PREFACE
[The work here presented to the American reader, was composed with the intention of being published in Great Britain; under this idea the following Preface was written.As it explains the design of the original undertaking, It has been thought proper that it should retain the place it was at first intended, to occupy.]
To promote prosperity within, to guard against danger from without, have ever been esteemed the two great branches of the duty of the Statesman.
But of all the sources of internal prosperity, or means of repelling external aggressions, no one, in modern times, is of greater efficacy than wealth.
We have, therefore, no reason to be surprised, that statesmen should have endeavored to procure for their respective countries the greatest possible amount of it.If the laws they have enacted, and the regulations they have for this purpose established, have really answered the ends they were intended to promote, they are certainly praiseworthy.
Of the efficacy of such laws, for those purposes, politicians for a long time did not doubt; but a great revolution in public opinion has taken place, and almost all men who now pretend to understand the principles that should govern the policy of nations, agree in condemning them.
This revolution in the opinions of men, had its rise in France.It might have died there, however, with the sect from which it had birth, had not a man of surprising genius, placing himself at the head of the feeble party then supporting it, enabling them to give their principles currency throughout the nations of Europe, Adam Smith will be recorded among remote generations, as one having powerfully influenced the opinions and policy of the civilized world, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.His great work no sooner appeared in Britain than it was read, and the opinions it maintained adopted, by every one who pretended to any knowledge of the important subjects of which it treated.It quickly, and with like success, spread through other lands.Never was the force which mere intellect possesses more strikingly manifested.To illustrate his speculations, to cast them into new forms suited to the varied tastes of various nations, became an employment by which men of undoubted genius thought themselves honored.His reasonings are the basis of numerous systems and innumerable essays.A voluminous library might be formed of the works of men who call him master.Nor were the dicta of a retired student acquiesced in, and embraced, only by theorists like himself.They have guided the councils, they have formed the text book of statesmen, and have had an important influence on the policy of nations.
Against doctrines supported by so great a weight of authority, what, it may be demanded, can possibly be urged? and how comes it, that so obscure an individual as the author of the following pages, places himself in opposition to them? Custom authorises me,in a measure calls on me, in answer to these questions, to state to the reader how I was led to form opinions opposed to this system, and why I bring those opinions before him.
Many years ago, I became engaged in a series of inquiries into the circumstances which have governed the history of man, or, to vary the expression, into the causes which have made him what he is in various countries, or has been in various times.It seemed to me, that, by gathering together all that consciousness makes known to us of what is within, and all that observation informs us of what lies without, the real agents in the production of the great events by which the fortunes of our race have been diversified, might be at least partially discovered, the laws regulating their procedure traced, and that thus the materials for a true Natural History of man might be reached.The pursuits in which I was engaged led me to the subject on the side of physiology, and what `is termed metaphysics, and imagining that I saw a ray of light struggling through the obscurity of the objects, amidst which these investigations placed me, I began to conceive hopes of being able to dispel some of the darkness, in which are involved causes that have produced, and are producing, results of the highest importance to us.To this pursuit I determined to devote myself.Such a resolution would scarcely have been taken by any one unless prompted by the enthusiasm natural to youth, and would not have been adopted by me, had I not had the prospect of enjoying every facility in following out the objects Ihad in view; but a sudden and unexpected change took place in my circumstances, and I exchanged the literary leisure of Europe for the solitude and labors of the Canadian backwoods.I found, notwithstanding, that this accident could not altogether put a stop to my inquiries, though it retarded them and altered their form.
I had early turned for assistance to the Inquiry into the nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and to the speculations of the political economists.But, I found their scope and design too confined, to advance the attainment of my purpose in the degree I had anticipated, and I had besides the mortification of perceiving, that the conclusions to which they led, were, in many points, opposed to those at which I had arrived.
