two later occasions.[1] National prosperity and relative superiority were vague and difiicult notions, but when the whole discussion was made to turn on wealth, the treatment seemed to be more concrete and definite, and it took hold upon the public mind.
There were of course some economists who never really adapted their habits of thought in accordance with Adam Smith's principles. Playfair speaks of him with respect, but he continued to draw his beautiful diagrams of the Balance of Trade, as if he still thought it furnished a criterion of something. His Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall af Wealthy and Powerful Nations enumerates all sorts of influences, physical and moral; but fails to reach any very perspicuous conclusions. He admired The Wealth of Nations, but it seems to have left him unaffected. There is far more interest in the attitude of the hostile critics and the points which they singled out for attack.
(a) Governor Pownall, whose Letter was published some few months after The Wealth of Nations had been issued, subjected it to very acute criticism. He was prepared to admit that some of the colonial restrictions worked badly, but he defended the principle on which they rested, and which Adam Smith had ignored. Hs was prepared to relax restrictions that cause a roundabout trade, 'always however keeping in view this object and end namely, that so far as our colonies have to be considered as an institution, established sud directed to increase the naval force of our marine empire, and so far sa that force derives in any degree from the operations of their commercial powers, so in that monopoly which engrafts them upon our internal establishment, is indispensable and ought never to be departed from or relaxed.'[2] In fact he held that the object of a 'political economy' was not merely any kind of wealth, but the maintenance of English power.[3]
(b) Pownall also criticised Adam Smith's account of the production of wealth. In this he had apparently followed Locke.
- ↑ Haldane, Life of Adam Smith, 76.
- ↑ Letter, 27. This is a remarkable statement as coming from a man who was the chief spokesman in laying American grievances before Parliament, and was a recognised authority on the subject. Parl. Hist. xvi. 331, 485, xvii. 1199, 1282.
- ↑ Similarly the clergyman, who had lived in Paris and signs himself T. A——, apparently held that the special resources of each country rendered a special system of economy desirable for each. The principles of Adam Smith were all very well for a maritime country, but would not serve for an agricultural country like France. He appears to have failed to grasp Adam Smith's main position, but his criticism is none the less instructive as showing where The Wealth of Nations struck him as novel. Dr. Smith's System considered, p. 67. Appended to Suppression of French Nobility Vindicated (1792).
