Adam Smith's Rebuke of the Slave Trade, 1759.

• Author: Klein, Daniel B.
• Position: Theory of Moral Sentiments - Critical essay

Interest in Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS, Smith [1759] 1976b) has soared during the past thirty-five years. Long eclipsed by The Wealth of Nations (WN, Smith [1776] 1976a), TMS now has a popular estimation more in line with Smith's own estimation. Shortly after Smith's death in 1790, a friend reported that Smith always considered TMS "a much superior work to [WN]" (Romilly 1840,1: 404).

The wonder and mystery of TMS is open-ended, but here we consider specifically two sentences, perhaps the most powerful passage in TMS. It comes in part V, titled "Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation." The part is curiously meandering and enigmatic; the passage is the key to the whole part. Once the passage is fully appreciated, the whole part achieves cogency and power. It is quite clear that the two sentences, appearing in the original edition of 1759 and maintained thereafter, were an inspiration to the early antislavery movement.

Smith says that from the regularities of experience and practice "the imagination acquires a habit" and that such regularities--custom among the society in general, fashion among those "of a high rank, or character" (TMS 194.3)--may cause "many irregular and discordant opinions which prevail in different ages and nations concerning what is blamable or praise-worthy" (194.1). (1) The part consists of two chapters. The first considers clothing, furniture, architecture, and other such inanimate objects and argues that, here, custom and fashion play a large role.

The second chapter turns to the influence of custom and fashion "upon Moral Sentiments"--that is, sentiments about the beauty or deformity of human conduct and character. Since the title of the entire part speaks only of "Moral Approbation and Disapprobation," we may regard the first chapter, treating inanimate objects (or objects of nonmoral sentiment) as a warmup.

Less malleable, these: the moral sentiments, "though they may be somewhat warpt, cannot be entirely perverted," for they "are founded on the strongest and most vigorous passions of human nature" (200.1). To the extent that moral standards do vary, they vary with circumstances. The variations follow different professions, different stages of life--young versus old=-and different stages of society--barbarism versus civilization and refinement.

Among "civilized nations," people cultivate especially the soft, amiable virtues, whereas in "rude and barbarous nations" people cultivate especially the respectable virtues of self-command. Smith employs the distinction between the amiable and the respectable virtues (23-26.1-10).

In a mammoth paragraph of 957 words, (2) Smith opens an extended, engrossing description of the "savages in North America," whose "magnanimity and self-command, in this respect, are almost beyond the conception of Europeans" (206.9). He embarks on a remarkable account of how they behave under great adversity and duress, including capture by their enemies and protracted torture. The description is delivered calmly, but it produces a bracing and sobering effect on the reader, inspiring a sense of awe. Smith continues the mammoth paragraph telling of their "song of death":

Every savage is said to prepare himself, from his earliest youth, for this dreadful end: he composes for this purpose what they call the song of death, a song which he is to sing when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies, and is expiring under the tortures which they inflict upon him. It consists of insults upon his tormentors, and expresses the highest contempt of death and pain. He sings this song upon all extraordinary occasions; when he goes out to war, when he meets his enemies in the field, or whenever he has a mind to shew that he has familiarized his imagination to the most dreadful misfortunes, and that no human event can daunt his resolution or alter his purpose. (206.9) At this point, Smith turns the scene away from the native communities of North America: "The same contempt of death and torture prevails among all other savage nations."

There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished. (206-7.9) After these two sentences, appearing at the end of the mammoth paragraph, Smith continues his original theme, as though nothing has happened. But something has, and we must pause to reflect on them.

The two sentences condemn slavery in general but aim especially at what was...