The Wealth of Nations_ Books 4-5 - Adam Smith [25]
91. Corr, letter 149, February 1776.
92. WN, IV.vii.c.81; p.210.
93. WN, IV.ii.c.30; p.41.
94. WN, IV.vii.b.40; p.162.
95. WN, IV.viii.15; p.231.
96. WN, IV.ii.30; p.41.
97. WN, I.ix.11; p.195.
98. WN, I.viii.23; vol.i.p.173.
99. WN, IV.vii.b.39; p.162.
100. WN, IV.vii.c.51; p.192.
101. WN, IV.vii.b.44; p.164.
102. WN, I.vii.23; vol.1.p.173.
103. WN, IV.i.31; p.23.
104. WN, IV.vii.c.64; p.198.
105. WN, IV.vii.b.44; p.163.
106. WN, IV.vii.c.47; p.190.
107. WN, IV.vii.c.55; p.193.
108. WN, IV.vii.c.22; p.179.
109. WN, IV.vii.c.43; p.187.
110. WN, IV.vii.c.85; p.212.
111. WN, V.iii.92; p.550.
112. WN, V.iii.88; p.547.
113. WN, V.iii.68; p.536.
114. WN, IV.vii.c.77; p.208.
115. WN, IV.vii.c.79; p.209.
116. Corr, Appendix B, p.382. The ‘Memorandum’ is dated 1778 and was written in the aftermath of the Battle of Saratoga. It was first published in 1932 by G. H. Guttridge. Smith offered the following points:
(a) The preferred solution was an incorporating union; a choice which he rejected as no longer viable.
(b) Military victory was to be discounted as unlikely, and
(c) even if possible was unlikely to be workable in an administrative sense.
(d) Voluntary withdrawal from the conflict was the most rational option, but was unlikely for reasons which have affected other belligerents in the same situation, before and since: ‘Tho this termination of the war might be really advantageous, it would not, in the eyes of Europe, appear honourable to Great Britain; and when her empire was so much curtailed, her power and dignity would be supposed to be proportionably diminished. What is of still greater importance, it could scarce fail to discredit the government in the eyes of our own people, whowould probably impute to maladministration what might, perhaps, be no more than the unavoidable effect of the natural and necessary course of things.’ (Corr, p.383).
117. WN, IV.viii.15; p.232.
118. ‘Resolve No. 4’ of the ‘Suffolk Resolves’ is representative:
We cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British Parliament as are bona fide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantage of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members, excluding every idea of taxation internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects without their consent. (Quoted in Stevens, ‘Adam Smith and the Colonial Disturbances’, in A. S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds), Essays on Adam Smith (1975), p.213.
119. WN, IV.ix.51; p.274.
120. WN, I.x.c.12; Vol. 1, p.225.
121. WN, IV.v.b.1; pp.102–23.
122. WN, IV.v.b.7; p.106. E. P. Thompson has pointed out that the Digression acquired ‘oracular authority’, claiming that few chapters can have had a more ‘palpable influence’, Customs in Common (1991), pp.276, 279. As Thompson has argued, ‘death and famine are always in the short run, but not the long. And Adam Smith has only long-run remedies’ (p.278; cf. p.283).
123. WN, II.ii.94; Vol. 1, p.424.
124. WN, II.ii.94; Vol. 1, p.424.
125. WN, II.iv.15; Vol. 1, p.457.
126. See Jeremy Bentham’s Defence of Usury, reprinted in Corr as Appendix C. Dugald Stewart remarked that ‘It is a remarkable circumstance, that Mr Smith should, in this solitary instance, have adopted, on such slight grounds, a conclusion so strikingly contrasted with the spirit of his general discussions, and so manifestly at variance with the fundamental principles which, on other occasions, he has so boldly followed out, through their practical applications’ (Stewart, IV.28, note J).
127. WN, V.i.c.1; p.310.
128. See also WN, Book III and A. S. Skinner, A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith (Oxford, 1996).
129. WN, V.i.a.9, 10; p.283.
130. WN, V.i.a.14; p.285.
131. WN, V.i.a.41; p.295.
132. WN, V.i.i.1;