Harold J. Laski

The order they represent is the natural order; and whatever hinders its full operation is an unwise check upon the things for which men strive.

He emphasizes the strength of reason in the economic field, and his sense that it enables men to judge much better of their best interests than an external authority can hope to do.

Where there was conflict between love of the status quo and a social good which Revolution alone could achieve, he did not, at least in the Moral Sentiments, hesitate to choose the latter.

Enlightened selfishness is thus the root of prosperity; but we must not fall into the easy fallacy which makes Smith deaf to the plaint of the poor.

For we know so well what makes us happy that none can hope to help us so much as we help ourselves.

Each man, therefore, as he follows his self-interest promotes the general happiness of society.

Men, moreover, he regarded as largely equal in their original powers; and differences of character he ascribes to the various occupations implied in the division of labor.

But, for the most part, happiness is simply a state of mind; and he seems to have had but little suspicion that differences of wealth might issue in dangerous social consequence.

Man, in fact, is by nature a trader and he is bound by nature to discover the means most apt to progress.

Therein we have some index of what it would achieve if left unhindered to work out its own destinies.

We gain, in fact, some sense of its inherent power when we bear in mind the magnitude of its accomplishment despite the folly and extravagance of princes.

We cannot avoid the impulse to better our condition; and the less its effort is restrained the more certain it is that happiness will result.

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way....

What virtually he does is to assume the existence of a natural economic order which tends, when unrestrained by counter-tendencies, to secure the happiness of men.

The man of whom Smith writes is man in search of wealth; by definition the economic motive dominates his actions.

We are less concerned here with the specific economic details of the Wealth of Nations than with its general attitude to the State.

Men discovered with something akin to ecstasy the possibilities of the new inventions; and when the protest came against the misery they effected, it was answered that they represented the working of that natural law by which the energies…

Religiously, the Church exalted the status quo; and where, as with Wesley, there was revolt, its impetus directed the mind to the source of salvation in the individual act.

The poets, like Pope, were singing of the small part of life which kings and laws may hope to cure; and that attitude is written in the general absence of economic legislation during the period.

On the whole his age was a conservative one, convinced, without due reason, that happiness was independent of birth or wealth and that natural law somehow could be made to justify existing institutions.

He sees with striking clarity that the real problem is not at any cost to maintain the industries a nation actually possesses, but to have the national capital applied in the most efficient channels.

Therein he clearly sees that commercial barriers between Great Britain and France are basically as senseless as would be commercial barriers between Yorkshire and Middlesex.

So Ireland and America were sacrificed to the fear of British merchants, with the inevitable result that repression brought from both the obvious search for remedy.

Protection was essential in the colonial market; for unless the trade of the colonies was directed through England they might be dangerous rivals.

Nations grow prosperous at each other's expense; wherefore a woolen trade in Ireland necessarily spells English unemployment.