, perhaps constitutes a weak point in his theory. ”

“ The poverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the poverty of the country: public prosperity could be restored only by the restoration of private prosperity; and private prosperity could be restored only by years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine that there was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived, at once extricate himself from his financial difficulties by the simple process of calling a farthing a shilling. ”

“ With a wonderful knowledge of history, law, philosophy, and letters, he combined an intuitive insight into the motives of men and the unseen mechanism of society. At the same time, by restricting his horizon to wealth and its phenomena, he was able to see how men always had acted and always would act under certain circumstances, and by what rules public finance should be governed. This is the secret of his success in making political economy queen of the useful arts, and in raising her alone among political studies to the dignity of a science. ”

“ The country which accepts the policy of budget deficits is treading the slippery path which leads to general ruin; to escape from that path no sacrifice is too great. It is therefore imperative that every government should, as the first social and financial reform, on which all others depend:
(a) Restrict its ordinary recurrent expenditure, including the service of the debt, to such an amount as can be covered by its ordinary revenue.
(b) Rigidly reduce all expenditure on armaments in so far as such reduction is compatible with the preservation of national security. ”

“ The author seeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions; and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and shewing that those are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth, one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared. The illustrations are numerous and happy, and shew the author to be a man of 50 uncommon observation. His language is easy and spirited, and puts things before you in the fullest light; it is rather painting than writing. ”

“ But though reason led him by every road to a complete system of liberty as the true end of commercial policy, he despaired of its adoption. “To expect indeed that freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.” Even if public prejudice were overcome, the resistance of private interests would be unconquerable. ”

“ Smith built his theory of industrial and commercial life upon the assumption that wage-earners and profit-makers are generally actuated by the desire to get as high wages and profits as possible. If this is not the general and predominant motive in one great sphere of activity, the production and distribution of wealth, the Wealth of Nations is a vain feat of the imagination, and political economy is not a dismal science but a dismal fiction. ”

“ Hume would explain all virtues by their usefulness to oneself or society. But Smith only regards utility as a powerful additional reason for approving virtue and virtuous actions. It influences our ideas of virtue, as custom and fashion influence our ideas of beauty. Usefulness is seldom the first ground of approval, and “it seems impossible that we should have no other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers.” ”

“ When a man consumes more than he gains by his industry, he must impoverish himself unless he has some other way of subsistence. In the same manner, if a nation consume more than it produces, poverty is inevitable; if its annual produce be ninety millions and its annual consumption an hundred, then it spends, eats and drinks, tears, wears, ten millions more than it produces, and its stock of opulence must gradually go to nothing. ”

“ The goods which the English merchants want to import from France are certainly more valuable to them than what they give for them. Our very desire to purchase them shows that we have more use for them than either the money or the commodities which we give for them. It may be said, indeed, that money lasts for ever, but that claret and cambrics are soon consumed. This is true. But what is the intention of industry if it be not to produce those things which are capable of being used, and are conducive to the convenience and comfort of human life? ”

“ This criticism has been adopted by Mr. Farrer in his luminous account of Smith’s moral philosophy, and its justice may be conceded. With all its faults, the Theory of Moral Sentiments is still one of the most instructive and entertaining of all our English treatises on ethics. There is plenty of warmth and colour. The argument is never bare; you follow its thread through a wondrous maze, till your perplexities are solved, and you finally congratulate yourself as well as the author on having rejected all the errors and collected all the wisdom of the ages. ”

“ His gifts might have remained idle, his talents buried, had not the warm and sympathetic atmosphere of a full, eager, and admiring class-room set his tongue and his more reluctant pen in motion. We need not brood over the might-not-have-beens; but when we think of the power that fortune exercises over men’s lives, we may thank her for assigning Adam Smith at this critical moment to the town and University of Glasgow. By that propitious act she lent powerful aid to the construction of a science that must ever be associated with the prosperity and peaceful progress of mankind. ”

“ While the poor grew poorer, administration worse, taxes more oppressive, that thick cloud of conventional darkness which had so long shrouded misgovernment was dispersing, irradiated by the fierce glare of an intellectual illumination such as the world had never seen before. Already the mind of France was undimmed. Voltaire’s search-light had shown the nakedness of Church and State. Diderot’s great lamp was fixed; Rousseau waved his fiery torch, beaconing oppressed civilisation back to the freedom of its cradle. Quesnai was at his patient calculations in the Royal Palace. ”

“ Another advantage of the land-tax over taxes on consumption was that it did not raise prices; and it was better than a tax on capital or income (“stock or money”) , in that, land being visible property, the sum required could be assessed without very arbitrary proceedings. “It is a hardship upon a man in trade to oblige him to show his books, which is the only way we can know how much he is worth. It is a breach of liberty, and may be productive of very bad consequences by ruining his credit.” Yet Smith was far from being a single taxer. ”

“ Is it not evident that the individual himself, though he may make mistakes, can judge best how and where to employ his own labour or capital? The statesman or lawgiver who attempted to direct private people how to manage their business and spend their money would not only be overloaded with work, but would be assuming an authority “which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever.” From this consideration we pass almost insensibly into the argument from the division of labour. ”

“ Our natural sentiments are often shocked. We see great combinations oppress small. We see the innocent suffer. Despairing of earthly forces to check the triumph of injustice, we naturally appeal to heaven, “and thus we are led to a belief in the future state by the love of virtue,” and moral rules acquire new sanctity by being regarded as the laws of an all-powerful Deity. As religion in this way enforces an innate sense of duty, mankind is generally disposed to place great confidence in the probity of those who seem to be deeply religious. ”

“ In short, imports are just as advantageous as exports, and one is the necessary complement of the other. All jealousies and wars between nations are extremely bad for commerce. If preferential trade is to be established at all, it should be with France, a much richer and more populous country than Spain, and also our nearest neighbour. “It were happy both for this country and France that all national prejudices were rooted out and a free and uninterrupted commerce established.” Foreign trade, if wisely and prudently carried on, can never impoverish a country. ”

“ Holding these views, it is not surprising that Smith welcomed an escape from this chair to one which proposed as its object an inquiry of a very different nature: wherein consists the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind. Here was a stepping-stone to the Wealth of Nations. ”

“ Of modern philosophers, those to whom Smith is most indebted are certainly Mandeville, his old master Hutcheson, and his friend Hume, “an ingenious and agreeable philosopher who joins the greatest depth of 63 thought to the greatest elegance of expression, and possesses the singular and happy talent of treating the abstrusest subjects not only with the most perfect perspicuity, but with the most lively eloquence.” ”

“ Looking now only at the lectures, we find that of the hundred pages into which this first discourse on the Wealth of Nations falls, eighty, or four-fifths, are concerned with “cheapness or plenty,” in other words, with “the most proper way of procuring wealth or abundance.” Cheapness is synonymous with plenty, as dearness is synonymous with dearth. Water is only cheap because it is plentiful, diamonds are costly only because they are scarce. If we wish to find wherein opulence consists, we must first consider what are the natural wants of mankind which are to be supplied ”

“ Reason reigned; and as reason seldom wears an air of originality, we need not wonder if later ingenuity has discovered that all these philosophers borrowed their doctrines either from the ancients or from one another or from foreigners.
But though there appears to be just now a tendency to carry the search for the genealogy and pedigree of ideas rather too far, it is certainly not our purpose to show that Adam Smith was a solitary conqueror who founded a kingdom entirely for himself, and peopled it with the creatures of his imagination. ”

“ The last age has put the present in a condition to assemble into one body and to transmit to posterity, to be by them delivered down to remoter ages, the sacred repository of all the arts and all the sciences, all of them pushed as far as human industry can go. ”

“ How, then, does Adam Smith account for the growth of moral sentiments in the man, and for the progress of morality in mankind? He holds that what we call conscience, or the sense of duty, arises from a certain reflex action of sympathy. We apply to ourselves the moral judgments we have learned to pass on others. We imagine what they will say and think about our own thoughts and words and actions. We try to look at ourselves with the impartial eyes of other people, and seek to anticipate that judgment which they are likely to pass upon us. ”

“ He leans strongly against the policy, partly because he is unwilling to trust “that insidious and crafty animal vulgarly called a statesman” to use such a weapon wisely; partly because you rarely benefit the sufferers and always injure other classes of your own citizens, than those whom you are trying to assist.
The second case of doubt was merely one of expediency—whether free trade should be introduced quickly or slowly. “In what manner the natural system of perfect liberty and justice ought gradually to be restored” Smith left to the wisdom of future statesmen and legislators to determine. ”

“ Admirable as were the best stoics and epicureans and those Roman writers who, like Cicero and Seneca, direct us to the imperfect but attainable virtues, they quite misunderstood nature. “By nature, the events which immediately affect that little department in which we ourselves have some little management and direction, which immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our country, are the events which interest us the most and which chiefly excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows.” ”

“ Smith’s own scepticism is so carefully phrased and so disguised in soft language, that a stupid reader is never perplexed, a devout one never offended. Take, for example, his reflections upon the doctrine of a future life. That there is a world to come, he says in a passage of striking eloquence, “is a doctrine in every respect so venerable, so comfortable to the weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human nature, that the virtuous man, who has the misfortune to doubt of it, cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe it. ”

“ The only advantage to taxpayers of taxes on commodities is that they are paid in small sums at a time, whereas taxes on possessions are paid in large lump sums. But to the government there is the all-important fact that they are paid insensibly and are 90 not so much murmured against. “When we buy a pound of tea we do not reflect that the most part of the price is a duty paid to the government, and therefore pay it contentedly, as though it were only the natural price of the commodity. ”

“ It has been a commonplace of criticism to compare Adam Smith with Locke. He is supposed to have done for a particular branch of politics what Locke did for the whole science. But Locke’s main achievement, after all, was to find philosophic sanction for a revolution accomplished by others, and to establish in the minds of the Whig aristocracy an unlimited respect for a limited constitution. Smith was the single-handed contriver and sole author of a revolution in thought which has modified the governing policy and prodigiously increased the welfare of the whole civilised world. ”

“ By a policy of free trade, which Adam Smith said was the best means a statesman could adopt of promoting national wealth and commerce, he meant a policy that would relieve commerce and industry from all internal dues and all external duties or prohibitions. Anything that would bring other nations into line commanded his warm sympathy and support. But what he desired as a patriot was a policy of free imports irrespective of what other countries might do. The object of a national, as of an individual policy in trade, should be to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. ”