On the Liberty of the English: Adam Smith’s Reply to Montesquieu and Hume

• Date: 01 June 2022
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Author: Paul Sagar
• DOI: 10.1177/00905917211039763
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917211039763

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(3) 381 –404

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917211039763

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Article

On the Liberty of the

English: Adam Smith’s

Reply to Montesquieu

and Hume

Paul Sagar1

Abstract

This essay has two purposes—first, to identify Adam Smith as intervening

in the debate between Montesquieu and Hume regarding the nature, age,

and robustness of English liberty. Whereas Montesquieu took English

liberty to be old and fragile, Hume took it to be new and robust. Smith

disagreed with both: it was older than Hume supposed, but not fragile in

the way Montesquieu claimed. The reason for this was the importance of

the common law in England’s legal history. Seeing this enables the essay’s

second purpose: achieving a more thorough and nuanced understanding of

Smith’s account of liberty. This requires us to go beyond repeating Smith’s

famous claim that modern liberty was the result of the feudal barons trading

away their wealth and power for inane status goods. As I demonstrate,

this is only one part of a much wider story: of liberty requiring, and also

being constituted by, the rise of the regular administration of justice, and

ultimately the rule of law. Although Smith’s history of the English courts

and common law has been almost entirely neglected by scholars, it is

indispensable to understanding both his reply to Montesquieu and Hume

and his wider political theory of modern freedom.

Keywords

Adam Smith, David Hume, Montesquieu, rule of law, liberty

1Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Dr. Paul Sagar, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, UK.

Email: paul.sagar@kcl.ac.uk

1039763PTXXXX10.1177/00905917211039763Political TheorySagar

research-article2021

382 Political Theory 50(3)

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, it seeks to locate Adam Smith as

intervening in the debate between Montesquieu and Hume on the origins,

age, and robustness of English liberty. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu

famously took the liberty of the English to be old, but also fragile.

Responding in The History of England, Hume took the opposite view:

English liberty was only as old as the 1688 settlement, and yet nonetheless

likely to prove robust. Smith took an intermediate position, seeking to cor-

rect and improve both in turn. Core aspects of English liberty long predated

the Glorious Revolution in ways Hume had not appreciated. Yet those same

features ensured Hume was nonetheless right, and Montesquieu mistaken:

English liberty ought to prove robust.

Appreciating how and why Smith came to this position enables the essay’s

second purpose: facilitating a more thorough and nuanced appreciation of

Smith’s understanding of modern liberty, of where it came from and what it

required. In particular this means going beyond Smith’s well-known account

of how the feudal barons frittered away their political power by wasting their

wealth on inane status goods (WN III.iv.10; LJ(A) iv.157–58).1 For despite

the prominence that this part of Smith’s narrative has assumed in the estab-

lished scholarship, it is only one part of his overarching account, and to prop-

erly appreciate the role that it plays we must integrate it much more fully with

1. References to Smith’s works take the following abbreviations. CAS: The

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, rev. ed.

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 2 vols.; LJ(A): “Lectures on Jurisprudence,”

report of 1762–63, in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence

of Adam Smith: Volume V – Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D.

Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); LJ(B): “Jurisprudence

or Notes from the Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms delivered in

the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy,

report dated 1766,” in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence

of Adam Smith: Volume V – Lectures on Jurisprudence, eds. R. L. Meek, D. D.

Raphael, and P. G. Stein (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); LRBL: The Glasgow

Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith: Volume IV – Lectures

on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. C. Bryce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983);

TMS: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith:

Volume I – The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); WN: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and

Correspondence of Adam Smith: Volume II – An Inquiry into the Nature and

Causes of The Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B.

Todd, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).