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Anticipations of Nineteenth and Twentieth century social thought in the work of Adam Ferguson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Lisa Hill
Lisa Hill
Affiliation:
University of Sydney (Sydney).
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Abstract

This paper seeks to locate Adam Ferguson (17231816), a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment, within a tradition. Ferguson's work seems to straddle two traditions: classical civic humanism, on the one hand, and liberalism on the other. The claims of those scholars who have perceived in Ferguson's work prescient anticipations of nineteenth and twentieth century social thought are of particular relevance here. It is the contention of this paper that although Ferguson's work must be understood as classically and theologically inspired, there are, nevertheless, clear anticipations of modern social science in it. The dimensions of Ferguson's work focussed on are: his historiography, his theories of spontaneous order, habit and conflict, and his anticipatory detection otanomie and alienation effects. Ferguson's unique contribution lays in his ability to give ancient insights a sociological twist thereby bridging the gap between modern and classical traditions.

L'article vise donner Adam Ferguson (17231816), figure majeure de l'ge des Lumires en cosse, la place qui lui revient dans la tradition sociologique. Or, Ferguson participe de deux hritages, l'humanisme classique d'une part, le libralisme de l'autre. Ceux qui ont vu dans son uvre des prmices de la pense sociale du xixxxe sicle, sont ici mentionns avec juste intrt. Bien que la pense de Ferguson doive tre comprise classiquement et thologiquement, on y trouve nanmoins une nette anticipation des sciences sociales modernes : historiographie, thories de l'ordre spontan, tradition et conflit, prescience de l'anomie et des effets d'alination. L'articulation de ces thmes n'est pas nette chez Ferguson mais son uvre dmontre que la sociologie du xixxxe sicle a, par sa pntration et sa capacit donner un tour sociologique aux anciens concepts, rduit le foss entre hritage classique et pense moderne.

Im Rahmen dieser Abhandlung soll Adam Ferguson (17231816), einem fhrenden Denker der schottischen Aufklrung, der ihm in dcr Entstehungsgeschichte der Soziologie gebhrende Platz zugeordnet werden. Klassischer Humanismus und Liberalismus sind in seiner Lehre vereint. Jene, die sein Werk als Ausgangspunkt fr die Soziologie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts begreifen, seien hier besonders crwhnt. Obwohl Fergusons Lehre auf klassischen und theologischen Wurzeln fut, sind cindeutige Vorgriffe auf die moderne Sozialwissenschaft auszumachen: seine Geschichts-schrwibung, seine Theorien bezglich der spontanen Befehlsform, Tradition und Konflikt, sein vorausgreifendes Erkennen der Anomie und die Auswirkungen der Alienation. Fergusons besa die einzigartige Gabc alten Erkenntnissen eine soziologische Drehung zu geben und dadurch den Abstand zwischen klassischem Erbe und moderner Lehre zu verringem.

Type
Notes Critiques
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 203 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1996

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References

(1) As first noted by Brewer, John in his excellent article: Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation, The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 37 ( (1986), 461–478, 472–473CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and to which the present essay owes a good deal.

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(5) D. Forbes, introd. to Ferguson, A. (1967), An Essay on the History of Civil Society, edited and with an introduction by Forbes, Duncan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), iGoogle Scholar; Ryan, Essay, 63.

(6) As noted also by Brewer, Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation, 462.

(7) Specifically in some form of Christian-Stoic theology though they could just as easily be described as those of a Deist. Though scholarly opinion is divided over the nature of Ferguson's theology Richard Sher's conclusion that Ferguson's writings are profoundly Christian/Stoic in nature seems the most convincing. Sher, R., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 177, 324–8Google Scholar.

(8) G. Bryson, Some Eighteenth Century Conceptions of Society, 405–6. Ferguson's own definition of moral philosophy is: ‘the knowledge of what ought to be, or the application of rules that ought to determine the choice of voluntary agents’ [Ferguson, A., Institutes of Moral Philosophy (New York: Garland Publishing Company, 1978)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Institutes, p. 11]. Lehmann agrees that Ferguson's work is that of a moralist above all else (Review, 173).

(9) See, for example, Ferguson, A., Principles of Moral and Political Science: Being Chiefly a Retrospect of Lectures Delivered in the College of Edinburgh, in Two Volumes (Edinburgh: printed for A. Strahan and T. Cadell, London; and W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1792)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as P.I., 7–8; Institutes, 5, 138, 154–7; see also Small, J., Biographical Sketch of Adam Ferguson, Edinburgh Review, vol. 75 no. 255 (1867), 48–85Google Scholar.

(10) See P.I., 7, 310, 312, 331–2; P.II, 356, 359–60; Institutes, 154–5, 158; Essay, 38, 55. Though Ferguson singled out Marcus and Epictetus as favourites he admired all the Stoic philosophers. See for example ‘An Excursion in the Highlands: Discourse on Various Subjects’ (12–17), collection of Unpublished Essays (Edinburgh University Library MSS), No 5; Institutes, 138.

(11) See for example P.I., ii, 53, 180; P.H., 27; Essay, 55, 90–91.

(12) P.I., 338.

(13) Essay, 90–91.

(14) P.I., p. 180.

(15) James Force conceives the distinction thus; ‘General Providence’ refers to God's action in the original creation of nature. In the beginning God created the material frame of nature and He structured it to function in obedience to the laws of nature which He also created. In contrast to this original creative act of general providence is ‘special Providence’ which refers to a particular act of direct divine intervention that cancels or contravenes the ordinary course of natural operations (Force, J. E., Hume and the Relation of Science to Religion Among Certain Members of the Royal Society, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XLV, no. 4, (1984), 517–536, 519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(16) P.I., p. 180. See also, P.I., 312, 338.

(17) P.I., 331–2, 184–5, 202, 305, 313; PII, 330, 403.

(18) See, for example, P.I., 338.

(19) Pascal, Property and Society, 178. For further discussion see: Ballestrem, K. G., Sources of the Materialist Conception of History in the History of Ideas, Studies in Soviet Thought (1983), v. 26, no. 1, 3–6Google Scholar; Swingewood, Origins of Sociology; Lehmann, Review, 171.

(20) Forbes, Introduction to Essay, xxv.

(21) Essay, 82.

(22) See Forbes, Introduction to Essay, xxv for a critique of Pascal's proto-Marxist reading of Ferguson.

(23) Ibid., 82.

(24) Ibid., 171.

(25) See, for example, P.I., 53, 56, 167, 174–5; Institutes, 13, 17, 86–90; Essay, p. 46.

(26) Winch, D., Adam Smith's enduring particular result, in Hont, I., and Ignatieff, M. (eds), Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 259Google Scholar. For a further discussion of the debate see Skinner, A., A Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology, Bradley, I. and Howard, M. (eds), Classical and Marxian Political Economy: Essays in Honour of Ronald L. Meek (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

(27) See, for example: P.II., 496–7; Institutes, 274; Remarks on a Pamphlet lately Published by Dr. Price, intitled ‘Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty…’, in a Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to a Member of Parliament (London: T. Cadell, 1776), passim, Ferguson's Private Letters, Edinburgh University Library Letters, No. 17 to John MacPherson (dated January 10, 1780).

(28) Cartesian rationalism that is [Hayek, F.A., Kinds of Rationalism, Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1967), 84Google Scholar].

(29) See Cronk, L., Spontaneous Order Analysis and Anthropology, Cultural Dynamics, 1 (3), (1988) 8, 282–308, 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Hayek, F.A., The Results of Human Actions but not of Human Design, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 97Google Scholar. Hamowy suggests that Ferguson's articulation of the concept is ‘much clearer and less ambiguous’ than Smith's ( Hamowy, R., Progress and Commerce in Anglo-American Thought: The Social Philosophy of Adam Ferguson, Interpretation, 14, January 1986, 61–87, 79)Google Scholar.

(30) Hayek, The Results of Human Action, 97.

(31) Hamowy, Spontaneous Order, 87. See also by the same author ‘Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment’. It should be noted that Ferguson did not himself use the term ‘spontaneous order’. After Polanyi, F.A. Hayek (inspired further by Ferguson's remark that social order is the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design), popularised the term in the context of expounding his own defence of a natural, social order founded on individual liberty. Michael Polanyi seems to have been the first to coin the term ‘spontaneous order’ in 1950 [Polanyi, Michael, The Logic of Liberty: Reflections and Rejoinders (London: Kegan Paul, 1951), 112, 154, 159Google Scholar].

(32) Durkheim, Émile, Montesquieu and Rousseau (Ann Arbor: University of Michegan Press, 1960), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(33) Valauri, J.T., Social Order and the Limits of Law, Duke Law Journal, vol. 3 (1981), 607–618, 610CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(34) Forbes, Introduction to Essay p. xxiv.

(35) Essay, 122.

(36) Essay, 168.

(37) Ibid., 176, 168.

(38) Ibid., 176.

(39) Essay, 11.

(40) P.I., 53 (my emphasis).

(41) Forbes, Introduction to Essay, xxiii.

(42) P.I., 27–8.

(43) Essay, 143–4.

(44) A phrase suggested to me by John Gray.

(45) Essay, 6; P.I., 312.

(46) P.II., 27.

(47) P.I., 180.

(48) Ferguson, A., Of the Principle of Moral Estimation: A Discourse between David Hume, Robert Clerk, and Adam Smith, an Unpublished MS by Adam Ferguson, E.C. Mossner (ed.), Journal of the History of Ideas, 21 (1960), 222–232, herefater cited as ‘Principles of Moral Estimation’, 232.Google Scholar

(49) See, for example, P. II., 54 and P.I., 180.

(50) Institutes, 11; P.I., 338.

(51) Epictetus, , Enchiridion, translated by Long, George (New York: Prometheus Books, 1991), XLIX-L, 42–4Google Scholar; Aurelius, Marcus, Meditations, translated and with an Introduction by Staniforth, Maxwell (London: Penguin, 1964), II. 17, 51Google Scholar.

(52) Ibid., 200. Other Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume, Helvetius, Rousseau, Condorcet and Kant, also shared with Ferguson an interest in demonstrating the role of habit in our social life and in our moral and practical progress (Camic, Charles, The Matter of Habit, American Journal of Sociology, Vol 91, no. 5, March 1986, 1039–1087, 1047–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Donald Pickens identifies the Scottish Common Sense philosophers as seminal figures in the anthropology of folkways and argues that William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) the early American social scientist, was heavily influenced by their work in the writing of folkways [ Pickens, D.K., Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and Folkways, Journal of Thought, Vol.22, (1987), 39–44Google Scholar]. Lehmann provides an excellent exposition of Ferguson's treatment of habit in Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology, 52–53, 67–77.

(53) P.I., 207–8.

(54) P.I., 218–219.

(55) Ibid., 202.

(56) P.II., 404.

(57) P.I., 201–2, 234, 224–6.

(58) Ibid., 226.

(59) Ibid., 123.

(60) P.I., 125. Adam Smith's ideas on the development of the social self are particulary well developed. Shott, S., Society, Self and Mind in Moral Philosophy, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, vol. 12 (1976). 39–46, 423.0.CO;2-T>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

(61) P.I., 126.

(62) Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, 48.

(63) Benton, T., How Many Sociologies?, Sociological Review, vol 26 (1978), 217–236, 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Ferguson explains ‘Human nature nowhere exists in the abstract’ (P.II., 419). Ferguson, it should be noted, was not alone in refuting state of nature theories; Smith and Hume, for example, were just as enthusiastic in their attacks.

(64) Shott, Society Self and Mind, 39–40. Shott also asserts that ‘(c)oncepts nearly equivalent to Mead's notions of “role-taking”, the “generalised other” and the “I-me” relationship are employed by the Scottish Moralists in their discussions of social and moral conduct’.

(65) Comte, A., System of Positive Polity, translated by Harrison, Frederic (London, 1875), II., 370Google Scholar.

(66) Institutes, 232; P.I., 131, 209–110; P.II., 419; Essay, 11–12.

(67) P.I., 208, 224.

(68) Institutes, 169.

(69) Essay, 33.

(70) See ‘On the Principles of Moral Estimation’, 226–8.

(71) Institutes, 168–9. Ferguson stresses the volition of agents despite the powerful influence of custom (P.I., p. 233).

(72) Kettler, Adam Ferguson, 193–4.

(73) Essay, 16–17. The social function of parental affection was noted much earlier by Cicero and subsequently picked up by Frances Hutcheson (Waszek, Man's Social Nature, 152).

(74) Essay, 16–19.

(75) A similar argument is also made by Hume in the Treatise of Human Nature, II, ii.

(76) Ibid., 234.

(77) Ibid., 212. Hume also makes this point in the Treatise, III, v, 422.

(78) P.I., 232.

(79) P.I., 215.

(80) D., and Jary, J. (eds), Collins Dictionary of Sociology (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1991), 454Google Scholar.

(81) Kettler, Adam Ferguson, 195.

(82) P.I., 218.

(83) Ibid.

(84) Ibid., 215.

(85) Ibid.

(86) William Lehmann was the first to detect this proto-psychology in Ferguson's writings and these are his terms of identification for the phenomena Ferguson describes (Adam Ferguson, 69–70).

(87) P.I., 137.

(88) Ibid., 143–4.

(89) Ibid., 133.

(90) Ibid., 141.

(91) Ibid., 210.

(92) Ibid., 234.

(93) See P.I., 213, 218.

(94) P.I., 217.

(95) Ibid., 202.

(96) Ibid., 225.

(97) Bryson, Man and Society, 49–50; see also Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, 189–190.

(98) Ferguson was familiar with Machia-velli's views which would probably have come to him via Montesquieu. But any debt to Machiavelli is barely acknowledged whereas in the case of Tacitus, it usually is; see, for example, Essay, 45, 79, 87, 93–4, 98, 101, 103, 262; Ferguson, A., The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (London: Jones and Company 1834), hereafter cited as History, passimGoogle Scholar.

(99) Kettler, Adam Ferguson, 45.

(100) Barnes, Sociology before Comte, 235.

(101) See, for example, Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, 98. Glumpowicz considered Ferguson to be ‘the first sociologist’ and thought his Essay was ‘the first natural History of society’ (Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, 52).Google Scholar

(102) Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, 189–190.

(103) Essay, 16.

(104) Institutes, 22.

(105) Essay, 16.

(106) Hobbes, T., Leviathan (Ringwood: Penguin, 1981), Chapter 13, Part I, 184–188.Google Scholar

(107) Montesquieu had also opposed Hobbes in this ‘binary opposites’ matter but the former's position differs from Ferguson's in its primitivist and contractarian tendencies. Montesquieu, C., The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Part I, Chapter 2, 6.Google Scholar

(108) P.I., 34.

(109) P.II., 502.

(110) Essay, 45.

(111) Tacitus recalls the custom of one of the Germanic tribes, the Chatti, whereby young warriors were required to refrain from shaving their facial hair until they had demonstrated their civic commitment through killing in battle. [Tacitus, , The Agricola and the Germania, translated and with an introduction by Mattingly, H. (London: Penguin, 1970), 127–Google Scholar8].

(112) Essay, 24, P.I., p. 252.

(113) Ibid., 24–25; 101.

(114) Ibid.

(115) Machiavelli, N., The Discourses, edited and with an introduction by Crick, Bernard (Suffolk: Penguin, 1970), I.i. 100–101.Google Scholar

(116) P.I. p. 252. As Ferrarotti has noted ‘Civil Society and State Structures’, 14.

(117) Essay, p. 101.

(118) Hamowy, Progress and Commerce, 73.

(119) Essay, 261–2. Ferguson's comments on the activities of factions are made in passing and he does not pause to throw light on whether he is referring to factions united in principle (à la Burke) or in a shared interest (à la Madison). Thanks to Geoffrey Smith for this insight.

(120) Essay, 270. Bentham criticised Ferguson for these views. See Conway, S., Bentham Versus Pitt: Jeremy Bentham and British Foreign Policy 1789, The Historical Journal, vol. 30, no. 4 (1987), 791–809, 805CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The argument that conflict can preserve free government does not apply to republics where, Ferguson suggests, factions are usually pernicious (Institutes, p. 289). But even in republics, conflict could still be educative: ‘The Roman Constitution, though far from an arrangement proper to preserve domestic peace and tranquillity, was an excellent nursery of statesmen and warriors’ (History, p. 141).

(121) P.II., p. 510.

(122) Essay, 270.

(123) Ibid., 128.

(124) Though he is careful to add that ‘we would do him an injustice if we saw in his Essay a sort of proto-Marxist theory of class struggle’. Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, 56.

(125) In Book VI Polybius reports that the Romans maintained free constitutions ‘not… by means of abstract reasoning, but through many struggles and difficulties, and from continually adopting reforms from knowledge gained in experience’ [Polybius, , The Histories of Polybius, translated from the text of Hultsch, F. by Shuckburgh, E., with a New Introduction by F.W. Walbank, in Two Volumes (Connecticut: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1975), 6.10., 467Google Scholar].

(126) There is even a section in the Discourses entitled: ‘That Discord Between the Plebs and the Senate of Rome made this Republic both Free and Powerful’ in which he asserts that, provided a people are free from corruption, tumults are, at worst, harmless and may, in fact, do some good towards preserving free constitutions. Machiavelli, Discourses I.4., 113. Branson, Roy suggests that Ferguson influenced Madison in this regard (R. Branson, James Madison and the Scottish Enlightenment, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 40, 1979, 235–250, 248–9).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(127) Essay, 61.

(128) Ibid.

(129) P.I., 267.

(130) Essay, 62.

(131) Ibid.

(132) Essay, 23–4.

(133) Springborg, P., Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990, 225.Google Scholar

(134) Essay, 24–5.

(135) See also Essay, 106.

(136) Wills, G., Inventing America (London: Althone Press, 1988), 289.Google Scholar

(137) Essay, 101.

(138) Forbes, Introduction to Essay, xviii.

(139) Pocock, J. G. A., Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian, Daedelus, 105 (1976), 153–169, 162.Google Scholar

(140) Brewer, Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation, 465. For Marx's reference to Ferguson see Marx, K., Capital, Vol. I (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1977), 334Google Scholar; The Poverty of Philosophy (New York, International Publishers, 1971), 129Google Scholar. For further discussion on the Marx/Ferguson link see Lehmann, Review, 169; Meek, R., The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology, in Economics and Ideology and other Essays (London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1967)Google Scholar; Pascal, , Property and Society; R. Bendix, Mandate to Rule, An Introduction, Social Forces, Vol. 55, no. 2 (1976), 252–53Google Scholar; Gaunsey, E., The Rediscovery of the Division of Labour, Theory and Society, Vol. 10 (1981), 337–58, 341Google Scholar; R. Hamowy, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour, 249–59; Ballestrem, Sources of the Materialist Conception of History, 3–9.

(141) Forbes, Essay, xxxi.

(142) Brewer, Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation, 473.

(143) Ibid., 66.

(144) Lehmann, Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology, 187.

(145) Essay, 109–110.

(146) See Patey, D. L., Art and Integrity: Concepts of Self in Alexander Pope and Edward Young, odern Philology, vol. 83, no. 4, (1986), 364–378, 370.Google Scholar

(147) As suggested by Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson, 8–9.

(148) See, for example, Adam Ferguson, Of the Separation of Departments, Professions and Tasks Resulting from the Progress of Arts in Society, in Y. Amoh, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour, Kochi University Review, 29, July 1987, 71–85, 76–77. Hamowy lauds the sophistication of Ferguson's analysis on this count. Hamowy, Progress and Commerce, 87.

(149) Institutes, 22.

(150) Essay, 182–3. See also 187, 217.

(151) See Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 129–30.

(152) Essay, 221.

(153) Ibid., 218.

(154) Essay, 222. Macrae writes, perhaps too cautiously, that: ‘most of what is written about alienation (in Ferguson) is void’. See Macrae in T. Raison, The Founding Fathers of Social Science, 32.

(155) Ibid., 259.

(156) Ibid., 217.

(157) Essay, 230.

(158) Ibid., 157.

(159) Ibid., 241.

(160) Ibid., 181.

(161) Ibid., 217. See Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation’ for a brief discussion of this topic.

(162) Ibid., 260.

(163) Ibid., 186.

(164) Ibid., 187–8.

(165) Ibid., 67. And, as we have seen, Ferguson regards ‘class conflict’ as essential to the maintenance of a robust constitution.

(166) Waszek, Division of Labour, 56. Neilson suggests that Ferguson and Smith were at odds on this count (T. H. Neilsen, The State, The Market and the Individual. Politics, Economy and the Idea of Man in the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith and in Renaissance Humanism, Acta Sociologica, 29 1986), 283–302, 290). But the textual evidence against such a reading is substantial and while Ferguson is certainly more pessimistic than Smith their conclusions are ultimately the same.

(167) Essay, 218.

(168) Ibid.

(169) Essay, p. 272.

(170) Forbes, D. et al. , Edinburgh in the Age of Reason (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), 43.Google Scholar

(171) Mahon, J., Engels and the Question about Cities, History of European Ideas (1982), vol. 3, no. 1, 43–77, 44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(172) Kettler, Adam Ferguson, 8–9.

(173) Essay. p. 187.

(174) Ibid., 219–20. Ferrarotti notes that Hegel's exposition of burgerlich Gessellschaft was also markedly informed by Ferguson's analysis. See ‘State Structures’, 16.

(175) Ibid., 217–20.

(176) Ibid., 219.

(177) Ibid., 243.

(178) Ibid., 105–6.

(179) Ibid., 87.

(180) Ibid., 19. See also P.IL, 376–7.

(181) Essay, 186.

(182) Institutes, 243; see also History, 80.

(183) ‘Ideally’ is the important qualification here because Ferguson never rejects the progress of civilization towards larger scale social structures; nor does he ever recommend any devolvement in social scale. Any primitivistic nostalgia in this direction is probably unconscious.

(184) Dodds, E.R., The Ancient Concept of Progress (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 16.Google Scholar

(185) Essay, 88.

(186) Hirschman, A.O., The Passions and the Interests (New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1977), 120Google Scholar. See also Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, 154–5; Bryson, Some Eighteenth Century Conceptions of Society, 421.

(187) See Essay, 147, where Ferguson cites Thucydides on the subject of foreign conquests.

(188) Institutes, 243. See also Essay, 57–60.

(189) Essay, 271–2.

(190) De Romilly, J., Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, translated by Thody, Philip (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 316–19. Like Ferguson, Thucydides also lists: rule by force tyranny, engendered hatred, neglect of domestic concerns, and unprofitability as factors which precipitate the declension associated with imperialism.Google Scholar

(191) P.l., 34–5.

(192) To borrow a felicitous turn of phrase from Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and Theme of Exploitation’, 473. See also Norbert Waszek, Man's Social Nature, 140.