Smith, Adam | "… led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

Smith, Adam

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776

2 volumes, 4to (269 x 219 mm). Half-title in vol. 2, publisher's advertisement on last page of vol. 2, terminal blank in vol. 1, with all the usual cancels (M3, Q1, U3, Zz3, 3A4 and 3O4 in vol. I, and D1 and Zzz4 in vol. II.); some light browning to text block, scattered foxing, ¹H1 with closed marginal tear just into text, some light offsetting to ¹B1v, ¹Iiv, ²[A]1r, ²B1v, ²4F2v, evidently from stacking of unbound sheets. Contemporary speckled calf; handsomely rebacked to style with red and green morocco labels, corners and board edges restored. Brown cloth slipcase.

First edition of the "first and greatest classic of modern economic thought" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Smith, a Scottish professor and tutor and the patron saint of free markets, "is generally credited with the formulation of the liberal economic doctrine of free enterprise: ‘for the first time an incoherent mass of empirical maxims was codified into a definite system and elevated to the dignity of a science'" (Dunn, p. 330, quoting Leslie Stephen).

The Wealth of Nations is divided into five books, and its most enduring therom appears in the second champer of Book IV, "Of Systems of Political Oeconomy": "Every individual … generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention" (IV, chap. 2).

In a work with few rivals in its time or after, Smith "begins with the thought that labour is the source from which a nation derives what is necessary to it. The improvement of the division of labour is the measure of productivity and in it lies the human propensity to barter and exchange … it ends with a history of economic development, a definitive onslaught on the mercantile system, and some prophetic speculations on the limits of economic control. … Where the political aspects of human rights had taken two centuries to explore, Smith's achievement was to bring the study of economic aspects to the same point in a single work" (PMM).  

By undermining mercantilist theory, Smith made the strongest economic argument against the suppression of the American colonies. Indeed, the significance of Smith's Wealth of Nations for the United States extends far beyond its publication date, which preceded that of the Declaration of Independence by just over four months. In many ways the two texts have since been intertwined; certainly, the American Founders embraced Smith’s Inquiry—which discussed taxation, proposed a fiscal union to defuse the foment of revolution, and defended standing armies—before Europe did, and by 1789 the work was reprinted in an American edition, published in Philadelphia by Thomas Dobson. 

The pseudonymous authors of The Federalist—James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay—invoke Smith and his ideas in several polemics, and "Federalist 10," Madison’s influential discussion of the harmonization of apparently competing interests or factions in both economic and political spheres, owes much to Smith’s argument that permitting a proliferation of religious sects, rather than establishing a state-sanctioned religion, would allow for "candour and moderation" and, so, "publick tranquility."

The Wealth of Nations had an even more profound influence on Alexander Hamilton—and, by virtue of his position as the first Secretary of the Treasury—even greater impact on the nation. Glory M. Liu writes that for Hamilton, Smith’s opus "served as an encyclopedic guide to the science of wealth creation. He refashioned and used its summary of the physiocratic doctrine, its history of banking practices, and its theory of economic growth to scaffold a forward-looking agenda of political and economic nationalism" (pp. 66–67). Indeed, according to Liu, portions of Hamilton’s major Treasury reports—which included "Report Relative to a Provision for the Support of Public Credit," 1790; "Second Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit," 1790; and "Report on the Subject of Manufactures," 1791—were "simply cribbed from The Wealth of Nations."

While traveling as the tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch in the mid-1760s, Smith met Benjamin Franklin, and the two must have discussed their mutual interest in theories of population growth. Another Philadelphian, Benjamin Rush, quoted Smith in an address delivered to the American Philosophical Society, 1786. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both owned two copies of The Wealth of Nations. Thomas Jefferson sold his copy of the third edition (3 volumes; London: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1784), with most of the rest of his library, to the Library of Congress in 1815 to replace the books lost when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812; the set remains in the Library of Congress today. Jefferson subsequently acquired a replacement copy for his own shelves, a two-volume edition published in Hartford, Connecticut, by Cooke and Hale in 1818.

Smith’s work is mentioned frequently in Jefferson’s correspondence. In a letter written to his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., 30 May 1790, advising him on a course of reading for the study of the law, Jefferson made an assessment that still holds true today: "In political oeconomy I think Smith’s wealth of nations the best book extant" (Papers 16:448–50). 

REFERENCES:

Goldsmiths' Library 11392; Grolier, English 57; Kress 7621; Printing and the Mind of Man 221; Rothschild 1897; Sabin 82303; cf. David Bromwich, The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to the Declaration of Independence (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014); William Clyde Dunn, “Adam Smith and Edmund Burke: Complementary Contemporaries,” in Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Jan. 1941):330–346; Samuel Fleischacker, “Adam Smith’s Reception Among American Founders, 1776–1790,” in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 59, no. 4 (2002):897–924; Glory M. Liu, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2022)

PROVENANCE:

Two sets of cancelled pressmarks: I.1.22[23] (G); E 4 30[31].