Review Author(s): Review by: Henry Higgs Source: , Vol. 6, No. 24 (Dec., 1896), pp. 608-612 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Economic Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2957203 Accessed: 27-06-2016 10:30 UTC

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had come to me, and I thenl determined to devote myself to the construction of a real science of , on the model of the already established physical sciences. Even then, from the study of these works, I could discern from , Ricardo, and especially Whately,-that Economics is in reality the Science of Exchanges or of Commerce, or the Theory of Value.'

In short, Air. MacLeod plunged into the middle of the subject, as an almost middle-aged lawyer consulted on a question of banking. Misled by the somewhat egotistical vein which may be traced in all his works, he immediately concluded that those parts of political economy in which he was not interested ought not to be included therein, and consequently proceeded to reject the whole of what is commonly called -production, distribution, and consumption. With a boldness which is magnificent rather than admirable, he asserts that before Say wrote, production meant offering for sale, distribution meant exchange, and consumption meant purchase for use and enjoyment, and he thinks that these meanings ought to be reverted to. Now other economists, even while making value the central pivot of economics, have always realised, more or less, that what people are really interested in is the general laws which govern the quantities of wealth obtained by individuals and communities, and, with occasional abe'rra- tions, have kept this fact in view. To Mr. MacLeod, on the other hand, intent as he is upon exchange and value for their own sake, quantities of wealth and the mnaterial well-being of the human race have no near connection with each other. It is wealth in the abstract and not the wealth of nations and individuals that he studies. Hence his inclusion in ' wealth' of various rights and obligations which other economists omit because they would not be entered in a catalogue of the things which constitute the capital wealth of a nation. The actual difference here, once understood, is not very important. There is no reason to suppose that if Mr. MacLeod were Chancellor of the Exchequer he would propose to enrich the country by issuing a thousand millions of consols. He himself tells us (p. 231) that the statement ' credit is capital,' his favourite proposition, ' simply means that commerce is carried on by means of credit, by bank-notes, cheques, bills of exchange, andlother instruments, as well as by money.' But his failure to understand the difference between his own point of view and that of the ordinar,y economists has placed a great gap between him and them which no criticism can bridge over. EDWIN CANNAN

Lectures on Jtstice, Police, Reventue, antd Arms, delivered in the Uniiversity of Glasgow by ADAM SMITH. Reported by a Student in 1763. And Edited with an Introduction and Notes by EDWIN CANNAN. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 1896. Pp. xl., 293, 8vo. 10s. 6d. nett.)

'To live with the eterrnitie of her fame,' the dedication of the Faerie Queene to Elizabeth, at once recurs to the mind in reviewing a book

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destined to endure as long as the memory of Adam Smith. Virtually the recovery of a lost work, it shows us the intellect of the great econo- mist moving in a new sphere, in Jurisprudelnce; it gives us his earlier views upon many topics handled thirteen years later in the WVealth of Natiorns; and in Mr. Cannan's opinion 'it enables us to follow the gradual construction' of that work 'almost from its very foundation, and to distinguish positively between what the original genius of its author created out of British materials on the one hand and French materials on the other.' 'To distinguish positively,' is much too strong a phrase; but the lectures are undoubtedly of the highest interest and importance in the history of economic theory. The authenticity of the report is beyond que3tion. Our readers were informed of its discovery and character in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL of June last (p. 330), and it is unnecessary to add to the account of the manuscript there given. The last few years have been eloquent in testimony to the abiding interest taken in Adam Smith. We have just seen an Adam Smith chair of Political Economy founded in the University of Glasgow, and there has been a fertile crop of Adam Smith studies. Professor Has- bach has carefully stated and cormpared the origin and character of the philosophical principles which are, he supposes, the groundwork of the economics of Quesnay and of Adam Smith. Dr. Feilbogen has published a monograph upon Smith und T'urgot. Mr. Johh Rae has given us a vivid and conscientious Life of Adam Smith, and Dr. Bonar's Catalogue of his Library must have been of the greatest assistance to Mr. Cannan in editing these lectures. What Adam Smith has to say about ' Justice' is of much significance in connection with Professor Hasbach's inquiry, for it throws new light upon the conception of the Law of Nature which plays a large part in all Smith's writings. It is highly significant that his first Moral Philosophy lectures dealt with Natural Theology, the second were on Ethics (which he might have called Natucrtal or rationalistic morality), the third on Justice (which he calls Natural Jurisprudence), and the fourth grew into the Inquiry concerning the Nature and Causes of the JVerath of Nations. Nor is this the only service which the lectures on Justico render. There are, here and there, passages of economic interest like the remiarks on monopolie s and corporations (p. 130), and the law lectures are a new gauge to the calibre of Adam Smith's culture and originality. They exhibit fairly wide reading, sound and independent j udgment-if sometimes that of the layman rather than the practical lawyer-and the author's undoubted gift of felicitous phrasing. Blackstone had not yet commenced to make the English law ' speak the language of a scholar and a gentleman'; and Adam Smith's lectures, though different in scope and purpose from the famous Commenttaries, would have found in 1763 a fairly open field. Not that they would have been of much value to the lawyer. They abound1 n small errors, even judged from a contemporary standpoinit. Grotius and Pufendorf, Hobbes and Montesquieu, with Justinian's Institutes and a smattering of modern law, made a poor working equipment even

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in the 18th century; wv.Thile Niebuhr's subsequent discovery of Gaius, and the commentaries of Savigny, Puchta and other 19th century scholars have greatly modified earlier views of legal antiquities. This Journal is not the place to di-scuss the lectures on Justice; but the opening sentence shows how little the influence of Montesquieu had impressed the idea of relativity upon Adam Smith. 'Jurisprudence,' he says, ' is that science which inquires into the general principles which ought to be the foundation of the law of all nations,'-a definition rather of what Bentham calls Deontology than of Jurisprudence proper,-whose function is the study of legal concepts as they are, and not of legal systems as they ' ought to be.' The law of husband and wife, for example, must differ very much in monogamous and polygamous countries; but here, as in his economics, Adam Smith is prone to regard ideal principles of government as of universal application. The word 4natural' is of constant occurrence. We find it used six times in as many pages (19-25). Fromi these and other points of interest to the economist in the lectures on Justice, we must turn, however, to the second and smaller portion of the book, dealing with Police, Revenue, and Arms. The lectures on Police and Revenue amount on a rough computa- tion to one-eleventh of the matter contained in the TWealth of Nations, in which many portions of them were incorporated with comparatively little variation. The points of difference are often of piquant interest. There is one passage (p. 189) which bimetallists will not be slow to mark: 'A diminution [i.e., a lowering of the nominal value of coin, in other words a fall of prices] has always a worse effect than an augmentation. An augmentation injures the creditor, a diminution the debtor, who should always be favoured. If I bind for ten pounds and be obliged to pay fifteen, common industry must be excessively embarrassed.' Nor will the socialists fail to notice pp. 163 and 257: ' The artisan who works at his ease within doors has far more than the poor labourer who trudges up and down without intermission. Thus, he who as it we re bears the burden of society, has the fewest advantages. . . ' ' It may very justly be said that the people who clothe the whole world are in rags themselves.' Mr. Cannan furnishes an interesting introduction, a table of a hundred parallels to the Wealth of Nations, and four hundred other references in his notes. By the aid of these the reader is enabled to study the resemblances between the lectures and the finished treatise. We should have pre- ferred to see these ' parallel' passages distinguished by different type in the text, instead of tabulated-ungracious though it may seem -to criticise in any respect the work of an editor who has conducted his labours with a thoroughness and care which can only be described as affectionate. It is very rarely he is found tripping. A note on p. 211 in which he ascribes to Law the authorship of Paterson's Proposals, is almost the only slip we have noticed. Nearly every page of the lecture on Police offers some temptation

This content downloaded from 137.99.31.134 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:30:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms CANNAN: ADAM SMITH'S LECTURES ON JUSTICE, POLICE, ETC. 611 to linger, to point out changes of opinion in the TWealth of Nations, or to suggest the original of one statement or another. But our remain- ing comments must be confined to the editor's remarks upon British and French materials referred to at the beginning, of this review. We see no reason for supposing that Adamrn Smith was entirely ignoranit of French economics in 1763. HIe might have already read, e.g., Herbert's Essai 1765, the articles of Quesnay and Turgot in the Encyclopedie on Fermiers, Foires, F'ondations, and Grains, 1756-7, Turgot's Eloge de Gourzay, 1759, Mirabeau's Ami des Hommes, 1755-1760 (including the Tableau Oeconomiqne with its explanation), Mirabeau's Theorie cle l'Imp6t, 1760, and his Philosophie Rllrale, 1763, quoted in the TVealth of Nations, and called by Grimm ' The Pentateuch of the Sect ' of the Economistes. In fine, the whole physiocratic doctrine had been given to the world before these lectures were delivered, and it is a large assumption that Adam Smith was still ignorant of its existence. He had evidently already developed a taste for French literature. He uses the French terms Police (cf. Herbert's Essai sur lapolice des Grainzs, and Baudeau's Analyse des Jtats polices) and concurrence in the sense of ' competition' (pp. 236, 240), and had read at least Montesquieu and Du Verney. Pages 224 and 230 (paragraph beginning 'Agriculture is of all other arts the most beneficent to society' . . . . 'agriculture, the most important branch of industry') are very like parts of Quesnay's article on Grains; and it seems to us a little perverse on the editor's part to refer in his notes to articles like Art and iEpingles in the Encyclope'die as ' authorities open to Adam Smith,' and not to give a reference of this kind. It is clear that Adam Smith was not imbued with the principles of the French school in 1763 ; but this does not justify the contention that so far as he agreed with them in 1763 he was independent of them in 1776. On the other hand, we demur to the implication that what was added to these lectures from 1763 to 1776 is,' created out of French materials.' Much of what was best in the French writers before 1776 was common to them with their British contemporaries. It would often be difficult, for instance, to determine whether some of Adam Smith's later views were derived, say, from Quesnay or from Tucker. The lectures on Police are distinctly inferior as a whole to the earlier work of Cantillon, Hume, and Tucker, and disprove the claims of priority which are suggested in Mr. Rae's biography. If these few loosely connected essays were the best economic thought of which Adam Smith was capable in 1763, after lecturing for eleven or twelve years, they show suffici-ently the immense advantage which he derived from subsequent study of the Physiocrats and others, and the peculiar physiocratic doctrines of the Wealth of Nations, of 'productive' and ' unproductive' employments of capital and the like, must certainly be ascribed to the influence of Quesnay's school. But the lectures are far from closing the discussion. Mr. Cannan says ' it is plain that Smith acquired the idea of the necessity of a scheme of distribution from the physiocrats,' though his own scheme was very differelnt from theirs. With this opinion it may

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be allowable to compare my own view expressed in 1890 in th Harvard Quarterly Journal of Economics (p. 454): 'The debt of Quesnay to Cantillon is not a borrowing of detail, but an influence of spirit. It was not upon questions of grande or petite culture, of oxen or horses, of productive or unproductive labour, that he found help in Cantillon, but in the scientific attitude which he adopted when he approached the Distribution of Wealth. This organisation of principle and analytical habit of mind, characteristic of the -Jconomistes, con- stituted their very real service to Adam Smith.' Take away the 'scheme of distribution' from a treatise on Political Economy, and what is left is of little account. Mr. Cannan's attack upon Thorold Rogers is crushing and conclu- sive. But this easy victory does not disprove the possibility of an influence of Turgot upon Adam Smith. Rogers chose his quotations unintelligently. -It is incredible that Adam Smith, who met Turgot in Paris and discussed economics with him when his RBflexions were being written, should never have had the curiosity to read them when they appeared, and they contain many passages (not to be paralleled in the Lectures) which offer much closer resemblance in ideas to the Wealth of Nations- than any which Rogers quotes. The late Dr. Hodgson expressed an opinion -that Adam Smith was made acquainted with the R4flexions by Tucker, to whom Turgot sent a copy in 1770; though it does not appear upon what foundation this opinion rested. But to pursue this subject would carry us too far. We can only conclude by congratulating ourselves upon possessing this valuable addition to the classical literature of economics, and by complimenting the editor upon the great skill and infinite pains with which he has pre- sented it to the world in a malnner worthy of the occasion and of himself. HENRY HIGG&

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