Adam Smith, alleged systematist

Smith is frequently described as a great admirer of intellectual systems and a devotee of system-building. This view of him is far from new. Dugald Stewart, Smith’s contemporary and first biographer, remarked on Smith’s “love of system” and claimed that his goal in the Wealth of Nations was to provide “a systematical view of the most important articles of political economy.”Footnote ² A more recent biographer, Nicholas Phillipson, comments on Smith’s “lifelong love of intellectual systems” and on “that remarkable esprit de système which characterized all his work,” and he describes Smith as being one of the “most systematically minded of philosophers.”Footnote ³ Similarly, the editors of the Glasgow Edition of the Wealth of Nations write that “not only were Smith’s ethics, jurisprudence, and economics marked by a degree of systematic thought of such a kind as to reveal a great capacity for model-building, but also by an attempt to delineate the boundaries of a single system of thought, of which these separate subjects were the component parts.”Footnote ⁴

It is true that “system” was one of Smith’s favorite words. By my count, he uses it—or related terms such as “systematic” or “systematical”—no fewer than 116 times in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 193 times in the Wealth of Nations, and 98 times in his posthumously published Essays on Philosophical Subjects. (Just for a sense of scale here, in his published works Smith employs these terms roughly four times as often as the term “liberty.”) It is also true that Smith sometimes speaks favorably of various political and economic systems. Most famously, he lauds “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty” that “establishes itself of its own accord” when “[a]ll systems either of preference or of restraint” within the economy are “completely taken away” (WN IV.ix.51). Elsewhere, he speaks similarly of “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation” (WN IV.v.b.39) and “the natural system of perfect liberty and justice” (WN IV.vii.c.44).

Yet to describe Smith as a great proponent of intellectual system-building is to go much too far. At the most—to utilize the distinction that was drawn by Jean Le Rond d’Alembert in his “Preliminary Discourse” to the celebrated French Encyclopédie—Smith exhibited an inductive and empirical “systematic spirit” (esprit systématique) rather than embracing a deductive and rationalist “spirit of system” (esprit de système).Footnote ⁵ Put another way, Smith did advocate—and himself sought to engage in—systematic observation of human nature and human relations, but he regarded the world as too complex and dynamic to be adequately contained within a neat, rigid intellectual system. Both of his published books (TMS and WN), as well as the student notes that we have from his jurisprudence course, rely far more on concrete, empirical facts than on abstract, a priori first principles. As Samuel Fleischacker notes, throughout his works “Smith gives strong priority to particular facts over general theories, stressing repeatedly that human knowledge is most reliable when it is highly contextual. Smith is, for this reason, perhaps the most empirical of all the empiricists, pursuing his version of ‘the science of man’ in a particularly messy, fact-laden rather than theory-laden way.”Footnote ⁶ In keeping with this fact-driven approach, Smith declares that the proper role of the philosopher is not to devise abstract theories or to build comprehensive systems, but rather simply to “observe every thing” (WN I.i.9).

Moreover, Smith was frequently critical of the reductionism and oversimplifications that are so often a part of intellectual system-building. In the Wealth of Nations, he remarks that “[s]peculative systems have in all ages of the world been adopted for reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest” (WN V.i.f.26). Similarly, in Part 7 of The Theory of Moral Sentiments he canvasses a number of earlier “Systems of Moral Philosophy” and emphasizes the distortions that were inherent in them. For instance, Smith declares that Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, “reduced their doctrines into a scholastic or technical system of artificial definitions, divisions, and subdivisions; one of the most effectual expedients, perhaps, for extinguishing whatever degree of good sense there may be in any moral or metaphysical doctrine” (TMS VII.ii.1.41). Likewise, he reproaches Epicurus for “indulg[ing] a propensity, which is natural to all men, but which philosophers in particular are apt to cultivate with a peculiar fondness, as the great means of displaying their ingenuity, the propensity to account for all appearances from as few principles as possible” (TMS VII.ii.2.14).

Earlier in The Theory of Moral Sentiments—in the paragraph that follows the only invocation of “the invisible hand” in that work—Smith does argue that a “love of system” can sometimes promote public-spiritedness or a concern for the common welfare (TMS IV.1.11). However, he suggests that this very benefit arises from a theoretical mistake, namely, the valuing of means over ends. That is, Smith claims that many people—particularly those with a certain intellectual bent—embrace beneficial policy measures not primarily in order to make their fellow citizens happier or better off, which presumably should be their aim, but rather in order “to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system” that they have constructed within their minds (TMS IV.1.11). In the final, sixth edition of the work, he added a detailed discussion of how the “spirit of system” often leads reformers to grow carried away with their plans, and sometimes even produces “the madness of fanaticism” (TMS VI.ii.2.15). (This passage will be examined in more detail in the final section of this essay.)

What, then, of Smith’s famous description of his own preferred political-economic order as the “system of natural liberty”? As Charles Griswold notes, Smith regarded this “system” (such as it was) as “a system that liberates politics from system … . Although positive action is required to maintain the system of natural liberty, it generally takes the form of removing obstacles to liberty and then refraining from instituting them.”Footnote ⁷ Smith was, of course, particularly concerned to avoid the inefficiencies and injustices that he associated with the interventionist “mercantile system” (as he calls it) that reigned in his own time, as well as the “agricultural systems” that had been proposed by French Physiocrats such as François Quesnay and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.

Seeking to avoid the ills produced by theoretical systems was in fact something of a through line for Smith, whether it involved political economy, moral philosophy, or even the natural sciences. Hence Fleischacker persuasively argues that “the central thread running through all [Smith’s] work,” from his early Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries through The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the Wealth of Nations, was “an unusually strong commitment to the soundness of the ordinary human being’s judgments, and a concern to fend off attempts, by philosophers and policy-makers, to replace those judgments with the supposedly better ‘systems’ invented by intellectuals.”Footnote ⁸

Restoring the prudence to Smith’s jurisprudence

It must be admitted, however, that Smith occasionally suggested that legislation could and should be guided by permanent, universal principles of justice. At one point in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he proclaims that “[e]very system of positive law may be regarded as a more or less imperfect attempt towards a system of natural jurisprudence, or towards an enumeration of the particular rules of justice” (TMS VII.iv.36). Although he deemed it unnecessary to “enter into any detail” on the subject of natural jurisprudence in his book on moral philosophy (TMS VI.ii.intro.2), Smith assures his readers that he intended to do so in another work. He concludes The Theory of Moral Sentiments with the declaration that “I shall in another discourse endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government” that “ought to run through, and be the foundation of the laws of all nations” (TMS VII.iv.37). He chose to include this promise even in the final (1790) edition, although he was forced to acknowledge that “my very advanced age leaves me … very little expectation of ever being able to execute this great work [on jurisprudence] to my own satisfaction” (TMS Advertisement, 2). In this, Smith proved correct: he died later that year, and he never published a book on natural jurisprudence.

To the dismay of posterity, Smith arranged to have the great majority of his manuscripts consigned to the flames shortly before his death, which makes it exceedingly difficult for us to surmise what his projected work on jurisprudence might have looked like. Scholars frequently assume that it would have resembled the student notes that we have from the jurisprudence course that Smith taught at the University of Glasgow, but this seems doubtful for the simple reason that the content of the notes does not match Smith’s description of the projected work very well. What we know as Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence consists overwhelmingly of a dry description of various forms of law in different ages of society, particularly in modern Britain, rather than an account of the broader, normative principles that should serve as the basis of law and government in all times and places. Even when the lecture notes come to discuss “what are called natural rights,” they simply draw on the writings of Samuel von Pufendorf and Francis Hutcheson to explain the distinction between perfect and imperfect rights and then breezily dismiss the question of “the originall or foundation from whence they arise,” saying that this “need not be explained” (LJA i.24).Footnote ⁹

Smith’s scattered claims about the possibility of developing a system of natural jurisprudence and his aspiration to write a book on the subject have led a number of scholars to view him as a universalist natural law thinker in the tradition of Hugo Grotius and Pufendorf. Perhaps the best-known work in this vein is Knud Haakonssen’s The Science of a Legislator, which underscores the “critical” potential of Smith’s jurisprudential theory, meaning its ability to provide a universal standard by which to judge positive laws. Haakonssen writes that “if we do not find room for the natural and universal in Smith’s theory of justice, his whole project for a natural jurisprudence becomes unintelligible.”Footnote ¹⁰ As this quotation intimates, such readings generally stress the role of justice within Smith’s moral theory, and in particular his claim that justice is “the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice” of society (TMS II.ii.3.4) as well as the one virtue that is best enforced through a system of rigid rules (see TMS III.6.10). Even Fonna Forman-Barzilai, who generally goes as far as any Smith scholar does in stressing the importance of cultural context within Smith’s moral philosophy, holds that when it comes to the virtue of justice Smith does indeed adopt a firmly universalist stance.Footnote ¹¹

On my reading, however, Smith’s conception of justice in fact precludes the possibility of formulating natural laws or universal rules that could provide a determinate standard by which to judge positive laws in all times and places. Whereas his good friend David Hume had regarded justice as an “artificial” virtue that arises as people come to recognize the utility of rules protecting private property, Smith maintains that justice is instead rooted in the natural sentiment of resentment.Footnote ¹² For Smith, acting justly requires abstaining from actions that cause “injury” or “real and positive hurt” to others, where injury and hurt are defined as what provokes resentment in an impartial spectator (TMS II.ii.1.5).

And, crucially, Smith accepts that different things will be considered an injury, or provoke resentment—and thus constitute an injustice—in different contexts. In his jurisprudence lectures, he notes that there are three broad ways in which people can be injured: in their person, their property, and their reputation (see LJB 8). Let us take these in reverse order. What constitutes an injury to one’s reputation of course depends a great deal on one’s understanding of honor, which Smith acknowledges will fluctuate widely from society to society (see LJA ii.135–41). Injury to property necessarily varies as well, along with the different understandings of what counts as property in the different stages of society. In fact, Smith accepts that in hunting and gathering societies there is “scarce any property,” which is why there is “seldom any established magistrate or any regular administration of justice” (WN V.i.b.2; see also LJA i.27–47; LJB 149–50). Remarkably, Smith seems to concede that not even bodily injury is universally constant. Torture provoked no resentment among many Native American tribes (see TMS V.2.9), for instance, and Smith notes that the practice of infanticide was widely accepted, nearly unavoidable, and therefore “surely … excusable” in very primitive societies (even if not in polite and civilized Athens) (TMS V.2.15).Footnote ¹³

Given that what provokes resentment varies so widely in different historical and cultural contexts, Smith’s conception of justice was ultimately far more contingent and variable than some of his own claims about natural jurisprudence would seem to imply.Footnote ¹⁴ Even Haakonssen concedes as much in some of his more recent work, writing that for Smith

In other words, although the way in which rules of justice are established is always the same, according to Smith, the actual content of these rules can be very different in different times and places.

Hence, I concur with the thesis of both Griswold and Fleischacker that Smith never wrote his projected work on natural jurisprudence not just because old age and other projects prevented him from doing so, but also because such a work would be impossible to square with his broader philosophical outlook.Footnote ¹⁶ As Griswold writes, “given his skeptical stance, Smith could not fulfill his aspiration for a final and comprehensive philosophical system articulating the ‘general principles of law and government.’ To pursue questions about first principles is to seek a standpoint external to the human spectacle, and he thinks that that is unavailable.”Footnote ¹⁷ Or, as Donald Winch puts it, Smith “found himself incapable of [writing the book on natural jurisprudence] for reasons that had nothing to do with the Great Reaper.”Footnote ¹⁸

The limits of the legislator’s “science”

Yet Smith’s references to the notion of natural jurisprudence in The Theory of Moral Sentiments were not the only indications that he believed that legislation could and should be guided by permanent, universal principles. In the Wealth of Nations, he draws a distinction between “the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same,” and “the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs” (WN IV.ii.39). (This is the passage from which the title of Haakonssen’s book was derived.) And Smith suggests that political economy, properly understood, falls in the former category, or at least that it can be “considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator,” one whose purpose is to show how “to enrich both the people and the sovereign” (WN IV.intro.1).

Although these are the only two references to a science of a legislator in Smith’s corpus, if we take them at face value, then it appears that Smith envisioned—and presumably saw himself as contributing to—the development of a “science” of political economy that could guide legislation based on “general principles which are always the same.” Of course, it is important to keep in mind that the term “science” did not have the connotations of precision and certainty for Smith that it tends to have for many people today. After all, Smith went to great lengths, in his Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries, to highlight the contingent and subjective nature of the scientific enterprise. In his view, science is a permanently open-ended activity, one that is prompted by the passions and forged by the imagination.Footnote ¹⁹ Moreover, there is much to suggest that any “general principles” that might be developed to guide legislators must, in Smith’s view, be quite “loose, vague, and indeterminate” if they are to remain “always the same”—more akin to advice for how to write well than to rules of grammar, to borrow an analogy that Smith uses in a slightly different context (TMS III.6.11).

Perhaps the clearest indication that Smith rejected the idea of a single, universally applicable set of laws or political institutions can be found in the fact that he stresses, throughout Book 5 of the Wealth of Nations as well as his jurisprudence lectures, that different stages in the development of society require radically different types (and amounts) of government. He suggests that in “the lowest and rudest state of society, such as we find it among the native tribes of North America … there is properly neither sovereign nor commonwealth” at all, and he shows that government necessarily grows more extensive and complicated as society becomes more developed (WN V.i.a.2). This is true, Smith notes, for all three of the sovereign’s duties under the “system of natural liberty”—that is, military defense (see WN V.i.a.42), the administration of justice (see WN V.i.b.1), and the provision of certain public works (see WN V.i.c.1).

Laws and institutions that are appropriate for one historical stage may thus, in Smith’s view, be utterly inappropriate for another. To take just one specific but notable example, as much scorn as Smith pours on laws of primogeniture—in the lectures he proclaims that they are “contrary to nature, to reason, and to justice” (LJA i.116)—he accepts that they were perfectly sensible in the feudal age. During that era, after all, “the security of a landed estate … depended on its greatness. To divide it up was to ruin it, and to expose every part of it to be oppressed and swallowed up by the incursions of its neighbours.” These circumstances, Smith explicitly states, rendered laws of primogeniture “reasonable” within that context (WN III.ii.3–4).Footnote ²⁰ In fact, Smith regarded some of his own policy recommendations in the Wealth of Nations as so contextually specific that in the advertisement to the third edition he felt compelled to note—rather dispiritingly, for those who would like to take lessons from the work for today’s world—that when he referred to “the present state of things,” he generally meant the state of things “in the end of the year 1775, and in the beginning of the year 1776,” except for the chapters that were added to that edition, in which “the present state of things” should be taken to mean “the state in which they were during the year 1783 and the beginning of the present year 1784” (WN Advertisement, 8).

It is also notable that although Smith clearly admired Britain’s mixed, representative government and deemed it to be superior to the absolute monarchies on the Continent,Footnote ²¹ he never suggested that the British system was the only legitimate one or that it could or should simply be transplanted elsewhere. Duncan Forbes, drawing on a self-referential remark of Hume’s,Footnote ²² famously christened Smith a “sceptical Whig,” meaning (among other things) that, in contrast to the ordinary or “vulgar” Whigs of his time, Smith did not hold to “the parochial absurdity of declaring that absolute monarchy could not be a proper form of government.” On the contrary, Smith concurred with Hume that the “civilized” monarchies of Europe had “a high degree of liberty, as well as all the other marks of a civilized society: an established order of ranks, a highly developed division of labour, opulence, and so on.”Footnote ²³ Thus, in the Wealth of Nations Smith applauds the absolute monarchies that arose throughout Europe on the heels of the feudal age for establishing a “regular government” that was able to effectively enforce order and administer justice (WN III.iv.15), thereby ensuring “the liberty and security of individuals … who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile dependency upon their superiors” (WN III.iv.4). The notes from Smith’s jurisprudence course have him declaring in a similar context that “[i]n an absolute government … the greatest part of the nation, who were in the remote parts of the kingdom, had nothing to fear, nor were in any great danger of being oppressed by the sovereign” (LJA iv.165–66).

All of that said—and as his preference for the British system suggests—Smith was no mere relativist; he certainly deemed some regimes, institutions, laws, and practices to be better than others. And, as the passage on the science of a legislator indicates, he believed that politics should, where possible, be “governed by general principles” rather than merely “by the momentary fluctuations of affairs” (WN IV.ii.39). So what were Smith’s political preferences, and what “general principles” did they rest on? These are large questions, of course, and they have been the subject of a great deal of debate, but at a minimum it seems safe to say that Smith was a liberal, in the broadest sense of that term. That is, he clearly supported the ideals that we now associate with the liberal tradition, such as limited government, private property, free trade, religious toleration, and the freedom of expression, all underpinned by the effective rule of law.

Many of the leading figures of the liberal tradition sought to ground their outlook in transcendent or a priori first principles, as John Locke did with his appeals to God-given natural rights and Immanuel Kant did with his appeals to the rational (and hence categorical) requirements of human dignity. Smith’s liberalism, in contrast, was based much more on empirical observation and historical and comparative analysis. When arguing for the superiority of liberal ideals, practices, and institutions, he rarely appealed to abstract standards of right derived from God, Nature, or Reason, and far more often tried to show simply that they were preferable to the alternatives, all things considered.

For instance, as I argue elsewhere, Smith defended commercial society principally because he believed that it had proven superior to what preceded it, namely, the hunting, shepherding, and agricultural stages of society. He certainly did not depict commercial society as perfect—indeed, he repeatedly stressed the many potential dangers and drawbacks inherent in this form of society—but he regarded all other forms of society as even less perfect, given how susceptible they were to ills such as poverty, insecurity, and personal dependence.Footnote ²⁴ Similarly, Smith advocated free trade because he surmised, based on the available evidence, that it would prove more beneficial than mercantilism or Physiocracy; this is the basic case that he makes in Book 4 of the Wealth of Nations. Although Smith refers to his preferred political-economic order as “the system of natural liberty,” he never develops the idea that there is something especially natural about this order, or especially unnatural about the alternatives. As Don Herzog writes, “despite the foundationalist echoes of the label, he defends market society by showing how it leaves people better off than mercantilism does or than the physiocratic system would.”Footnote ²⁵

Nor did Smith rely on a single standard or benchmark in making these kinds of historical and comparative judgments. Sometimes, he celebrated liberal practices and institutions for the personal freedoms that they afforded people, while at other times he lauded the security that they provided, the prosperity that they made possible, the happiness that they produced, and/or the virtues or character traits that they encouraged. In this respect, Smith could be seen as precursor of the liberal pluralism that has more recently been advocated by Isaiah Berlin and his followers.Footnote ²⁶ Smith too appears to have believed that there are a number of important political ends or goods, that there is no simple or foolproof means by which to rank them or adjudicate among them, and that balance and compromise will always be necessary—but also that liberal institutions, laws, and practices generally provide a greater degree of a greater number of these goods than illiberal ones do.

In short, despite his pair of references to a science of a legislator, Smith’s general approach to politics and political economy is not particularly “scientific,” at least if that term is taken to connote precision and certainty.Footnote ²⁷ Instead, it tends to be far more pragmatic, in several senses of that term.Footnote ²⁸ It is based on empirical observation rather than on transcendent or a priori first principles. It seeks to fulfill basic human needs and desires rather than to satisfy an abstract standard of right derived from God, Nature, or Reason. It is attentive to the importance of historical and cultural context and eschews the idea of a perfect, single best, or uniquely legitimate form of government. And, as we will see in the final section of this essay, it favors gradual, piecemeal reform over sudden, radical change.

The system of natural liberty meets the spirit of system

Another element of Smith’s thought that pushes against the idea of a systematic and universally applicable science of political economy is his cautious attitude toward political change. To be sure, Smith did not, like Edmund Burke, revere tradition as such or believe that it had a presumptive claim to wisdom, nor was he simply an advocate of the status quo. He did, after all, want to push society in a broadly liberal direction. The Wealth of Nations contains a great number of concrete suggestions for reform in areas such as trade regulations, settlement and inheritance laws, apprenticeship requirements, taxation, and education policy. Nor were Smith’s proposals all minor, easily implemented ones. As Fleischacker notes, “in the context of his time, it was quite unrealistic, not to say visionary, to urge the complete disestablishment of religion, the end of the East India Company, and a legislative union between England and America,” as Smith did.Footnote ²⁹ Yet Smith steadfastly opposed the idea of imposing a comprehensive political ideal on society from above or of trying to wipe the political slate clean in order to form a wholly new “rational” order from scratch. He warned that attempting to effect a sudden, radical break from the existing order would generally prove to be both ineffective and dangerous, and hence that all changes—including the liberal reforms that he cherished most—should be implemented in a gradual, piecemeal fashion.

This standpoint is especially discernible in the passage on the “spirit of system” that Smith added to the final edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1790. The context of this passage is a discussion of patriotism or the love of one’s country, which Smith claims generally involves two different principles: “first, a certain respect and reverence for that constitution or form of government which is actually established; and secondly, an earnest desire to render the condition of our fellow-citizens as safe, respectable, and happy as we can” (TMS VI.ii.2.11). In ordinary, quiet times, he says, these two principles will generally coincide, in the sense that we can best serve our fellow citizens by supporting the established government. In times of “public discontent, faction, and disorder,” however, “it often requires … the highest effort of political wisdom to determine when a real patriot ought to support and endeavour to re-establish the authority of the old system, and when he ought to give way to the more daring, but often more dangerous spirit of innovation” (TMS VI.ii.2.12). Smith was not, then, always opposed to political innovation.

Smith went on to warn, however, that “a certain spirit of system” often leads people to irresponsibly seek “to new-model the constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential parts, [the] system of government.” People who are driven by this spirit, he explains, tend to be so “intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of [their] ideal system” that they grow convinced that it will resolve not just this or that immediate problem, but all political problems, for all time (TMS VI.ii.2.15). In Smith’s view, of course, this is a delusion, and a rather arrogant and dangerous one at that. Far too often it leads people to “refus[e] all palliatives, all temperaments, all reasonable accommodations,” and as a result “those inconveniencies and distresses which, with a little moderation, might in a great measure have been removed and relieved, are left altogether without the hope of a remedy” (TMS VI.ii.2.15).Footnote ³⁰ In Smith’s view, a truly wise and humane reformer will not strive for perfection or seek to impose a theoretical blueprint on society, but will instead respect established institutions and prejudices as much as possible: “Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. … When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear” (TMS VI.ii.2.16).Footnote ³¹

Smith’s condemnation of the “spirit of system” in this passage is well known among Smith scholars. It is less often noted, however, that he applied its lessons even to his own preferred “system” (or perhaps anti-system), the system of natural liberty. Smith was, of course, opposed to most of the elements of the mercantilist system that sought to guide or control people’s economic choices—legal monopolies, bounties, duties, trade prohibitions, apprenticeship laws, settlement laws, laws of primogeniture and entail, and so on. Eliminating these kinds of policies was what the system of natural liberty was all about. Yet Smith’s aversion to large-scale, precipitate change dictated against attempting to get rid of them wholesale or instantaneously. Thus, throughout the Wealth of Nations he warns that even his own economic proposals should be implemented gradually, with due attention to the disorders that they might generate.

For instance, in the midst of a discussion of import duties and trade prohibitions that were designed to protect domestic industries—in the same chapter as the only mention of the “invisible hand” in the work—Smith writes:

“Such are the unfortunate effects of all the regulations of the mercantile system!” he laments in a later chapter: “They not only introduce very dangerous disorders into the state of the body politick, but disorders which it is often difficult to remedy, without occasioning, for a time at least, still greater disorders.” Thus, Smith maintains that “in what manner the natural system of perfect liberty and justice ought gradually to be restored, we must leave to the wisdom of future statesmen and legislators to determine” (WN IV.vii.c.44).

Scholars frequently cite Smith’s later description of the Wealth of Nations as “the very violent attack I … made upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain,” and in some respects this rare snippet of colorful self-characterization is indeed apt.Footnote ³² The work is, after all, unsparing and unrelenting in its critique of mercantilism. Yet however violent Smith’s verbal attack may have been, he certainly never advocated a wholesale restructuring of society based on his own theories. As Istvan Hont observes, it was precisely his insistence on gradual reform that separated Smith from many of the Physiocrats, who advocated instituting a system of economic liberty all at once, in spite of all obstacle or opposition.Footnote ³³ As Smith saw it, even the Physiocrats, his allies in the cause of free trade, had fallen prey to the rationalist fallacy according to which there is only one set of institutions that truly corresponds to the order of Reason or Nature, and that should therefore be imposed on society immediately and in its entirety. Smith rejected this rationalist view in all of its guises, and instead recommended that policymakers begin with existing institutions and proceed piecemeal, carefully weighing the available options and continually taking changing circumstances into consideration.

In short, Smith held that prudence is indispensable in politics, just as it is in morality.Footnote ³⁴ As we have seen, however, the kind of political prudence that Smith advocated did not entail acting based on gut instinct or mere expediency. Instead, it required the pursuit (and balancing) of a number of basic political goods—security, liberty, prosperity, happiness, even virtue—based on empirical observation of the types of institutions, laws, and practices that have done the most to promote these goods in similar circumstances, in the past and around the world. Understood in this sense, it would not be too much to say that a lawmaker who faithfully were to follow Smith’s “science of a legislator” would be guided less by a systematic or universally applicable science than by the dictates of prudence.