Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham by Harold J. Laski

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In the light of this conception it is obvious enough that Smith's view
is impossible. No mere conflict of private interests, however pure in
motive, seems able to achieve a harmony of interest between the members
of the State. Liberty, in the sense of a positive and equal opportunity
for self-realization, is impossible save upon the basis of the
acceptance of certain minimal standards which can get accepted only
through collective effort. Smith did not see that in the processes of
politics what gets accepted is not the will that is at every moment a
part of the state-purpose, but the will of those who in fact operate the
machinery of government. In the half-century after he wrote the men who
dominated political life were, with the best intentions, moved by
motives at most points unrelated to the national well-being. The
fellow-servant doctrine would never have obtained acceptance in a state
where, as he thought, employer and workman stood upon an equal footing.
Opposition to the Factory Acts would never have developed in a community
where it was realized that below certain standards of subsistence the
very concept of humanity is impossible. Modern achievement implies a
training in the tools of life; and that, for most, is denied even in our
own day to the vast majority of men. In the absence of legislation, it
is certain that those who employ the services of men will be their
political masters; and it will follow that their Acts of Parliament will
be adapted to the needs of property. That shrinkage of the purpose of
the State will mean for most not merely hardship but degradation of all
that makes life worthy. Upon those stunted existences, indeed, a wealthy
civilization may easily be builded. Yet it will be a civilization of
slaves rather than of men.

The individualism, that is to say, for which Adam Smith was zealous
demands a different institutional expression from that which he gave it.
We must not assume an _a priori_ justification for the forces of the
past. The customs of men may represent the thwarting of the impulses of
the many at the expense of the few not less easily than they may embody
a general desire; and it is surely a mistaken usage to dignify as
natural whatever may happen to have occurred. A man may find
self-realization not less in working for the common good than in the
limited satisfaction of his narrow desire for material advancement. And
that, indeed, is the starting-point of modern effort. Our liberty means
the consistent expression of our personality in media where we find
people like-minded with ourselves in their conception of social life.
The very scale of civilization implies collective plans and common
effort. The constant revision of our basic notions was inevitable
immediately science was applied to industry. There was thus no reason to
believe that the system of individual interests for which Smith stood
sponsor was more likely to fit requirements of a new time than one which
implied the national regulation of business enterprise. The danger in
every period of history is lest we take our own age as the term in
institutional evolution. Private enterprise has the sanction of
prescription; but since the Industrial Revolution the chief lesson we
have had to learn is the unsatisfactory character of that title. History
is an unenviable record of bad metaphysics used to defend obsolete
systems. It took almost a century after the publication of the _Wealth
of Nations_ for men to realize that its axioms represented the
experience of a definite time. Smith thought of freedom in the terms
most suitable to his generation and stated them with a largeness of view
which remains impressive even at a century's distance.

But nothing is more certain in the history of political philosophy than
that the problem of freedom changes with each age. The nineteenth
century sought release from political privilege; and it built its
success upon the system prepared by its predecessor. It can never be too
greatly emphasized that in each age the substance of liberty will be
found in what the dominating forces of that age most greatly want. With
Locke, with Smith, with Hegel and with Marx, the ultimate hypothesis is
always the summary of some special experience universalized. That does
not mean that the past is worthless. Politics, as Seeley said, are
vulgar unless they are liberalized by history; and a state which failed
to see itself as a mosaic of ancestral institutions would build its
novelties upon foundations of sand. Suspicions of collective effort in
the eighteenth century ought not to mean suspicion in the twentieth; to
think in such fashion is to fall into the error for which Lassalle so
finely criticized Hegel. It is as though one were to confound the
accidental phases of the history of property with the philosophic basis
of property itself. From such an error it is the task of history above
all to free us. For it records the ideals and doubts of earlier ages as
a perennial challenge to the coming time.

The rightness of this attitude admits of proof in terms of the double
tradition to which Adam Smith gave birth. On the one hand he is the
founder of the classic political economy. With Ricardo, the elder Mill
and Nassau Senior, the main preoccupation is the production of wealth
without regard to its moral environment; and the state for them is
merely an engine to protect the atmosphere in which business men achieve
their labors. There is nothing in them of that fine despair which made
Stuart Mill welcome socialism itself rather than allow the continuance
of the new capitalist system. Herein the State is purged of moral
purpose; and the utilitarian method achieves the greatest happiness by
insisting that the technique of production must dominate all other
circumstances. Until the Reform Act of 1867, the orthodox economists
remained unchallenged. The use of the franchise was only beginning to be
understood. The "new model" of trade unionism had not yet been tested in
the political field. But it was discovered impossible to act any longer
upon the assumptions of the abstract economic man. The infallible sense
of his own interest was discovered to be without basis in the facts for
the simple reason that the instruments of his perception obviously
required training if they were to be applied to a complex world.
Individualism, in the old, utilitarian sense, passed away because it
failed to build a State wherein a channel of expression might be found
for the creative energies of humble men.

It is only within the last two decades that we have begun to understand
the inner significance of the protest against this economic liberalism.
Adam Smith had declared the source of value to lie in labor; and, at
the moment of its deepest agony, there were men willing to point the
moral of his tale. That it represented an incautious analysis was, for
them, unimportant beside the fact that it opened once more a path
whereby economics could be reclaimed for moral science. For if labor was
the source of value, as Bray and Thompson pointed out, it seemed as
though degradation was the sole payment for its services. They did not
ask whether the organization they envisaged was economically profitable,
but whether it was ethically right. No one can read the history of these
years and fail to understand their uncompromising denial of its
rightness. Their negation fell upon unheeding ears; but twenty years
later, the tradition for which they stood came into Marx's hands and was
fashioned by him into an interpretation of history. With all its faults
of statement and of emphasis, the doctrine of the English socialists has
been, in later hands, the most fruitful hypothesis of modern politics.
It was a deliberate effort, upon the basis of Adam Smith's ideas, to
create a commonwealth in the interests of the masses. Wealth, in its
view, was less the mere production of goods than the accumulated
happiness of humble men. The impulses it praised and sought through
state-action to express were, indeed, different from those upon which
Smith laid emphasis; and he would doubtless have stood aghast at the way
in which his thought was turned to ends of which he did not dream. Yet
he can hardly have desired a greater glory. He thus made possible not
only knowledge of a State untrammelled in its economic life by moral
considerations; but also the road to those categories wherein the old
conception of co-operative effort might find a new expression. Those who
trod in his footsteps may have repudiated the ideal for which he stood,
but they made possible a larger hope in which he would have been proud
and glad to share.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This bibliography makes no pretence to completeness. It attempts only to
enumerate the more obvious sources that an interested reader would care
to examine.

GENERAL

LESLIE STEPHEN. _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_.
1876. Vol. II, Chapters IX and X.

W.E.H. LECKY. _History of England in the Eighteenth Century._

A.L. SMITH. _Political Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries_ in the _Cambridge Modern History_. Vol. VI,
Chapter XXIII.

J. BONAR. _Philosophy and Political Economy_. Chapters V-IX.

F.W. MAITLAND. _An Historical Sketch of Liberty and Equality_ in
_Collected Papers_. Vol. I.

CHAPTER II

JOHN LOCKE. _Works_ (Eleventh Edition), 10 volumes. London, 1812.

H.R. FOX-BOURNE. _Life of John Locke_. London, 1876.

T.H. GREEN. _The Principles of Political Obligation_ in _Collected
Works_. Vol. II. London, 1908.

PETER. LORD KING. _The Life and Letters of John Locke_. London, 1858.

SIR F. POLLOCK. _Locke's Theory of the State_ in _Proc. Brit. Acad._.
Vol. I. London, 1904.

S.P. LAMPRECHT. _The Moral and Political Philosophy of Locke_. New York,
1918.

A.A. SEATON. _The Theory of Toleration under the Later Stuarts_.
Cambridge, 1911.

J.N. FIGGIS. _The Divine Right of Kings_. Cambridge, 1914.

CHAPTER III

JEREMY COLLIER. _The History of Passive Obedience_. London, 1689.

WILLIAM SHERLOCK. _The Case of Resistance_. London, 1684.

CHARLES LESLIE. _The Case of the Regale_ (Collected Works). Vol. III,
p. 291.
_The Rehearsal_.
_The New Association_.
_Cassandra_.
_The Finishing Stroke_.
_Obedience to Civil Government Clearly Stated_.
_The Best Answer_.
_The Best of All_.

SAMUEL GRASCOM. _A Brief Answer_.

E. SHELLINGFLEET. _A Vindication of their Majesties Authoritie_.

B. SHOWER. _A Letter to a Convocation Man._

W. WAKE. _The Authority of Christian Princes_. _The State of the Church_
(1703).

FRANCIS ATTERBURY. _Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English
Convocation_ (1701).

BENJAMIN HOADLY. _Origins of Civil Government_ (1710).
_Preservative Against Nonjurors_ (1716).
_Works_, 3 vols. London (1773).

WILLIAM LAW. _A Defence of Church Principles_ (ed. Gore). Edinburgh,
1904.

W. WARBURTON. _Alliance between Church and State_ (1736).

J.H. OVERTON. _The Nonjurors._ New York, 1903.

T. LATHEBURY. _History of Convocation._ London, 1842.

CHAPTER IV

BERKELEY. _Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721).

H. ST. JOHN (Viscount Bolingbroke). _Works._ 5 vols. London, 1754.

LORD EGMONT. _Faction detected by the Evidence of Facts_ (1742).

DAVID HUME. _Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals_ (1752).
_Essays_. (1742-1752) ed. Green & Grose. London, 1876.

W. SICHEL. _Life of Bolingbroke_. 2 vols. 1900-4.

J. CHURTON COLLINS. _Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England_.

J. HILL BURTON. _Life of Hume_.

CHAPTER V

MONTESQUIEU. _L'Esprit des Lois_ (1748).

J.J. ROUSSEAU. _Du Contrat Social_ (1762). See ed. by Vaughan, 1918.

JOHN BROWN. _Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_
(1757).

ADAM FERGUSON. _Essay on the History of Civil Society_ (1767).

WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. _Commentaries_ (1765-9).

JEREMY BENTHAM. _A Fragment on Government_ (1776). Ed. F.C. Montague,
1891.

J. DE LOLME. _The Constitution of England_ (1775).

ROBERT WALLACE. _Various Prospects_ (1761).

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. _Essay on the First Principles of Government_ (1768).

RICHARD PRICE. _Observations on Civil Liberty_ (1776). _Additional
Observations_ (1777).

WILLIAM OGILVIE. _The Right of Property in Land_ (1781). Ed. Macdonald,
1891.

JOSIAH TUCKER. _Treatise on Civil Government_ (1781).

SAMUEL JOHNSON. _Taxation No Tyranny_ (1775).

M. BEER. _History of British Socialism_ (1919).

JAMES BOSWELL. _Life of Samuel Johnson_ (1791).

CHAPTER VI

EDMUND BURKE. _Collected Works_. London, 1808.

JOHN MORLEY. _Edmund Burke_ (1867). _Life of Burke_ (1887).

J. MACCUNN. _The Political Philosophy of Burke_ (1908).

JUNIUS. _Letters_ (1769-72). London, 1812.

THOMAS PAINE. _The Rights of Man_ (1791-2).

JAMES MACKINTOSH. _Vendiciae Gallicae_ (1791).

CHAPTER VII

CHARLES DAVENANT. _Works_. London, 1771.

SIR DUDLEY NORTH. _A Discourse upon Trade_ (1691).

ADAM SMITH. _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ (1759).
_Wealth of Nations_ (1776).
_Lectures on Justice and Police_. (Ed. Cannan, 1896).

W.R. SCOTT. _Life of Francis Hutcheson_ (1900).

JOHN RAE. _Life of Adam Smith_ (1895).

W. BAGEHOT. _Adam Smith as a Person_ in _Coll. Works_. Vol. VII.

F.W. HIRST. _Adam Smith_ (1904).

W. HASBACH. _Untersuchungen ueber Adam Smith_ (1891).

J. BONAR. _A Catalogue of Adam Smith's Library_ (1894).

T. CLIFFE LESLIE. _Adam Smith_ in _Essays in Moral and Political
Philosophy_ (1879).

E. TROELTSCH. _Die Sociallehren der Christlichen Kirchen_ (1912).

INDEX

Addison, 69
Andrewes, 83
Ashley, 33-4
Atterbury, 102
Austin, 62

Bagehot, 9, 249
Barbeyrac, 68
Barrow, 84
Bellarmine, 83, 121
Bentham, 23, 62, 72, 151, 157, 175, 194
Berkeley, 10, 129
Blackstone, 163-4, 174f
Bolingbroke, 69, 131f
Bonald, 277
Bonar, 300
Bonwicke, 82
Boswell, 209
Bray, 307, 315
Brown (J.), 168
Brown (R.), 52
Burke, 7, 8, 16, 30, 157, 159, 166, 221f, 286
Burnet, 80, 87, 93
Busher, 52

Cartwright, 97
Chatham, 132, 167, 188, 262
Chillingworth, 52
Chubb, 128
Coleridge, 277
Collier, 84n
Cowper, 20
Crabbe, 20

Dalrymple, 8
Darwin, 67
Davenant, 283, 287
Defoe, 8, 128, 132
Dicey, 175, 179
Disraeli, 132
Divine Right, 7, 30
Dodwell, 82
Dupont de Nemours, 292

Egmont, 142
Eldon, 159

Ferguson, 172-4
Fielding, 160
Filmer, 7, 38

Galsworthy, 171-2
George III, 13, 15, 158, 188, 213f
Godwin, 10, 163, 222, 276
Goldsmith, 19, 223
Goodman, 57
Grascom, 86
Gray, 160
Green (T.H.), 61, 279

Haldane, 126
Hales, 52
Halifax, 8, 27
Hall, 17, 307
Hamilton (J.L. & B.), 19
Harrington, 147
Hegel, 249, 277, 212-3
Hickes, 83
Hoadly, 9, 22, 69, 107f
Hobbes, 8, 16, 30, 40f, 72, 91, 278, 284
Hodgskin, 17, 307
Holmes (O.W.), 63n, 269
Holt, 14,
Hooker, 44
Hotman, 57, 68
Hume, 8, 11, 71, 92, 143f, 278, 284, 297
Hutcheson, 11, 153, 155, 291, 297

Independents, 40

Jackson, 84
James II, 24f, 35
Johnson (Dr.), 18, 210f, 223, 230
Junius, 21, 219

Keble, 82
Kerr, 82
Knox, 57, 83, 97

Lassalle, 313
Laud, 285
Law, 22, 108f
Leslie, 80, 85, 88, 90, 97, 104, 132
Locke, 7, 11, 21, 29-76, 79, 197, 207, 273, 287
de Lolme, 10, 183f

Mackintosh, 269
Madison, 63
Maine, 66, 249
Maistre, 91, 252, 273
Malthus, 305
Mandeville, 129, 284
Mariana, 57
Martin, 69
Marx, 312, 315
Melville, 121
Mill, 157
Milton, 52
Molyneux, 68
Montesquieu, 12, 63, 160f, 173, 183
Morley, 132, 223

Newton, 37
Newman, 81, 122, 125
North, 287

Ogilvie, 199f
Owen, 17, 307
Oxford Movement, 81

Paine, 202, 269
Paley, 157
Pattison, 10
Penn, 58
Place, 306
Pope, 69, 128, 132
Price, 196f
Priestley, 72, 190f
Proast, 64
Prynne, 8, 55
Pufendorf, 68
Pulteney, 217

Quesnay, 288, 292

Renan, 249
Ricardo, 305
Richardson, 160
Richardson (S.), 52
Rousseau, 8, 74, 162f, 188, 197, 276
Royer-Collard, 226
Ruskin, 293, 301

Sanderson, 84
Savigny, 249, 277
Seeley, 312
Selden, 9
Senior, 304
Separation of Powers, 63f
Shaftesbury, 11, 128, 155
Sherlock (T.), 108
Sherlock (W.), 87
Shower, 99
Sidney, 7, 57
Smith (Adam), 9, 16, 152, 195, 258, 281f
Smith (A.L.), 140
Snape, 108
Social Contract, 57
Spelman, 9
Spence, 202
Stammler, 60
Steele, 284
Stephen (F.), 65
Stephen (L.), 108, 223
Stillingfleet, 37, 87, 93
Suarez, 57

Taylor, 52, 57
Temple, 283
Thompson, 307, 215
Tindal, 123
Tocqueville, 254
Toleration, 52, 64
Tucker, 71, 206f, 288
Turgot, 288, 292

Voltaire, 12, 132, 160

Wake, 80, 100f
Wallace, 188
Walpole, 13, 21, 128-30
Warburton, 69, 118f, 192
Wilberforce, 290
Wilkes, 167, 188, 220
William III, 25f
Williams (Roger), 52
Woolston, 128
Wordsworth, 277

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