Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XIV

THE IMPERIALISM OF ADAM SMITH

§ 1. The "Shopkeeper" Idea of Empire Criticised. "To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens to found and maintain such an empire. Say to a shopkeeper, Buy me a good estate and I shall always buy my clothes at your shop even though I should pay somewhat dearer than what I can have them for at other shops, and you will not find him very forward to embrace your proposal. But should any other person buy you such an estate the shopkeeper will be much obliged to your benefactor if he would enjoin you to buy all your clothes at his shop. England purchased for some of her subjects who found themselves uneasy at home a great estate in a distant country. . The cultivators became in

[ocr errors]

little more than thirty or forty years so numerous and thriving a people that the shopkeepers and other traders of England wished to secure for themselves the monopoly of their custom. Without pretending, therefore, that they had paid any part either of the original purchase money or of the subsequent expense of improvement they petitioned the parliament that the cultivators of America might for the future be confined to their shop; first for buying all the goods which they wanted from Europe; and secondly for selling all such parts of their own produce as those traders might find it convenient to buy. For they did not find it convenient to buy every part of it. Some parts of it imported into England might have interfered with some of the trades which they themselves carried on at home. Those particular parts of it, therefore, they were willing that the colonists should sell where they could; the farther off the better; and upon that account proposed that their market should be confined to the countries south of Cape Finisterre. A clause in the famous Act of Navigation established this truly shopkeeper proposal into law."1

This shopkeeper policy, considered as the basis of imperial union, is condemned by Adam Smith first of all on economic grounds as adverse to the interests of the home country. The only people who benefit (i.e. from the monopoly) are the mercantile classes who trade with the colonies, the "shopkeepers who make the colonist buy and sell at their

1 Book IV. chap. vii.

[ocr errors]

"shops," and the gain of the particular traders is not transferred to the whole body of the people, but indirectly is adverse to national interests by diverting capital from more advantageous employments. The colonial trade artificially fostered is less advantageous than the foreign trade developed under natural conditions.

§ 2. The Ideal of Empire not purely Economic.

In looking at the relations of the mother country to the colonies, from the point of view of empire, Adam Smith also first of all takes up the economic standpoint. From this point of view the adoption of the Greek ideal of colonisation might eventually turn out the best. If the independence of the colonies were allowed "Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishment of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade more advantageous to the great body of the people, though less so to the merchants, than the monopoly which she at present enjoys. By thus parting good friends the natural affection of the colonies to the mother country which, perhaps, our late dissensions have well-nigh extinguished, would quickly revive. might dispose them not only to respect for whole centuries together that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in war as well as in trade, and instead of turbulent and factious subjects to become our most faithful,

It

affectionate, and generous allies; and the same sort of parental affection on the one side and filial respect on the other might revive between Great Britain and her colonies which used to subsist between those of ancient Greece and the cities from which they descended."

In spite, however, of its economic advantages, Adam Smith rejected this scheme of friendly separation as fantastical, and opposed to the fundamental notions of territorial sovereignty. But the actual separation of the greatest of the colonies took place as the result of war and without any provision for free trade; indeed, one of the first ideals impressed on the new republic was that as a nation it must learn to be self-contained, must learn to manufacture and build great cities and not be content to remain a mere agricultural state, even if that were the shortest way to national wealth. This is the great argument of Alexander Hamilton, whose personality, achievements, and ideals have been restored to their proper place and setting in the world's history in the brilliant biography by Mr. F. S. Oliver.

And yet in spite of the dislocation by war in its origin, and of a speedy renewal of war when the republic sided with Napoleon against the mother country, in spite of the divergence of commercial interests and policies and of the more important division of opinion at the time of the great civil war, it is not too much to say that after nearly a century and a half of independence the people of the United States of America have much of the natural affection

so well depicted by Adam Smith for the country of their origin.

And as regards the other colonies, which by the force of circumstances as well as by the fear of example, we have gradually admitted to self-government in all essentials, there can be no question that though only nominal subjects in peace they would be devoted allies in war. And for this purpose even the nominal sovereignty has its advantages, although in the meantime the home country bears a disproportionate part of the burden of defence and in return has not even freedom of trade.

§ 3. Ideal of British Empire in Development of British Constitution.

Adam Smith himself, however, did not look upon empire merely from the economic standpoint even when his subject was emphatically the wealth of nations. Writing before the separation was an accomplished fact, and before it seemed likely that it ever would be an accomplished fact, he propounded a scheme of imperial federation which he described as the natural development of the British Constitution. In place of the Greek ideal of friendly disintegration he set up the ideal of Roman organisation with one essential difference; the provision, namely, for the representation of the provinces. It was the absence of this principle of representation which on Adam Smith's view ruined the Roman Empire, and it was in the adoption of this principle that he sought for the nexus that should bind into one the different

« AnteriorContinuar »