Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

by Roy Porter

  90 Dean, The Constitution of Poverty, pp. 27–8: William Petty argued that ‘Fewness of people is real poverty’: William Petty, Treatise of Taxes and Contributions (1662), p. 34.

  91 Sylvana Tomaselli, ‘Moral Philosophy and Population Questions in Eighteenth-century Europe’ (1989); Frederick G. Whelan, ‘Population and Ideology in the Enlightenment’ (1991).

  92 J. Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786), p. 34. For discussion, see Kenneth Smith, The Malthusian Controversy (1951), pp. 28–9.

  93 Dean, The Constitution of Poverty, p. 69.

  94 Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population. For Malthus's ideas, see James R. Bonar, Malthus and His Work (1966); Donald Winch, Malthus (1987); Smith, The Malthusian Controversy; Andrew Pyle (ed.), Population: Contemporary Responses to Thomas Malthus (1994), p. 129. For a definitive biography, see Patricia James, Population Malthus: His Life and Times (1979). Malthus is briefly discussed here in terms of population and poverty; for a wider account of his politics, see chapter 20.

  95 Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact (1998).

  96 Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2nd edn (1803), p. 531. Malthus argued that:

  A man… if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him.

  97 Thomas Peacock, Melincourt (1817), in David Garnett (ed.), The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (1948), pp. 103f.

  98 Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, p. 20.

  99 Ian Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution (1992); J. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1870 (1979).

  100 William Blake, ‘Holy Thursday’ (1793), in G. Keynes (ed.), Blake: Complete Writings (1969), p. 211, ll. 1–4.

  101 Karlis Racevskis, Postmodernism and the Search for Enlightenment (1993); Robert Darnton, ‘George Washington's False Teeth’ The New York Review (27 March 1997). For the reform of popular culture, see Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, p. 208.

  102 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1979). Underpinning this was the notion of a native virtue, corrupted by society: see Lois Whitney, Primitivism and the Idea of Progress (1934).

  This limitation to populism was not an aberration unique to Britain. In France the philosophes wished to reform, not to revolutionize, society, and the outlook of Voltaire and others to the common people was generally severe. Philosophes sought not to heed but to help the peasantry, whose lot was to be alleviated to make them more useful and society stronger: H. C. Payne, The Philosophes and the People (1976).

  103 R. Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750 (1985).

  104 Larry Stewart, The Selling of Newton’ (1986); Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (1988), pp. 116f.

  105 Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (1982); Dror Wahrman, ‘National Society, Communal Culture’ (1992).

  17 THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH

  1 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1976 [1776]), vol. i, bk II, ch. 3, p. 341.

  2 Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (1989). A butcher's son, Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) for a time he made his living as a merchant, but was bankrupted. He wrote extensively about trade, notably The Complete English Tradesman (1969 [1726]). He pioneered adventurous novels with exotic plots, including Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722), Roxana (1724) and The History and Remarkable Life of Colonel Jacque, Commonly Call'd (1722). He was responsible for the Review (1704–13), in which he was sponsored by Robert Harley, though he later wrote for the Whigs. In A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) he offered an account of the country that stressed improvement and the value of commerce.

  3 For Defoe on demons, see Peter Earle, The World of Daniel Defoe (1976), p. 43f.

  4 Daniel Defoe, The Compleat English Gentleman (1729), in James T. Boulton, Selected Writings of Daniel Defoe (1975), p. 247.

  5 Daniel Defoe, The Review (3 January 1706), quoted in Denis Donoghue, England, Their England (1988), p. 65. For his praise of the commercial classes, see The Complete English Tradesman, vol. i, pp. 368–87. For his economic views, see T. K. Meier, Defoe and the Defense of Commerce (1987); Simon Schaffer, ‘Defoe's Natural Philosophy and the Worlds of Credit’ (1989), and ‘A Social History of Plausibility’ (1993).

  6 Daniel Defoe, Review (1706), vol. ii, p. 26, quoted in Donoghue, England, Their England, p. 65.

  7 Defoe, Review, (Thursday, 5 February 1713), vol. ix, p. 109, quoted in Donoghue, England, Their England, p. 65.

  8 Daniel Defoe, preface to A Plan of the English Commerce (1728), p. x.

  9 Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1924 [1714]), vol. i, p. 116.

  10 Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom, Joseph Addison's Sociable Animal (1971), pp. 11–83.

  11 Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), p. xi; Nancy F. Koehn, The Power of Commerce (1994), p. 25.

  12 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator (1965), vol. i, no. 69, p. 296 (Saturday, 19 May 1711).

  13 For traditional Christian economics, see Richard Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926).

  14 E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (1991); Robert W. Gordon, ‘Paradoxical Property’ (1995); and the discussion in John Rule, The Vital Century (1992), p. 79.

  15 On mercantilism, see D. C. Coleman, The Economy of England 1450–1750 (1977); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1970), pp. 174–80.

  16 David Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Trade’ (1741–2), in Selected Essays (1993), p. 191. See the discussion in Ronald L. Meek (ed.), Precursors of Adam Smith (1973), pp. 61f.

  17 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk IV, ch. 8, p. 661.

  18 W. L. Letwin, The Origins of Scientific Economics (1963), pp. 41–5; Erich Roll, A History of Economic Thought (1938); J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (1954), pp. 186–7; Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx (1977), pp. 34–6.

  19 The title of book IV of Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

  20 Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-century England (1978), and Ideology and Theory’ (1976); for the old norms, see E. P. Thompson, The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ (1971); Keith Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor (1985); J. M. Neeson, Commoners (1993). Analysed by Thompson, Snell and Neeson, the agrarian debate will not be covered further here.

  21 For human nature and economics, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (1977); James Thompson, Models of Value (1996); Sylvana Tomaselli, ‘Political Economy’ (1995).

  22 Koehn, The Power of Commerce, pp. 74f; W. George Shelton, Dean Tucker and Eighteenth-century Economic and Political Thought (1981); Robert Brown, The Nature of Social Laws, Machiavelli to Mill (1984), p. 58; J. G. A. Pocock, Josiah Tucker on Burke, Locke, and Price’ (1985); Jacob Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order (1972), p. 92. Warburton is said to have remarked that Tucker, dean of Gloucester, made trade his religion.

  23 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 7, pp. 74–5. Prices should thus be natural: ‘When the quantity brought to market is just sufficient to supply the effectual demand, and no more, the market price naturally comes to be either exactly, or as nearly as can be judged of, the same with the natural price’ (bk VII). To Smith, the laws of supply and demand should operate as naturally as the laws of gravitation.

  24 Charles Davenant, ‘A Memorial concerning the Coyn of England’ (1695), in Abbot Payson Usher (ed.), Two Manuscripts by Charles Davenant (1942), pp. 20–21.

  25 Charles Davenant, An Essay on the East-India-Trade (sn, 1696), pp. 25, 3
4.

  26 See Dudley North, Discourses Upon Trade (1691), quoted in Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-century England, p. 169; Terence Hutchison, Before Adam Smith (1988); compare Alessandro Roncaglia, Petty: The Origins of Political Economy (1985).

  27 Joyce Oldham Appleby, ‘Locke, Liberalism and the Natural Law of Money’ (1976); C. G. Caffentzis, Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government (1989). For Locke, see Patrick Hyde Kelly (ed.) Locke on Money (1991).

  28 Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, p. 58.

  29 Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, p. 65. See above, chapter 7.

  30 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk II, ch. 3, p. 341. For discussions of Smith which transcend the limited and often anachronistic concerns of modern economists, see Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics (1978), and Riches and Poverty (1996). Stephen Copley and Kathryn Sutherland (eds.), Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1995); V. Brown, Adam Smith's Discourse (1994).

  31 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. IV, p. 37.

  32 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 2, pp. 26–7. For Sir James Steuart, it was ‘the combination of every private interest which forms the public good’; ‘publick happiness’, therefore, as Smith explained, was often the unintended result of all the members of a society acting ‘merely from a view to their own interest’, and in pursuit of the principle ‘of turning a penny wherever a penny was to be got’: quoted in John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt (1986), p. 49.

  33 Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence (1982 [lectures given 1762–3]), vol. iv, p. 163. The following depends heavily upon Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury (1994), pp. 152–73.

  34 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. II, bk IV, ch. 9, p. 674. Smith was not oblivious to the drawbacks of the manufacturing system:

  The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

  (Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 782.)

  35 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 185.

  36 Berry, The Idea of Luxury, p. 153.

  37 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 4, p. 37.

  38 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 2, p. 30; the phrase is often repeated.

  39 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk II, ch. 3, p. 341.

  40 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1976 [1759]), pp. 60, 292. Smith departed from the physiocrats regarding the source of value: Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment (1998), p. 122.

  41 ‘Digression on the Corn Trade’ in Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk IV, ch. 5, p. 540:

  The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.

  42 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 1, pp. 22–3.

  43 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 333.

  44 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 689. For Hume, see Eugene Rotwein, David Hume: Writings on Economics (1970).

  45 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 709.

  46 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 14; Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 714.

  47 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 712.

  48 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 717.

  49 David Hume, The History of England (1894 [1754–62]), vol. iii, p. 99; cf. vol. iii, p. 602. For Hume's economics, see Rotwein, David Hume: Writings on Economics; Meek, Precursors of Adam Smith, p. 43. For Smith's tributes to Hume, see Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 4, p. 412.

  50 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 4, p. 413.

  51 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk IV, ch. 3, p. 660.

  52 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 4, p. 419.

  53 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 712. Hume spoke of ‘worthless toys and gewgaws’: John B. Stewart, Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy (1992), p. 193.

  54 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, pp. 227, 416, 420.

  55 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 4, p. 421.

  56 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 4, p. 422; on ‘unintended consequences’, see Christopher J. Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (1997), pp. 39–47.

  57 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 1, p. 22.

  58 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 1, p. 24.

  59 As Smith frankly put it, ‘civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all’. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 715.

  60 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 7, p. 80. He also believed the Law of Settlement under the Poor Law was an unacceptable infringement on freedom: Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk V, ch. 1, p. 715.

  61 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk III, ch. 3, p. 400.

  62 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii, bk IV, ch. 9, p. 687.

  63 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk II, ch. 3, p. 346.

  64 Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 226.

  65 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 8, p. 99.

  The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation, so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition… Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.

  See A. W. Coats, ‘Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’ (1958). Smith saw labour as creating wealth; in this respect he owed something to the French physiocrats: Ian Ross, ‘The Physiocrats and Adam Smith’ (1984).

  66 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 8, p. 99.

  67 Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wea
lth of Nations, vol. i, bk I, ch. 8, p. 99.

  68 For this theme, see Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, ‘Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations: An Introductory Essay’, in Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (eds), Wealth And Virtue (1983), pp. 1–44. The authors' claim that ‘the Wealth of Nations was centrally concerned with the issue of justice’ seems overstated (p. 2).

  69 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 86.

  70 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 86; cf. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1978 [1739–40]), p. 497.

  71 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 82.

  72 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 231.

  73 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1995 [1767]), p. 255. The context of the Essay has been discussed in chapter 10.