It will be further remembered that in the year of our Revolution, in 1776, Adam Smith's Great work[1] had been published, the nature of trade carefully explained; the "mercantile system" as completely routed; and the true nature of business and its relation to the wealth of nations clearly and finally expounded in its most essential features. It will also be remembered that for twelve years thereafter the Constitution was either being discussed, drawn or adopted, until the final signature of General Washington was attached on the seventeenth day of December, 1787, and that the first ten amendments were declared in force upon the fifteenth day of December, 1791, a period during which Adam Smith's work had been thoroughly digested and as thoroughly understood and accepted.
It is not thought necessary at the present moment to state the results that then had been reached at Common Law, and finally buttressed by the Constitution, with minute exactness or in great detail; but generally it was held that all restraints of trade—that is to say, "trade" itself, not merely "traders,"—where their restraint did not restrain trade itself,—were against the public welfare, and injurious; and that the greatest of all trade evils was when they reached the point of monopoly. On the other hand, the right freely to trade in commodities at the untrammeled discretion as to terms, and prices, of all who wished to compete, was thought, and correctly thought, not only to be a part of our Liberty, but perhaps, its most essential safeguard.
If this be not understood, error is sure to result, as it has already resulted, in a misunderstanding of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States;
- ↑ Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations."
