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Adam Smith's Genius: Reflections on the Wealth of Nations
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10657 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
4,902 Words |
| Author
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Ben Stein
Ben Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in
Malibu, California. |
In 1776, a time before word processors, rap, or feminist criticism, the three greatest works ever written on the subject of human freedom under law were published, all by Englishmen.
Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant planter, inventor, soldier, scholar, and educator, wrote and published the Declaration of Independence. It marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the independence of the colonies, and a worldwide movement toward dignity and independence which, with a few staggeringly horrible detours, is still unfolding, particularly in eastern Europe and the former nations of the Bolshevik monolith everywhere.
Edward Gibbon, historian par excellence, the Hampshire grenadier who was moved by watching a procession of monks on the Capitoline Hill, published for his patron, the Duke of York, volume one of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. When he proudly delivered the book to his employer, who was supposedly eating a joint of roast beef at the time, the nobleman said, "Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Dr. Gibbon? Another great fat square book which we shall have to read."
In many ways Gibbon's work is still unmatched for the wit, thoroughness, and irony that marked its every paragraph. His idea of approaching all historical icons with rapier sarcasm and iconoclasm while at the same time presenting a virtually unassailable mountain of data is still the standard to which other historians attempt to repair.
Jefferson made the point that freedom and government by the consent of the governed are man's inalienable rights, bestowed by God.
Gibbon pointed out--among many other notions--that when freedom and law are lost, the most bestial outrages of man against man become commonplace and societies disappear.
In the same year, 1776, Adam Smith published An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith pointed out that a society founded on freedom and law would make a lot more money than any other kind of society.
It is 217 years later. Except in Charlottesville, Virginia, you don't see many men wearing Thomas Jefferson neckties. Certainly, except at meetings of academic societies, you do not hear much about Gibbon, and there may not even be such a thing as an Edward Gibbon necktie. But Adam Smith is a demigod. For ten years now, he
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