![]() ![]() On the Continent, “liberal” was used, as compared to in Britain, more to denote constitutional reform and political participation, as opposed to natural liberty. I wouldn’t go so far as Arthur Herman does in the title of his splendid 2001 book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, but it was Scots who originated the use of “liberal” in a political sense. But using Google’s scans of books in French, Spanish, Italian, and German, we can see that usage in these countries trails Britain. Some scholars have argued that the modern usage of “liberal” originated on the European continent before spreading to Britain. The term was exported to Europe and the United States as well. The term became familiar in British officialdom, popping up occasionally in Parliamentary debate and even in King George III’s address at the opening of Parliament in 1782. And as Smith’s system spread, so did his term for it. Shortly after The Wealth of Nations was published, Robertson wrote to Smith, saluting it as an antidote to "illiberal arrangements" and saying, “Your Book must necessarily become a Political or Commercial Code to all Europe, which must be often consulted by men both of Practice and Speculation.” Robertson’s expectation, widely shared at the time, proved accurate. Bentham then proceeded to challenge Smith on one of his exceptions, saying that Smith had failed to meet the burden of proof when he made an exception to natural liberty by endorsing an existing law setting a maximum interest rate. In an open letter to Smith in 1787, Jeremy Bentham saluted him for having taught society the presumption of liberty. Still, it is his main principle, and the burden of proof is on those who would contravene it. He made exceptions to it and acknowledged that he was doing so. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.įor Smith, natural liberty was not an axiom. Smith was a great opponent of restrictions in the labor market, favoring freedom of contract, and wished to see labor markets “resting on such liberal principles.”Īll systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. He used “liberal” to describe application of the same principles to domestic policy issues. Smith’s “liberal system” was not concerned solely with international trade. Then he repeats the phrase: “But very few countries have entirely adopted this liberal system.” If all nations, Smith says, were to follow “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation,” then they would be like one great cosmopolitan empire, and famines would be prevented. Robertson’s friend and fellow Scot Adam Smith used “liberal” in a similar sense in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. ![]() (I presented more details in a lecture at the Ratio Institute, viewable here.) Of the Hanseatic League, for example, Robertson spoke of “the spirit and zeal with which they contended for those liberties and rights,” and how a society of merchants, “attentive only to commercial objects, could not fail of diffusing over Europe new and more liberal ideas concerning justice and order.” My research with Will Fleming finds that the Scottish historian William Robertson appears to be the most significant innovator, repeatedly using “liberal” in a political way, notably in a book published in 1769. ![]()
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