The Passions and the Interests : Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Twentieth Anniversary Edition) by Hirschman Albert O

Author:Hirschman, Albert O.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

2. SIR JAMES STEUART

Set against the backdrop of a country where, in mid-eighteenth century, no clear remedy against disastrously arbitrary rule was in sight, Montesquieu’s partial reliance on commerce, the bill of exchange, and arbitrage as safeguards against les grands coups d’autorité and war can be interpreted as a counsel of despair or, alternatively, as an extraordinary leap of optimistic imagination. In England there was less need to look so far afield, the power of the Crown being anything but absolute by the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, similar ideas crop up among the political economists and historical sociologists of the “Scottish Enlightenment” in the second half of the century.

For such figures as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and John Millar, these ideas probably sprang from their common conviction that economic changes are the basic determinants of social and political transformation.16 But for Sir James Steuart, who presented ideas similar to those of Montesquieu in the most explicit and general form, the explanation is even simpler: his major work, the Inquiry into the Principles of Political O economy (1767), was largely conceived and written during his long exile from England on the European Continent where the interrelation between political conditions and economic progress was particularly obvious. Moreover, the influence of Montesquieu’s thought is evident throughout his work, with respect to both general principles and numerous specific points of analysis.

For example, Montesquieu’s ideas on the political effects of the bill of exchange and of arbitrage are distinctly echoed in the chapter in which Steuart describes “The general Consequences resulting to a trading Nation upon the opening of an active foreign Commerce” in the following terms:

The statesman looks about with amazement; he who was wont to consider himself as the first man in the society in every respect, perceives himself eclipsed by the lustre of private wealth, which avoids his grasp when he attempts to seize it. This makes his government more complex and more difficult to be carried on; he must now avail himself of art and address as well as of power and authority.17

The same idea is expressed again when Steuart says that “the monied interest,” in contrast to the landlords with their “solid property,” “can baffle [the statesman’s] attempts” and can frustrate “his schemes of laying hold of private wealth.”18

This thought about the expansion-induced constraints on the grasping authority and arbitrary exactions of the political power holders is elaborated and presented in more general form when the social and political consequences of economic expansion—he calls it “the establishment of trade and industry”—are specifically examined later in the same chapter.

As in the previously cited passage, Steuart shows himself to be uniquely aware of a remarkable puzzle. Thoroughly familiar with mercantilist thinking and in some respects still under its influence, he knew that trade and industry, if conducted properly, were supposed to increase the power of the realm and therefore that of the sovereign. At the same time, observation of actual social development as well as, presumably, acquaintance with the new historical thought of

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