Smith’s Dreams: Economic and Political Liberties in a Good Polity

jurisprudence good government economic rights economic liberties government structure

October 15, 2024

Silvestri & Walraevens offer commentary on Adam Smith's "Great Dream of Good Government" using both Lectures on Jurisprudence, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and The Wealth of Nations.

Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency upon their superiors. This, though it has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all their effects. (WN, III.iv.4: 412)

Here is a happy mixture of all the different forms of government properly restrained and a perfect security to liberty and property. (LJ(B), 63: 421–422)

The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. […] He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy as well as he can, the inconveniences which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear. (TMS, VI.ii.2.16: 233)

Prologue: Dreaming of Good Government

The first quotation placed in the epigraph can be seen as the prose transcription of a historical concretization, albeit imperfect, of the Great Dream of Good Government. That dream, pursued by the tradition of Western political-legal thought, peeped into Adam Smith’s mind just as modernity was awakening to new life. At the dawn of modern commercial society, which he had studied so much in its various legal, economic, and moral aspects, he had a kind of epiphany: a vision of the end of that “continual state of war” and the beginning of a new order without the sword of Leviathan; a vision of the concrete possibility of a new social order that was not only political, but also economic and political at the same time; a vision of an unprecedented nexus between economic and political liberties; a vision of the greatest paradigm shift ever achieved in the social sciences: a demonstration of the possibility that the new market society could contribute to a new, peaceful, and prosperous social order, i.e. to a new good society.

But what exactly had Adam Smith seen in that dream, revelation, or epiphany? That quotation, or rather, every single word of it, should be read very carefully. Smith himself writes and rewrites it three times, like a refrain, in Book III of WN.

This article can be seen as a commentary on that ‘crucial passage’ of Adam Smith. Moreover, we will try to show the important connections between that refrain and the second and third quotations in the epigraph, focusing on the nature of the always problematic nexus between economic and political liberties.

To explain the content and relevance of Smith’s dream, let us take a step back.

1. Rediscovering ‘good government’

In a previous paper (Silvestri and Walraevens 2023), we started interrogating the father of Political Economy with a series of questions, only seemingly trivial: what does Smith mean by “good government”? How, when, and why does it appear in his works? How is this concept related to his Political Economy and “system of natural liberty”? These questions seemed fundamental to us, not only because the concept of “good government” often recurs, and with various nuances and meanings, in Smith’s thought, but especially because it is a key concept of Western philosophical, political and legal thought, if only because it has long coincided with the (never-ending) search for the good polity, good society or best constitution, where ‘constitution’ classically means the ‘body politic’ or ‘social structure’. This is the reason why mixed government classically stands for ‘mixed constitution’ as the ideal model of good polity, that is between the ‘one’ (i.e. ‘monarchy’) and the ‘many’ (‘republic’ or ‘democracy’).

Much to our surprise, the issue of good government in Smith had been notably neglected by many Smith scholars, or, at best, recalled only en passant but without any particular insights as to its fundamental relevance in Smith’s reflection and works.

For example, some scholars have maintained that Book III of the WN is the “locus classicus of the theme of commerce and liberty” (Forbes 1975: 193), or that the whole WN could be “described as an extended treatise on the reciprocal relationship between commerce and liberty” (Winch 1978: 70, but see also Hont 2005: 453–88). Nevertheless, in that book, Smith keeps repeating his refrain: “commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals …”. That is why we have argued that a more accurate way to define Book III would be: “the locus classicus of the theme of commerce, good government, and liberty.”

This is also why we believe that there is more than just a grain of truth in Dennis Rasmussen’s thesis (2017: 162) that that passage is not only the “climatic claim” of Book III, but “the single most important passage in The Wealth of Nations”. However, Rasmussen interprets it as Smith’s fundamental defence of commercial society and provides an interpretation of “good government” limited to only one of its possible meanings, namely “rule of law” (2017: 163, 164).

To better understand what is at stake, let’s have a look at the following outline.

In the above outline we have summarized both the various meanings of good government in the Western tradition and Smith’s twofold masterstroke. On the one hand, he rediscovers and renews the ancient ideal of good government as a mixed constitution, which he conceives as capable of holding together the first two specific meanings of good government. On the other hand, he profoundly, and irrevocably, alters the third specific meaning of good government through his reflection on Political economy as a (new) “science of Legislator”.

We have shown that, in Smith’s thought, the idea of good government:

1) emerges and develops in the course of the reflection that will lead him from the LJ to the WN and against the background of the fruits of the TMS regarding the “mediating” function of the middling ranks in society and in the public sphere. In turn, the reflections developed in the WN will have a significant influence on the subsequent rewritings of the TMS;

2) has a synthetic character: it holds the different aspects – moral, legal, political, economic – of his thought together;

3) embodies both a descriptive and prescriptive idea for the social order;

4) is strictly connected to both his idea of Political Economy as “the science of Legislator” and the ideal and perfect system of liberty, equality and justice.

By rediscovering good government in Smith’s work, we have tried to point to possible new avenues of research. It now seems to us necessary to interrogate the father of political economy again with reference to another topos of modernity of which he may well be considered the initiator: the relationship between economic and political liberties in a good government.

2. “Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals”

The presence of the first specific meaning of good government – government of laws – in Smith’s thought is unsurprising, since the idea of the rule of law is rooted in the common law tradition. In the LJ, the liberties that the English have conquered thanks to the institutions and customs of the Common Law are re-traced in a historical key (LJ(B), 61-75: 420-426; LJ (A), IV.167-V.45: 265-288).

Though referring specifically to the English government, Smith makes an important reference to the “mixed government”: “here is a happy mixture of all the different forms of government properly restrained and a perfect security to liberty and property” (LJ(B), 63: 421-2). Smith praised (British) mixed government certainly because it takes the best of the two main forms of government: monarchies and republics (the latter including aristocracies and democracies) (LJ(B), 19: 404). It allies the two principles of “allegiance” or “obedience” to the government: the principle of “authority”, which prevails in the former, with the principle of “common or generall interest”, or “utility”, which prevails in the latter (LJ(A), v.120: 318; vi.132: 322; LJ(B), 14: 402). And these principles are generally endorsed by different kinds of people and characters (LJ(A), v.125: 320).

Then Smith explains that “there are still some other securities to liberty”, dependent on additional “established custom”: the lifetime appointment of judges, making them independent from the king, the possibility for the House of Commons to subject the king’s ministers to impeachment, Habeas Corpus, and the institution of the Courts of Justice (LJ(B), 64: 422; LJ(A), v.5-8: 271-3). In the LJ, Smith provides a conjectural history of the emergence and development of “regular” government and its different powers with the progress of society and the growth of economic activities, and he links this progress of government with the rise of modern liberty. For him “the security and independency of each individual”, supported by the magistrates, “can not be attained without a regular government” (LJ(A), v.121: 318) which was unmet in the first ages of society. Smith claims that “a judge is now […] the source of our liberty, our independence, and our security.” (LJ(A), v.109: 313) This is due to the fact that “the magistrate” should act “in the character of an impartial spectator” (LJ(A), ii.90: 104). In order to avoid or at least to limit the arbitrariness and partiality of his decisions and power, the legislative power was instituted (LJ(A), v.112: 314-5). That is why Smith thinks that laws “extend and secure” liberty rather than being a “restraint upon liberty” (LJ(A), v.111: 314). Together with the separation and independence of powers, the presence of counter-powers and the frequency of elections (LJ(A), v.5-11: 271-4), the impartial administration of justice is responsible for the prevalence of liberty (the security and independence of individuals) in Great Britain, and constitutes the main source of its prosperity, as is made clear in the WN.

Smith has also confronted the theme of commerce at different points in his LJ, but without giving them that organic synthesis present in Book III of the WN, and without a direct link with the emergence-expansion of the middling ranks (see below, and sec. 3.2).

Now, the main object of Book III of WN is the “the great commerce of every civilized society” or “that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country” (WN, III.i.1: 376). Smith retraces the history of Europe through a learned weaving of economic, social, legal, and political factors. He tries to grasp both the existing connections between the distribution of property (especially land) and the relationships of power and equilibrium between different social classes at the legal and political level.

Smith notes that “how servile soever may have been originally the condition of the inhabitants of the towns”, thanks to the protection and privileges conceded by princes and king, “they arrived at liberty and independency much earlier than the occupiers of land in the country” (WN, III.iii.3: 399). Through these concessions and privileges the free towns, corporations, and citizens’ institutions were born with their own magistrates, a form of self-government, and a defence militia.

The emergence of these institutions, and of what Smith calls “independent republics”, was the unintentional result of the evolution of the equilibriums and of the power relationships between the king, lords, and townspeople. Even though they did it only for reasons of opportunism and self-interest, the king and townspeople aligned against the lords, thus favouring the emergence of modern parliaments (WN, III.iii.8: 402). The “burghers” slowly installed themselves in the assembly of the general states, and their deputies were sometimes used by the king “as a counterbalance in those assemblies to the authority of the great lords. Hence the origin of the representation of burghs in the states-general of all the great monarchies in Europe” (ibid.).

Order and good government, and along with them the liberty and security of individuals, were, in this manner, established in cities at a time when the occupiers of land in the country were exposed to every sort of violence. But men in this defenceless state naturally content themselves with their necessary subsistence, because to acquire more might only tempt the injustice of their oppressors. On the contrary, when they are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition, and to acquire not only the necessaries, but the conveniences and elegancies of life. (WN, III.iii.12: 405, italics added)

In turn, the development and prosperity of the commercial and manufacturing cities contributed to the progress of the countryside in several ways. Following David Hume, Smith underlines that the emergence of good government and liberty is “the least observed”, but “by far the most important of all” the effects of the development of commerce.

Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency upon their superiors. (WN, III.iv.4: 412).

For Hume the development of commerce and, with it, the emergence of the middle ranks, interrupts the process of polarisation of society into two classes – the landlords and the renters – that continuously feeds the tyranny of the former and the servitude of the latter.

Where luxury nourishes commerce and industry, the peasant, by a proper cultivation of the land can become rich and independent; while the tradesman and merchants acquire a share of the property, and draw authority and consideration to that middling rank of man, who are the best and firmest basis of public liberty (Hume 1963: 284).

While Hume’s originality consisted in giving a “political meaning” (Winch 1978: 101) to the middling ranks, in turn, the novelty of Smith lies in the fact that he “constructs a whole model of society” around them (Pesciarelli 1988: 177n). Through their emergence, Smith sees not just the ideal of mixed government, or “free government”, but also the emergence of a good polity, which is not only the product of a spontaneous order but is something to pursue through the legislator’s sound and prudent management.

Here comes the third meaning of good government, the “art of governing well”, that Smith develops in the WN and in TMS 1790 edition. Smith’s re-thinking of the theme of good government is founded on his theorisation of Political Economy as the new science of the legislator, and on his elaboration of the “system of natural liberty”, which serves as an ideal benchmark that wise legislators should try to reach as much as possible, while pragmatically accommodating the “prejudices” of the people and their private interests (see our 3rd quotation in epigraph).

3. Good government, ‘liberty’ and the nexus between economic and political liberties

In the above passages, we have seen how Smith often associates ‘liberty’ with ‘independence,’ ‘security,’ and ‘property,’ as if they were ‘synonyms’ or variations on the same theme of ‘liberty.’ We will now try to better clarify the meaning of these ‘dyads’ or ‘triads’ of liberty and their relationship to economic and political liberties.

Many scholars have noted the presence of polysemous and diverse notions of ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ in Smith’s work. Complicating the picture is the fact that Smith does not provide a definition of these key terms. However, one can imagine that Smith was using the words ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ in their common meaning, and thus was speaking to an audience that understood and shared the meaning, as when, in his description of the process leading to the emergence of the bourgeoisie and then to good government, he concludes that “the principal attributes of villanage and slavery being thus taken away from them [the burghers], they now, at least, became really free in our present sense of the word Freedom” (WN, III. iii.5: 400, italics added). Some have glimpsed in this expression Smith’s awareness that the meaning of the word freedom was contingent, and therefore should not be formalized in a definition (Sagar 2022). However, many have seen in Smith’s various reflections on ‘slavery’ as opposed to freedom as non-dependence a clear residue of republicanism (Elazar 2022, Aguiar 2010, Casassas 2013). Others have insisted more on the presence in Smith of the well-known conceptions of negative freedom as non-interference, especially in the WN, and of positive freedom as self-mastery, especially in the TMS (Harpham 2000, but more generally see Schmidtz 2016). Let us try to shed some light on this problematic interweaving of meanings and on their relation with the Smithian vision of good government.

3.1. Economic rights and, therefore, (negative) liberties

First, the word ‘liberty’ has, in Smith, a more general meaning and use: it is “natural liberty,” understood in the philosophical-legal sense of ‘natural right,’ and as the right for people to “manage their own affairs their own way” (WN, IV.vii.b.16: 572).

Linked to it is the aforementioned “system of natural liberty.” The political economy of good government indicates to the (good) legislator the (good) reasons for not interfering with the activities of men. It is precisely with reference to this “system of natural liberty” that many have seen in Smith a predominantly negative conception of liberty (Harpham 2000).

These are the kinds of economic liberties that can be traced primarily to property rights and freedom of contract or exchange (in this regard, note that the word ‘freedom’ in Smithian discourse almost always appears associated with ‘trade,’ in the sense of “freedom of trade”). This is easily seen in a famous passage from Smith, in which the justification of these economic liberties takes an almost Lockean tone, resorting to a right-based justification:

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman, and of those who might be disposed to employ him (WN IV.vii.b.44: 582).

We can now begin to understand what Smith means by “security” and why he often associates it with liberty. Smith of course has in mind the preservation and protection of people’s physical integrity, the protection of their person and reputation, but also and more importantly the protection of their property and the respect of contracts, i.e. the respect of their (perfect) rights, guaranteed by the laws of justice (which should implement the standards of the impartial spectator):

The first and chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice; to prevent the members of a society from incroaching on one anothers property, or siezing what is not their own. The design here is to give each one the secure and peacable possession of his own property (LJ(A), i.1: 5).

For Smith, the violation of life, property and contracts is a violation of “the most sacred laws of justice” (TMS, II.ii.2.2: 84). So, liberty and security are founded on justice.

However, most of the time, Smith also provides a consequentialist justification of economic liberties: that is, they are important so that each person can “enjoy the fruits of its own labor” (I.xi.n.1: 256), and, by this, foster economic growth and benefit all of society.

It is precisely in this regard that we often find the inseparable dyad of ‘freedom-security’ in Smith. As he points out at the end of the first refrain on good government: “..[when] men are secure of enjoying the fruits of their industry, they naturally exert it to better their condition ...”. For Smith, this psychological sense of security, and therefore of liberty, is possible only under “good government,” which, “by securing every man the fruits of his own industry, gives the greatest and most effectual encouragement to every sort of industry” (WN, IV.vii.c.54: 610).

All this allows us to clear the field of some ambiguities about the meaning of economic liberty for Smith. Recall what has already been noted in the LJ: laws “extend and secure” liberty rather than being a “restraint upon liberty.” Some Smith scholars who have sought to rediscover in his thought the presence of republican liberty as non-domination (see Elazar 2022) have criticized readings more focused on the presence of negative liberty (Harpham 2000), and this is because such negative liberty is identified, for proponents of republican thought, with liberty as understood by Hobbes: the freedom of the subject lies in the silence of the law. This reasoning ends up equating ‘non-interference’ with the absence of law. However, as we have seen, this is not the case with Smith. So, the meaning of economic liberties in Smith can be summarized and better specified in the following formula: Economic rights and, therefore, (negative) liberties.

3.2. Independence and political liberties

We can now try to read together another Smithian reflection on the causes as well as the effects of good government and his important concluding remarks from Book III of WN, in order to better understand the Smithian connection between liberty as independence and political liberty.

It is important to remember that Smith’s focus is on the balancing of different powers and social classes, and how this led to the emergence of a mixed government and, in the end, of a good polity.

[Although the introduction of feudal law tends to strengthen] the authority of the king, and to weaken that of the great proprietors, it could not do either sufficiently for establishing order and good government among the inhabitants of the country, because it could not alter sufficiently that state of property and manners from which the disorders arose. (WN, III.iv.9: 417, italics added)

It was commerce and manufactures, introducing luxury, that pushed the lords and barons to embark on increasingly lavish expenditures, until they had to get rid of their tenants and retainers.

Commercial society makes greater liberty as independence possible thanks to the fragmentation of power, and, in turn, opens a hitherto unexplored avenue of a possible (and for Smith necessary) separation and limitation of economic and political power. Important, in this regard, is the following statement: “Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power” (WN, I.v.3: 48). With the development of commerce and the corresponding expansion of markets and the increase in the division of labor, the number of people who are free and independent increases. (WN, III.iv.12: 420)

The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice or of disturbing the peace of the country. […] Having sold their birthright, […] for trinkets and baubles, […] they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city. A regular government was established in the country as well as in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in the one any more than in the other. (WN, III.iv.15: 421, italics added)

Smith concludes his story of the emergence of good government by claiming that this was a “revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness” (WN, III.iv.17: 422).

In this epilogue, Smith summarizes what he glimpsed as a possible new good polity. This is because the ideal of mixed government/regular government is able to hold together the first two meanings of good government. Indeed, since the concentration of property is limited, and along with it the (economic and political) power of landowners, the mixed government is also a government of laws, not of men. In other words, it is not only the chances for interference with the “regular execution of justice” that are reduced, but also, through the balancing and control of different powers, the attempts by these powers to place themselves above the law which are limited.

Smith’s view of (modern) liberty is thus inseparable from considerations about “independence” in both the economic and the political sphere. From feudal to commercial society, humanity went from serfdom to freedom, and from “servile dependency” to economic independency for the majority of people. With the progress of the division of labour and the development of the impersonal market order, social cooperation for the satisfaction of needs is now based on mutual interdependence and merchants are not (personally) dependent upon any single customer. Persuasion and exchange replace domination and violence. Freedom (to trade, to invest, and to use our work as we see fit) takes the place of servility and corruption. In a context of economic growth and rising living standards, favored by good government and wise legislators trying to implement the system of natural liberty, which benefit the lowest ranks of society, (factory and agricultural) workers can, through their industry and frugality or “prudence”, improve their lot, accumulate some capital, and become their own “master”, or at least reduce their dependence towards their employer. Hence Smith’s praise of “independent” workers (see WN, I.viii.48: 101), but also his admiration for the life and pleasures of country gentlemen or landlords who enjoy “tranquillity of mind” (an essential component of happiness) and “independency” (WN, III.i.3: 378).

Again, and in conclusion, all this allows us to clear the field of some ambiguities about the meaning of ‘independence’ and ‘political liberty’ for Smith, and about the alleged influence of republicanism on his thought.

For sure the theme of good government as mixed constitution has been the subject of republican thought, but it is certainly not its invention or exclusive property. Moreover, what we have seen shows that Smith was predominantly more interested in new economic rights-freedoms than in political liberty. Such political liberty had for him more the sense of a freedom from political power, at least in the sense of limiting and dividing it as much as possible. Certainly, the middle class was making its entry into the modern parliament for the first time in history, but we are far from finding in Smith a conception of political liberty as active “participation” of citizens for the common good, typical of republicanism or civic humanism.

Above all, as we have seen, for Smith the mixed government is a “happy mixture” not only insofar as it mediates between the one and the many, but insofar as “it allies the two principles of ‘allegiance’ or ‘obedience’ to the government”, that is, “utility” and “authority”. The emergence of the commercial society was a happy epiphany in that it downsized authority-based power (and the violence and coercion of the dark ages of feudalism) in favor of utility-based power, which was closer to the way of thinking of the emergent middling ranks.

Here is another important piece of the Smithian vision of good government. As noted by Istvan Hont (2005), Smith’s reflection on the emergence of mixed government was an attempt to offer an alternative to John Locke’s normative political theory and his “account of how commerce corrupted politics to such a degree that the damage could be repaired only by revolution”. This claim has always been bread and butter of any form of republicanism. But Smith replied that commerce does not necessarily and not always corrupts.

However, Smith was certainly not a utopian or idealist, and had already seen how the new commercial society was certainly not infallible, immaculate or sinless, and how the “system of natural liberty” aimed at an ideal was always difficult to achieve, and that the promise of that good government “revolution” – a “revolution of the greatest importance to the public happiness” – is undermined by the resurgence of new private interests against the common good.

In this regard, Smith highlighted the crucial need to maintain the independence of political powers from economic powers. In the WN, Smith launched a powerful critique of the “mercantile system”, which is characterized by the proximity and collusion between politicians and the rising bourgeoisie, the latter getting help and undue privileges from the former through persuasion and deception, by making them believe that the interest of capital owners or business class is always aligned with public interest. Smith thus denounces the corruption of legislators and statesmen by economic powers, or what we call today “crony capitalism”, while pointing out to us the solution with his thoughts on good government (in the 3rd meaning we have identified), and especially on the need for wise, good, pragmatic, uncorrupted, impartial legislators, independent of economic powers.

However, even this solution cannot work forever. Smith knew that we need good and wise legislators and rulers as much as we need good citizens (hence the importance of education), but he also knew that both will never be enough because perfection is not of this world, and nothing lasts forever: ‘corruption’ or ‘degeneration’ (even of what is ‘good’) is inherent in human nature and, therefore, also in its social and institutional dimensions.

Epilogue

So, what had Smith seen in that dream of good government that no one had ever seen before? That the new commercial society held in its womb so many beautiful promises: that men could now live in a new type of good society, freed from “violence”, peaceful and prosperous; that men could be freed from all forms of “servile dependency” and gain independent living status – as smallholders, artisans or self-employed workers – with the possibility of realizing new life projects, thanks to the new economic rights-liberties; that there had been a virtuous circle between such economic rights-liberties, rule of law, independence and separation of powers and political liberties, and that this had been a great “revolution”. But he had also seen that the relationship between the new economic liberties and the regained political liberties was merely contingent, namely that it was a great stroke of luck that befell few countries in the world, and not easily replicable in other times and places.

And perhaps, he also understood, that the ability to give credence to and keep such promises alive is entrusted to and depends on us alone.

References

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