Sunday, August 9, 2020

Adam Smith on the rise of order

Quotes from Book 3, Chapter 4 of The Wealth of Nations

It was the rise of commerce that brought order, Smith says:
... 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. Mr. Hume is the only writer who, so far as I know, has hitherto taken notice of it.
Not the feudal law:
The introduction of the feudal law, so far from extending, may be regarded as an attempt to moderate the authority of the great allodial lords... But though this institution necessarily tended 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. The authority of government still continued to be, as before, too weak in the head and too strong in the inferior members, and the excessive strength of the inferior members was the cause of the weakness of the head. After the institution of feudal subordination, the king was as incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords as before. They still continued to make war according to their own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon the king; and the open country still continued to be a scene of violence, rapine, and disorder.
It was not feudal law, according to Adam Smith, but the growth of "commerce and manufactures", that brought order to the feudal era.

No comments: