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.
Highlights
The purpose of this essay is twofold
In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu famously took the liberty of the English to be old, and fragile
Arbitrary government under absolute monarchy, even if it was a substantial improvement in terms of the regular administration of justice, fell short of the fully fledged rule of law that Smith saw as enabling the most developed forms of modern liberty that were enjoyed in the western Europe of his own day
Summary
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. The coronation of Charles II did improve matters by ending the arbitrary government overseen by Cromwell, an enthusiasm to welcome the king back to England initially led the pendulum to swing too far toward royal power and prerogative, while the fundamental incoherence of the English constitution as regards the balance between Crown and Parliament was not resolved (Hume 1983, 6:190–91).
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