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is the best means to the production of wealth because it is right. It is the best means because it is most productive. This would not preclude the argument from purely moral grounds that natural liberty is an economic imperative because it is right. Smith's conviction of its righteousness, however, appears to have sprung very largely from his belief that it was expedient. Although he would have regarded the utilitarianism of Bentham as bizarre, yet he was practically much less removed from the logic of Benthamism than he would have been willing to admit if Bentham had been more nearly his contemporary.17

Another summary of Smith's whole economic philosophy, with just a hint of its bearing upon general social philosophy, occurs at the close of Book IV, and deserves a place in this digest:

It is thus that every system which endeavours, either, by extraordinary encouragements, to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the so

17 One might make a good deal in support of this judgment out of a passage in Smith's Lectures on Justice, etc. (Cannan), pp. 11, 13. Having remarked that in a monarchy the principle of authority prevails, but in a democracy that of utility, Smith continues: "Men in general follow these principles according to their natural dispositions. In a man of a bold, daring and bustling turn the principle of utility is predominant, and a peaceable, easy turn of mind usually is pleased with a tame submission to superiority." The objections to the suggested use of the passage are obvious enough, but on the

ciety than what would naturally go to it; or, by extraordinary restraints, to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it; is in reality subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour.

All systems, either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it

whole it is worth noting in this connection. Cf. loc. cit. for Smith's statement of the grounds of utility which "ought to make marriage perpetual;" also pp. 94 ff. on master and servant. Dugald Stewart expressed a judgment quite in the line of my conclusion. (Account of the Life, etc. [Bohn ed.], p, xxx.)

In Part I, Sec. 3, of the same lectures, entitled by the editor "How Republican Governments Were Introduced," the explanation is utilitarianism of a most frankly opportunistic

sort.

18 Cf. p. 203, above.

towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings; first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or any small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.19

At this point the sociologist may be pardoned for musing:

Of . . . . the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe.

The a-priori political philosophy which, from Plato down, imposed upon social theory one of the stupidest dei ex machina in the whole Walhalla of superstition, that inflexible monster of pedantic imagination, "sovereignty," betrays itself in this passage, and furnishes one of the

19 II, pp. 206, 207.

important clues to the fatuity of the classical economy. The vitality of Smith's fundamental morals could not save his theory until it could be delivered from the bondage of this arbitrary dogma. This is merely a more occult way of saying that inadequate analysis of the general social process set very strait bounds for extension of the positive method which Smith honestly applied so far as his doctrinal limitations would permit. A mechanical political philosophy was accomplice before the fact in a large part of the misconduct of classical economics. From one point of view modern socialism is the natural rebound, not so much from eighteenth-century economic theory, as from its stilted political preconceptions. I merely call attention in passing to this factor in the evolution of modern social theory. I hope to return to the subject in another

connection.

The metaphysical doctrine of "sovereignty" is as distinct from the literal fact of sovereigns, of various types, as the Ptolemaic theory of the universe was from the facts of astronomy. Governments actually exert a quasi-absolute power over subjects within territory which legal fictions may treat as beyond the prerogative of other governFor convenience we may call governments, or nations, if we please, "sovereigns."

ments.

We may take our own chances of escaping the confusions involved in the traditional problems of the actual location and sanctions of sovereignty; whether in the government itself, in "the state," in the people collectively, in the people individually, or in some other conceivable or inconceivable sanctuary. In any case, the politically organized groups to which a more or less fictitious sovereignty has always been ascribed carry on collective activities. These activities are costly. The expenses have to be met. There is nothing fictitious about the fiscal needs of states. At the same time, the questions of national revenue may be treated as purely technological problems, which have no more immediate reference to the larger problems of human welfare than the technology of production in the strict

sense.

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