ABSTRACT
Benjamin Vaughan explains why the old, narrow system had been mistakenly pursued for so long and why its last remnants should now be dropped. He suggested that Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that wherever readers find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce. Hume used doux-commerce language in his remarkable mid-century essay, Of Refinement in the Arts. He used the various discourses at his disposal to push the argument for free trade into an international, cosmopolitan vision of humanity, Anthony Pagden has used a line named, On the Jealousy of Trade, from Hume to exemplify the late eighteenth century shift from ancient attitudes of imperial competition toward more modern postures of international cooperation centred on commerce. Drawing on Adam Ferguson, philosophes like Rush adapted a stadial theory of development to the American context.
