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The Burke-Smith Problem and Late Eighteenth-Century Political and Economic Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Donald Winch
Donald Winch
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Type
Review Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 231 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 The most recent treatment of the Burke problem as such can be found in Himmelfarb, G., The idea of poverty (New York, 1983), pp. 66–73Google Scholar.

2 For a rescue attempt see Cone, C., Burke and the nature of politics: The age of the American revolution (Kentucky, 1957), p. 326Google Scholar, and continued in the companion volume on the French revolution (Kentucky, 1964), pp. 489–91. Alfred Cobban could find no grounds for defence: ‘[Burke's] economic views are the culmination of Lockean Whiggism of the eighteenth century and a foreshadowing of the classical economy of the nineteenth at its worst: they show to what extremes a naturally benevolent statesman could be led by theory. On the whole it was as well for his future reputation that Burke produced only one economic pamphlet, for on no other subject are both the limitations and the excesses of his mind so apparent’; see Edmund Burke and the revolt against the eighteenth century (London, 1929, 2nd edn, 1961), pp. 196–7Google Scholar.

3 Shklar, J., After Utopia (Princeton, 1957), p. 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Macpherson, C. B., Burke (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar.

5 Burke, p. 63.

6 For references to the long debate on Macpherson's work see Miller, D., ‘The Macpherson version’, Political Studies, XXX (1982), 120–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Kramnick, I., ‘The left and Edmund Burke’, Political Theory, XI (1983), 205Google Scholar.

8 The rage of Edmund Burke (New York, 1977), pp. 192–5Google Scholar.

9 For a statement of Kramnick's, position on bourgeois radicalism see ‘Religion and radicalism; English political theory in the age of revolution’, Political Theory, v (1977), 505–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See ‘The left and Edmund Burke’, pp. 207–9.

11 Freeman, M., Edmund Burke and the critique of political radicalism (Oxford, 1980), p. 216Google Scholar; see also his ‘Edmund Burke and the theory of revolution’, Political Theory, v (1978), 277–97Google Scholar.

12 See Wolin, S., ‘Hume and conservatism’ in Livingston, D. W. and King, J. T. (eds.), Hume: A reevaluation (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, Forbes, D., ‘Sceptical whiggism, commerce and liberty’ in Skinner, A. S. and Wilson, T. (eds.), Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford, 1976), pp. 179–201Google Scholar; Winch, D., Adam Smith's politics (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 38–43, 52–3, 67, 71 6, 124–30, 175–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haakonssen, K., The science of a legislator: the natural jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar.

13 Philosophy and ideology in Hume's political thought (Cambridge, 1981), p. 200Google Scholar.

14 ‘The Macpherson version’, p. 127.

15 See The rage of Edmund Burke, p. 165.

16 The questions appear at the end of ‘The Political Economy of Burke's Analysis of the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, XXV (1982), 346–9Google Scholar.

17 ‘From applied theology to social analysis: the break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment’ in I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds.), Wealth and virtue, p. 134.

18 This assumption is manifest in the work of Macpherson and Kramnick, but Miller also accepts the evidence advanced by Macpherson to show ‘how closely [Burke's economic utterances] correspond to those of Adam Smith’; see ‘The Macpherson version’, p. 126; and Philosophy and ideology, pp. 197–8. John Pocock does not accept the ‘bourgeois’ label, but he endorses Macpherson's anti-nostalgic reading of Burke and employs evidence of the link with Smith as proof that Burke was a ‘commercial humanist’; see ‘The political economy of Burke's analysis of the French Revolution’, pp. 332, 346.

19 Macpherson, , Burke, p. 51Google Scholar.

20 The correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge, 1958–1978), VIII, 337Google Scholar.

21 Parliamentary History, XXXII, 705.

22 Correspondence, VIII, 337.

23 See Todd, W. B., A bibliography of Edmund Burke (London, 1964), pp. 226–7Google Scholar.

24 See Parliamentary History, XXXII, 238–42.

25 Correspondence, VIII, 454.

26 Autobiography of Arthur Young, edited by Betham-Edwards, M. (London, 1898), pp. 257–8Google Scholar.

27 There is, however, a veiled reference in Letters on a Regicide Peace to the cost of poor relief; see Works (Boston, 1877), v, 465Google Scholar.

28 Wealth of Nations(WN)edited by Skinner, A. S. and Campbell, R. H. in The Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1976), I. viii. 11Google Scholar.

29 WN, I. viii. 12.

30 WN, I.x.c. 34.

31 WN, I.x.c. 61.

32 See Winch, D., ‘Science and the legislator, Adam Smith and after’, Economic Journal, XCIII (1983), 501–20 for an examination of Smith's advisory styleCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 See WN, IV.v.b.47–53.

34 WN, IV.v.a.23.

35 Society and pauperism; English ideas on poor relief, 1795–1834 (London, 1969), pp. 52–3Google Scholar.

36 For Burke's claims to be self-educated in political economy see Letter to a Noble Lord in Works, v, 192. Ehrman's, J.The British government and commercial negotiations with Europe, 1783–1793 (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 29, 44–50, 178–81 contains much that is relevant to Smith's influence on Pitt and ShelburneGoogle Scholar.

37 Smith barely figures in the margins of Macpherson's, most general statement of his thesis in ‘The economic penetration of political theory; some hypotheses’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXIX (1978), 101–18Google Scholar. See however his review of Winch's Adam Smith's politics in History of Political Economy, XI (1979), 450–4Google Scholar.

38 ‘The economic penetration…’, p. 107.

39 History of Political Economy, p. 453.

40 ‘From applied theology…’, p. 113.

41 Works, v, 135.

42 Works, v, 145–6.

43 Works, v, 466–7.

44 Works, v, 157.

45 This position is rehearsed by Himmelfarb, G., The idea of poverty, pp. 73–4Google Scholar.

46 See Works, 1, 57–8.

47 TMS, IV. 1.6–10.

48 See Skinner, A. S., A system of social science: papers relating to Adam Smith (Oxford, 1980), p. 149Google Scholar; Winch, D., Adam Smith's politics, pp. 88–93Google Scholar; Hirschman, A. O., Shifting involvements: private interests and public action (Princeton, 1982), pp. 46–50Google Scholar; and Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M., ‘;Needs and justice in the Wealth of Motions: an introductory essay’ in Wealth and virtue, pp. 2–44Google Scholar.

49 Early Draft as reprinted in the Glasgow edition of Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by W. P. D. Wightman (Oxford, 1980), p. 13.

50 See Hirschman, A. O., Shifting involvements, p. 48Google Scholar, and Hont, and Ignatieff, , ‘Needs and justice…’, p. 10Google Scholar.

51 Works, III, 445. Burke's argument that expenditure of ‘the surplus produce of the soil’ on libraries, collections of ancient records, paintings and statues is to be preferred to the uses to which the new owners of Church property will put their incomes has a parallel in Smith's defence of ‘durable magnificence’ in WN, II.iii, 39–43.

52 Letter to the Edinburgh Review in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, p. 13.

53 ‘Needs and Justice…’, p. 1. Italics supplied.

54 ‘Needs and Justice…’, p. 6.

55 The Glasgow edition of Lectures on Jurisprudence, edited by Meek, R. L., Raphael, D. D. and Stein, P. G. (Oxford, 1978), p. 196Google Scholar.

56 Koebner, R., Empire (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 220–37Google Scholar.

57 Kramnick, I., Rage of Edmund Burke, p. 159Google Scholar.

58 See Reflections in Works, III, 447.

59 See WN, V.i.g, 8–15. For Burke's defence of Church establishment in the Reflections see Works, in, 352–4. Although Smith regarded Richard Price as ‘a factious citizen’, his suggestion that dissenting sects should be allowed to proliferate is similar to the one proposed by Price and condemned by Burke; see Works, III, 246–7, 362–3.

60 See TMS, VI.ii.2, 7–10 for a statement of Smith's position.

61 See WN, III.ii, 2–7.

62 Burk's defence of primogeniture from the attacks of dissenting radicals can be found in Reflections, Works, III, 153, 449.

63 See Lucas, P., ‘On Edmund Burke's doctrine of prescription; or, an appeal from the new to the old lawyers’, Historical Journal, XI (1968), 33–63Google Scholar.

64 See Haakonssen, K., Science of a legislator, p. 132Google Scholar; and Forbes, D., ‘Sceptical whiggism…’, p. 196Google Scholar.

65 See TMS, VI.ii.2, 3–14.

66 See Historical View of the English Government (London, 1812), IV, 307–10.Google Scholar

67 See The friends of peace, p. 2.

68 See Corn, cash, commerce; the economic policies of the Tory governments, 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar.

69 See Bread, politics, and political economy in the reign of Louis XV (The Hague, 1976), I, xxviGoogle Scholar.

70 For the latter diagnosis see Fox-Genovese, E., The origins of physiocracy; economic revolution and social order in eighteenth-century France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976)Google Scholar.

71 See WN, IV.ix,28.