ABSTRACT
In 1790, John Kay, eighteenth-century barber turned engraver, left us an endearing sketch of Adam Smith,2 who he identified as, “The Author of The Wealth of Nations” (Smith, 1776; hereafterWealth orWN for page references). Kay’s portrait was made in the same year that the sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith, 1759; hereafter Sentiments or TMS for page references) appeared but, although Sentiments had been well received from its first edition to the last, it would be thoroughly eclipsed by Wealth for the following two centuries. Kay marks the expression of this truth already in 1790. Here is a quotation that hints why Smith’s first great book would be left in the
philosophical shadows by his second: “Smith was highly taken with Pitt, and one evening when dining with him, he remarked to Addington after dinner, ‘What an extraordinary man Pitt is; he understands my ideas better than I do myself’” (Rae, 1895, p. 405, quoted from Pellew, 1847, p. 151). The ideas which Smith is quoted as saying that Pitt understood “better than I do
myself” provided the intellectual foundation for the political economy that would nurture what economic historians tell us is the unprecedented takeoff of two centuries of growth in human economic betterment; for the first time in human history, per capita income and wealth would begin its astonishing acceleration. But, as Smith would be the first to emphasize, he was only the messenger – albeit a deeply insightful one – of transformations that grew out of Northern European human experience. McClosky (2010) has taught us that what mattered most in this reformation was a change in attitude at ground level: the widespread acceptance of liberal ideas respecting the dignity of people whose origins were the plainest and most ordinary. The rhetoric of prudence came to include “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice” (WN IV.ix.3, p. 664). These liberal principles fuelled Smith’s opposition to slavery, mercantilism, empire, colonialism, taxation without representation, and his belief that “the fortune of every individual should depend as much as possible upon his merit, and as little as possible upon his privilege” (Mossner and Ross, 1977, Letter number 143, p 178).3
