When men unite in large societies, they cannot each take an active part in what concerns the common good.They are obliged to delegate their individual powers and rights to act, in things relating to it, to several, or to one.
This body of men, or this man, acting and making laws for the supposed advantage of the whole, may properly be termed the legislator.It is, therefore, the capacities and powers of the whole, as far as they make one, turned to this sphere of action, and designated by this term, that we have now to consider.
"Man is generally considered by statesmen and projectors, as the materials of a sort of political mechanics.Projectors disturb nature in the course of her operations on human affairs; and it requires no more than to let her alone and give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends, that she may establish her own designs." "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical." (155)The principle here set forth by Adam Smith, though not formally announced in the Wealth of Nations, runs, nevertheless, through the whole work, and in its particular application to this science, forms the most important of the conclusions to which his reasonings tend.It is very frequently, also, expressly brought forward by the supporters of his opinions, as an argument against the interference of the legislator, and of all those they employ, none perhaps, is more popular, or has bad greater influence in giving currency to the system.A brief examination of its merit may not, then, form an improper introduction to the particular subject of this book.
In strict philosophical accuracy, the whole of every political system is certainly natural.Every political system must be allowed to have proceeded from the operation through long extended time, of the things without, and the things within man, acting as the powers and principles which nature has given them cause them to act.Every such system has many parts, but they all belong to a great whole, and from their action and reaction on each other the movements of that whole proceed.It seems not, therefore, to me, that we can take any of those parts separate from the others, and with propriety say, that it acts in opposition to the designs of nature, for that cannot well be said to be in opposition to the designs of nature, or to thwart her operations, which proceeds from principles that she herself has established.Least of all can statesmen be taken separate from the rest of the frame of society, and the actions they generate considered as unnatural, or operating contrary to the order of things which nature has established, for, to speak in the general, they are all moulded after the form and character of their time and nation, and instead of giving laws to the age, must rather be regarded by the philosopher as emanations of its genius, and organs by which its voice is uttered.Were the whole present race of politicians swept from the earth, so little essential difference would there be between them and their successors, that the change hence resulting to human affairs could not, probably, be traced a century afterwards.
Napoleon, when speaking on this subject to one of his generals, is somewhere reported to have expressed himself in nearly the following terms."We are apt to think that we have done much more than we really have.It is the march of events that has made us, and makes us, what we are.Had you and I never existed, our places would have been held by others, and were we now to cease to exist, the blank would be so filled as not to be perceptible:"It must be allowed that this was with justice said of himself, even by such a man.Already we perceive that all the apparently mighty changes, referable to his personal agency, were rather undulations on the surface of the tide of human affairs, than alterations in its coarse.
When we speak of the course of the operations of nature on human affairs, philosophical accuracy would, I think, imply a reference to the whole course, and all the springs and principles, that actuate and guide it.These springs and principles, discordant and jarring as they may appear, may, nevertheless, have been so adjusted by the hand of nature, as to have a tendency gradually to bring the whole system nearer and nearer perfection and happiness, "From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still, In infinite progression."This is a pleasing and no improbable theory, but, in this view of the.
subject, it is the tendency of the whole of these springs and principles that we have to consider, not some taken apart from others.Indeed, if we reason analogically, concerning the apparent action of these different springs and principles, so far from its appearing probable that the direct interference of the legislator in endeavoring to give an advantageous direction to the course of the national industry, in its efforts after the production of wealth, is a principle unlikely to farther that production, the presumption rather is, that it will farther it.
To perceive this, it is necessary particularly to attend to the distinction which Adam Smith makes between nature and art as.applied to the progress of human affairs.When we say, a thing is produced by art, we mean, that it is the result of the agency of man, designedly directed to its production.
