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to the constraints presented by the ‘confirmed habits and prejudices’ of people, and to the necessity of adjusting legislation to what ‘the interest, prejudices, and temper of the times would admit of’.170Secondly, Smith makes the point that while all governments are subject to the above constraints in some degree, ‘free’ governments are likely to be particularly sensitive to public opinion. He made this point quite explicitly in the ‘Memorandum on the American War’, written in 1778, where he commented on the limited options open to a government which even ‘in times of the most profound peace, of the highest public prosperity, when the people had scarce even the pretext of a single grievance to complain of, has not always been able to make itself respected by them’.171Thirdly, Smith drew attention to the fact that the government itself was a complex instrument. In this connection he felt that the management of Parliament through the distribution of offices was ‘a necessary feature of the British mixed government’;172a point which is in turn linked to the fact that the pursuit of office was itself a ‘dazzling object of ambition’; a competitive game with as its object the attainment of ‘the great prizes which sometimes come from the wheel of the great state lottery of British politicks’.173This point leads on to another which was greatly emphasized by Smith, namely that the same economic forces which had served to elevate the House of Commons to a superior degree of influence had also served to make it an important focal point for sectional interests.

Smith recognizes in The Wealth of Nations that the landed, monied, manufacturing and mercantile groups all constitute special interests which could impinge on the working of government. Smith referred frequently to their ‘clamorous importunity’, and in speaking of the growth of monopoly pointed out that government policy ‘has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature’.174Smith thus insisted that any legislative proposals emanating from this class

ought always to be listened to with the greatest precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the publick, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.175

Important as the role of government may be, Smith was clearly aware of the pressures operating upon an imperfect instrument, operating in an imperfect environment.

For all these reasons, Smith, ever the pragmatist, concluded:

To expect, indeed, that the 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. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.176

Later he was to comment, in a passage critical of Quesnay, that if ‘a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered.’177

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION

1. Corr, letter 31, 12 April 1759.

2. Corr, letter 82, 5 July 1764, Toulouse.

3. EPS, p.254.

4. For accounts of the movement, see Henry Higgs, The Physiocrats (1897); C. Gide and C. Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines (1948); Terence Hutchison, Before Adam Smith (1988); and especially R. L. Meek, The Economics of Physiocracy (1962).

5. H. Mizuta, Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (1967).

6. Corr, letter 97, 15 October 1766.

7. Stewart, III.12.

8. Corr, letter 248, 1 November 1785.

9. Abbé Morellet, Mémoires (1823), i.,p.244.

10. J. A. Schumpeter, Economic Doctrine and Method (1954),