Adam Smith’s free trade casuistry

Abstract

ABSTRACTSmith held a low opinion of casuistry as a moral system because of its false precision and potential to corrupt our sense of duty. Yet Smith endorsed the basic premise of casuistical reasoning in relation to state administration – that the application of principles would need to take into account the circumstances of a given case, especially when principles conflicted. This paper recovers the casuistical character of Smith’s exceptions to a policy of free trade, which he justified with reference to the statesman’s higher duties of providing security and justice. The exercise has two key effects. The first is to direct attention to the manner in which Smith first isolated wealth as an analytical category distinct from strength, a precondition for his reintegration of strength and wealth as superior and inferior goals of statesmanship. This was a major disruption to existing argumentative conventions, one that reveals the dangers of accepting Smith’s construction of a ‘mercantile system’ on his terms. The second effect is to highlight the implications of the disappearance of the statesman as an integrating site of reasoning with respect to multiple discourses of state administration. In short, the phrase ‘free trade’ is likely to mislead in relation to Smith.