Skip to main content

Corruption And Problems Of Modernity

  • Chapter
The Passionate Society

8. Concluding Remarks

Ferguson’s account of progress and corruption is noteworthy because he synthesises traditional aetiologies of retrogression with causes novel to a commercialising age, thereby signalling the first tremors of a paradigm shift in the study of social life. The impressions of actual modern conditions are combined with a classical perspective to produce an original outlook on modernity.

Ferguson’s treatment of corruption shows him attempting to steer a course between Stoic austerity and a more modern embrace of progress. There are moments where his navigation falters, causing him to seem inconsistent and even confused. Specifically, while he denies the moral dimension of luxury and decrees social and technical progress to be inevitable and positive, he frequently assumes an, apparently unconscious, primitivistic asceticism. Similarly, his policy on militias jars against his general view of progress and seems arbitrary. Nevertheless, the discussion is replete with many prescient, sometimes brilliant insights, some of which anticipated and influenced nineteenth and twentieth century sociology. He provided the first penetrating analysis of the social effects of commercial expansion, bureaucratisation and specialisation and although there is no fully developed critique of ‘capitalism’ inside his analysis, there are clear intimations of an embryonic (albeit purely descriptive rather than normative) theory of alienation and anomie effects. Ferguson also provides one of the earliest accounts of the negative impact of consumerism on friendship and political life and the importance of social capital and political efficacy in the maintenance of strong polities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Kettler, Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson, pp. 8–9.

    Google Scholar 

  2. See Hirschman, Passions and Interests, p.120; Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, pp. 154–5; Bryson,’ some Eighteenth Century Conceptions of Society’, p. 421 and Horne, ‘Envy and Commercial Society’, pp. 552–3.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Essay, p. 178.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Essay, p. 208.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Pocock, ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume’, pp.153–69, p. 162.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation’, p. 465. According to Brewer, ‘Ferguson’s account of the decline of the Roman empire...influenced Gibbon’s more famous study’. Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’, p. 15. For Marx’s reference to Ferguson see K. Marx, Capital, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, 3 Vols, Vol. 1, pp. 334, 341–2; The Poverty of Philosophy, International Publishers, New York: 1969, p. 129–30. For further discussion on the Marx/Ferguson link see Lehmann, ‘Review’, p.169; Meek, ‘The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology’; R. Bendix, ‘Mandate to Rule, An Introduction’, Social Forces, Vol. 55 (2), 1976, pp. 252–3; E. Garnsey, ‘The Rediscovery of the Division of Labour’, Theory and Society, Vol. 10, 1981, pp. 337–58, p. 341; Hamowy, ‘Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour7rs and Ballestrem,’ sources of the Materialist Conception of History’, pp. 3–9.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Forbes, ‘Introduction’ to Essay, p. xxxi.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation’, p. 473.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gellner, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society’, p. 119.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, p. 53.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Camic, Experience and Enlightenment, p. 95.

    Google Scholar 

  12. For example, after travelling through Manchester and Birmingham he reported how impressed he was by the level of industrial development. Letter to John Douglas July 21, 1781, Correspondence, No. 198,II, pp. 267–8.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Strasser, The Normative Structure of Sociology, p. 53.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Brewer, “Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour”, p. 24.

    Google Scholar 

  15. ‘Population growth in Scotland’s five main cities between 1755 and 1175 was three times the national average’. Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’, p. 25.

    Google Scholar 

  16. These changes became fully realised by the nineteenth century. Joseph Mahon, ‘Engels and the Question about Cities’, History of European Ideas, Vol. 3(1), 1982, pp. 43–77, pp. 43–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Brewer, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’, pp. 24–5; See also C.P. Kindleberger, ‘The Historical Background: Adam Smith and the Industrial Revolution’, in T. Wilson and A. Skinner (eds), The Market and the State, Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 24.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, p. 198.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Whitney, Primitivism and the Idea of Progress, p. 43.

    Google Scholar 

  20. E.R. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, pp. 25–30.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Though Ferguson does admit that corruption can also take place in nations neither prosperous nor advanced. Essay, p. 229.

    Google Scholar 

  22. History, pp. 169–70.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Sher, Church and University, p. 201; P.I., p. 238.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Rome is ‘a signal example of the vicissitudes to which prosperous nations are exposed...To know it well is to know mankind’. History, pp. 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Peter Burke, ‘Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon’, Daedelus, Vol. 105,Summer, 1976, pp. 137–52, p. 145. Dodds makes the same observation. Ancient Concept of Progress, p. 25.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 462.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Jean Willke, Historical Thought of Adam Ferguson, p. 170. According to Addison Ward: ‘The special relevance of Roman history for England arose from the observation that both countries had “mixed” government, composed of monarchical, aristocratic, and popular elements, whose balance assured a maximum both of stability and personal liberty’. ‘Tory View of Roman History’, p. 418.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Robert L. Heilbroner, ‘The Paradox of Progress: Decline and Decay in the Wealth of NationsJournal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 34(2) 1973, pp. 243–262, p. 243. By contrast, Pocock suggests that Smith did not share Ferguson’s gloom about the commercial age. Pocock, ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume’, p. 162.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Essay, p. 247.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Essay, pp. 197–8.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Polybius, Rise of the Roman Empire, 6.57. p. 350.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Essay, p. 264. ‘[N]ational spirit is frequently transient, not on account of any incurable distemper in the nature of mankind, but on account of their voluntary neglects and corruptions’. Essay, p. 212. See also History, pp. 305–6.

    Google Scholar 

  33. The term also started to become synonymous with bribery during this period and eventually this latter, exclusively monetary, meaning replaced the Machiavellian meaning. Hirschman, Passions and Interests, p. 40.

    Google Scholar 

  34. S. M. Shumer, ‘Machiavelli; Republican Politics and Its Corruption’, Political Theory, Vol. 7(1), 1979, pp. 5–34, p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Essay, p. 200.

    Google Scholar 

  36. P.II., p. 509.

    Google Scholar 

  37. See, for example, letter to William Pulteney, 1 December, 1769, Correspondence, No. 57, I, p. 88.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Essay, p. 260.

    Google Scholar 

  39. History, pp. 169–70 Ferguson explains elsewhere that, although these beliefs were not truly representative of Epicureanism, the vulgar, hedonistic understanding of Epicureanism was generally adopted. Institutes, pp. 138–40.

    Google Scholar 

  40. History, p. 170.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Population size was commonly used as a measure of national wealth in the eighteenth century. Ann Firth, ‘Moral Supervision and Autonomous Social Order: Wages and Consumption in Eighteenth Century Economic Thought’, History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 15(1), pp. 39–57, p. 44. Smith asserted that ‘the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase in the number of inhabitants’. WN. I. Viii. 23. pp. 87–8.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Essay, p. 62. Rousseau took a similar line, arguing that ‘it is better to count on the vigour which comes of good government than on the resources a great territory furnishes’. But it should also be noted that Rousseau thought that the’ surest sign’ of a well-governed state was population growth. Social Contract, p. 221.

    Google Scholar 

  43. For a discussion of the validity of this belief see Shaw, The Political History of Eighteenth Century Scotland, pp. 1–17.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Shaw, The Political History of Eighteenth Century Scotland, p. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  45. P.II., p. 509.

    Google Scholar 

  46. WN. V. i. f. 50, p. 782.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Essay, p. 60.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Though only in a precursory sense. Liberalism and laissez-faire did not become fully conflated until the nineteenth century. Zaret, ‘From Political Philosophy to Social Theory’, p. 159.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Essay, p. 257. Montesquieu and Gibbon both linked the decline of empires to over extension. Burke, ‘The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon’, p. 146. Hume also disapproved of ‘extensive conquests’, asserting that aggressive expansionism ‘must be the ruin of every free government’. Hume, ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’, Essays, p. 529. Smith seems to have had a similar attitude. Dalphy I. Fagerstrom,’ scottish Opinion and the American Revolution’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 11 (2), 1954, pp. 252–75, p. 259.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Forbes, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Community’, p. 43.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Essay, p. 104.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Essay, pp. 84–94. Contemporary sources included accounts of life among the indigenous peoples of North America by Lafitau, Charlevoix and Colden.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Essay, p. 24. See also P.II., pp. 376–7.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Institutes, pp. 243–4.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress, p. 17.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Reflections, p. 19. Even so, Ferguson also accepted the naturalness of progress and held that the good life was still possible in large-scale societies provided that virtue was consciously cultivated. To be discussed further.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Mahon, ‘Engels and the Question about Cities’, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Essay, p. 262.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Jacqueline De Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, Translated by Philis Thody, New York: Arno Press, 1979, pp. 322–4. See Essay. p. 142, where Ferguson cites Thucydides as an authority on the subject of foreign conquests.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Essay, pp. 214–15.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Institutes, pp. 243–4.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Essay, p. 60. Rousseau made the same argument, giving reasons almost identical to those cited by Ferguson. Rousseau, Social Contract, pp. 219–20.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Institutes, p. 243.

    Google Scholar 

  64. Essay, pp. 256–7. Montesquieu, Laws, 1. 8. 19, p. 126.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Political efficacy is a modern term that refers to a ‘person’s belief that political and social change can be effected or retarded and that [her/]his efforts, alone or in concert with others can produce desired behaviour on the part of political authorities’. K. Prewitt, ‘Political Efficacy’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 12, London: MacMillan, 1968, p. 225.

    Google Scholar 

  66. In Rousseau’s list of the disadvantages of imperialism, he argues that these demobilisation effects are actually intentional rather than incidental by-products of over-extension. He thought that the real motive for conquest was not ‘to aggrandise the Nation’ but rather to ‘increase the authority of rulers at home’ and divert the minds of citizens from home affairs. Rousseau, A Discourse on Political Economy, in Social Contract and Discourses, p. 157.

    Google Scholar 

  67. P.II., pp. 500–1. Ferguson’s critique of imperialism does not conflict with his views on the positive effects of war, as might be thought, because his arguments on the latter topic generally apply to communities intent on self-defence. Violence against neighbours is only defensible in the context of necessity.

    Google Scholar 

  68. P.II., p. 501.

    Google Scholar 

  69. P.I., p. 34.

    Google Scholar 

  70. Institutes, p. 22. See also P.I., p. 34.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Essay, p. 257. ‘[F]ree nations, under the shew of acquiring dominion, suffer themselves, in the end, to be yoked with the slaves they had conquered’. Essay, p. 62.

    Google Scholar 

  72. In a similar vein Rousseau had written that it is a certainty ‘that no peoples are so oppressed and wretched as conquering nations’. A Discourse on Political Economy, in Social Contract and Discourses, p. 157.

    Google Scholar 

  73. History, p. 217.

    Google Scholar 

  74. History, pp. 70, 77–80, 98, 309, 350, 360, 391, 405.

    Google Scholar 

  75. De Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, pp. 315–19. Like Ferguson, Thucydides also lists rule by force, hatred of rulers, neglect of domestic concerns, and unprofitability as negatives of imperialism.

    Google Scholar 

  76. P.I., pp. 34–5.

    Google Scholar 

  77. Essay, pp. 261–4.

    Google Scholar 

  78. History, p. 5. Curiously, though, when confronted with concrete examples like those of America and Ireland, Ferguson’s declamations are abandoned for the sake of what appears to be political expediency. See Chapter 12 for a more complete discussion of this point.

    Google Scholar 

  79. Gay, The Enlightenment, Vol. II, pp. 342–3. See also Brewer ‘Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  80. A. Swingewood, A Short History of Sociological Thought, London: Macmillan, 1984, p. 23.

    Google Scholar 

  81. Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, p. 187.

    Google Scholar 

  82. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, pp. 129–30; Capital, I, pp. 334, 341–2.

    Google Scholar 

  83. Essay, pp. 206–7.

    Google Scholar 

  84. As noticed by Kettler. Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson, pp. 8–9.

    Google Scholar 

  85. See, for example, Of the Separation of Departments’, Collection of Essays, No. 15, passim.; Hamowy, ‘Progress and Commerce’, p. 87.

    Google Scholar 

  86. Marx credits Ferguson with the idea of worker alienation and suggests that Smith took the idea from Ferguson. But he was unaware that Smith discussed the topic in his Glasgow Lectures before the Essay was published. However it is possible ‘that Ferguson suggested the theme in the first place’. Forbes, Introduction to Essay, p. xxxi. The subject is a vexed one and Smith and Ferguson are thought to have become embroiled in a priority controversy over it. For further details see: See Amoh, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour’; Hamowy, ‘Division of Labour’; H. Mizuta, ‘Two Adams in the Scottish Enlightenment’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 191, 1981, pp. 812–19; Dickey, ‘Historicising the Adam Smith Problem’, p. 591; Kettler, Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson, p. 74.

    Google Scholar 

  87. See Smith, WN. V.i, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  88. Smith, LJ (A) vi. 46–49, pp. 348–49; WN. I.ii.1–3, pp. 25–7.

    Google Scholar 

  89. Essay, pp. 174–5, 206–7.

    Google Scholar 

  90. Essay, p. 174.

    Google Scholar 

  91. Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, p. 80.

    Google Scholar 

  92. Institutes, p. 22.

    Google Scholar 

  93. Essay, pp. 206–7.

    Google Scholar 

  94. Essay, p. 207.

    Google Scholar 

  95. Essay, p.208.

    Google Scholar 

  96. Essay, p.231.

    Google Scholar 

  97. See Marx, Capital, I., p. 334.

    Google Scholar 

  98. Essay, p. 178.

    Google Scholar 

  99. As first noticed by John Brewer. Brewer, ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, pp. 15–23 who draws our attention to the above examples.

    Google Scholar 

  100. Essay, p. 151.

    Google Scholar 

  101. Essay, p. 175.

    Google Scholar 

  102. Essay, p. 177.

    Google Scholar 

  103. ‘Of the Separation of Departments’, Collection of Essays, No. 15, p. 142.

    Google Scholar 

  104. Essay, p. 179.

    Google Scholar 

  105. Essay, pp. 63–4. Yet Ferguson shows signs of real ambivalence here. Some occupations are so debasing that Ferguson is moved to comment that ‘the less there is of this sort, the better...subordination however valuable is too dearly bought by the debasement of any order or class of the people’. ‘Of the Separation of Departments’, Collection of Essays, No. 15, pp. 142–3.

    Google Scholar 

  106. To quote Norbert Waszek. ‘Division of Labour’, p. 56.

    Google Scholar 

  107. Essay, p. 177. Ferguson notes that: ‘Property, in the common course of human affairs, is unequally divided: we are therefore obliged to suffer the wealthy to squander, that the poor may subsist; we are obliged to tolerate certain orders of men, who are above the necessity of labour, in order that, in their condition, there may be an object of ambition, and a rank to which the busy aspire’. Essay, p. 225. The only regime under which equality of wealth is appropriate is a democratic one: ‘in such only it has been admitted with any degree of effect’. Essay, p. 151.

    Google Scholar 

  108. P.I., p. 251.

    Google Scholar 

  109. Ibn Kaldhoun (of whose work Ferguson seems to have been unaware) had also argued much earlier that the delegation of security to specialists leads to a politically and militarily weakened state. Gellner, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society’, p. 121. Rousseau’s observations on the same topic are also closely reiterated. Rousseau, ‘Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences’, in Social Contract and Discourses, p. 20.

    Google Scholar 

  110. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue, pp. 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  111. Smith, The Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson, pp. 19, 11.

    Google Scholar 

  112. Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue, p. 7.

    Google Scholar 

  113. Whereas he vigorously campaigned for a Scottish Militia Ferguson was more complacent about the’ shift of politics to London’. Smith, The Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson, pp. 19–20.

    Google Scholar 

  114. Willke, The Historical Thought of Adam Ferguson, p. 148. The theme of the standing army as an instrument of corruption is also present in the writings of Shaftesbury, another of Ferguson’s sources. F.. J. McLynn, ‘The Ideology of Jacobitism — Part II’, History of European Ideas, Vol. 6 (2), 1985, pp. 173–88, p. 179.

    Google Scholar 

  115. Essay, p. 218. Forbes, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Community’, p. 45.

    Google Scholar 

  116. ‘Of the Separation of Departments’, Collection of Essays, No. 15, p. 148.

    Google Scholar 

  117. Sher, ‘Problem of National Defense’, pp. 258–65

    Google Scholar 

  118. Fagg, Biographical Introduction, p. xxxiv.

    Google Scholar 

  119. Hamowy, Social and Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson, p. 198.

    Google Scholar 

  120. Sher, ‘Problem of National Defense’, p. 259. See also Ferguson, Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson Originally Intended for the British Encyclopedia, Edinburgh: Printed by John Moir, 1816, p.10.

    Google Scholar 

  121. The latter also produced a widely read pro-militia pamphlet. It was entitled: The Question Relating to a Scots Militia Considered (1760) and was edited by Ferguson and William Robertson. Sher, Church and University, p. 225.

    Google Scholar 

  122. Ferguson, Reflections, p. 12.

    Google Scholar 

  123. History, pp. 183, 348, 399; Reflections, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  124. Essay, p. 149.

    Google Scholar 

  125. Phillipson, in Hont and Ignatieff (eds.), Wealth and Virtue, p.181. The textual evidence certainly supports this view. See Smith WN. V.i.f–g. p. 788.

    Google Scholar 

  126. Sher, ‘Problem of National Defense’, p. 267 and passim.

    Google Scholar 

  127. Smith’s views on this topic were more complex than Ferguson’s perception because in later passages of Book V of the Wealth of Nations Smith qualifies his position thus: ‘That in the progress of improvement the practice of military exercises, unless government takes proper pains to support it, goes gradually to decay, and together with it, the martial spirit of the great body of the people, the example of modern Europe sufficiently demonstrates. But the security of every society must always depend, more or less, on the martial spirit of the great body of people. In the present times, indeed, that martial spirit alone, and unsupported by a well-disciplined standing army, would not perhaps, be sufficient for the defence and security of any society. But where every citizen had the spirit of a soldier, a smaller standing army would surely be requisite. That spirit besides, would necessarily diminish very much the dangers to liberty, whether real or imaginary, which are commonly apprehended from a standing army. As it would very much facilitate the operations of that standing army against a foreign invader, so it would obstruct them as much if unfortunately they should ever be directed against the constitution of the state’. WN. V. i. f. 59, pp. 786–7. Furthermore, in his response to Alexander Carlyle’s attack on his views Smith wrote to Andreas Holt: ‘When he wrote this book, he had not read mine to the end. He fancies that because I insist that a Militia is in all cases inferior to a well-regulated and well-disciplined standing Army, I disapprove of Militias altogether. With regard to that subject, he and I happened to be precisely of the same opinion’. Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, Mossner, E.C., and Ross, I.S., (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, Letter 208, October 26 1780, p. 251. Nevertheless, Smith insistence on the technical superiority of standing armies was a genuine point of disagreement with Ferguson. For a more detailed discussion on the relationship of the two Adams here see Sher, ‘Problem of National Defense’, pp. 240–268.

    Google Scholar 

  128. Mizuta, ‘Two Adams in the Scottish Enlightenment’, p. 815.

    Google Scholar 

  129. Smith WN. V.i.a.22–41, pp. 699–707. Smith did, however, concede with Ferguson that the standing armies of the Roman republic and Cromwell were pernicious but insisted that under ideal conditions, that is, where ‘the sovereign is himself the general...a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the contrary, in some cases it may be favourable to liberty’. WN., Vi.a.41, pp. 706–7.

    Google Scholar 

  130. Adam Ferguson in a letter to Adam Smith, April 18, 1776. Correspondence of Adam Smith, pp. 193–4.

    Google Scholar 

  131. P.II., p. 492.

    Google Scholar 

  132. Essay, p. 138. See also P.I., p. 302 and Essay, pp. 242–3.

    Google Scholar 

  133. Willke, The Historical Thought of Adam Ferguson, pp. 2–3.

    Google Scholar 

  134. Polybius, Rise of the Roman Empire, 6.52. p. 346. Identically, Machiavelli argued that ‘the reason why mercenary troops are useless’ is that ‘they have no cause to stand firm when attacked, apart from the small pay which you give them’. Therefore the only way to keep the state intact is ‘to arm oneself with one’s own subjects’. Machiavelli, Discourses, I. 43. p. 218. See also Machiavellli, ‘The Citizen Army’, The Art of War, in The Chief Works and Others; Vol. II, Allan Gibert (ed.), Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1965, pp. 579–87.

    Google Scholar 

  135. History, pp. 28–32, 104, 127, 288, and Reflections, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  136. Machiavelli, The Prince, 12. pp. 77–9.

    Google Scholar 

  137. Adam Ferguson’s unpublished moral philosophy lecture notes dated April 9, 1776, quoted in Sher, ‘Problem of National Defense’, p. 256.

    Google Scholar 

  138. Essay, pp. 218–19.

    Google Scholar 

  139. A view shared by Francis Hutcheson. Lawrence Delbert Cress, ‘Radical Whiggery on the Role of the Military: Ideological Roots of the American Revolutionary Militia’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 40(1), 1979, pp. 43–60, p. 52.

    Google Scholar 

  140. Essay, pp. 213–20.

    Google Scholar 

  141. Essay, p. 256.

    Google Scholar 

  142. Lois Schwoer, ‘No Standing Armies!’, pp. 51–71.

    Google Scholar 

  143. Essay, pp. 86–8.

    Google Scholar 

  144. Essay, pp. 22–3.

    Google Scholar 

  145. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley: Berkeley University Press 1978, p. 636.

    Google Scholar 

  146. Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences’, in Social Contract and Discourses, pp. 6–7.

    Google Scholar 

  147. Silver, ‘Friendship in Commercial Society’, pp. 1480–81.

    Google Scholar 

  148. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, Essays, pp. 270–271.

    Google Scholar 

  149. TMS. II. ii. 3. 2. p. 86.

    Google Scholar 

  150. Essay, pp. 23–4.

    Google Scholar 

  151. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, ‘Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations: An Introductory Essay’, in Hont and Ignatieff, (eds.), Wealth and Virtue, p. 6.

    Google Scholar 

  152. Kettler, ‘History and Theory in Ferguson’s Essay’, p. 452.

    Google Scholar 

  153. Bernstein, ‘Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Progress’, p. 113; P.II., p. 501.

    Google Scholar 

  154. Reesor, The Political Theory of the Old and Middle Stoa, p. 16.

    Google Scholar 

  155. Seneca, Letters From a Stoic, Selected and Translated with an Introduction by Robin Campbell, London: Penguin, 1969, Letter 114. 10, p. 216.

    Google Scholar 

  156. Seneca, Letters From a Stoic, Letter 90, 37, p. 173.

    Google Scholar 

  157. Epictetus, Enchiridion, 39, pp. 37–8.

    Google Scholar 

  158. History, pp. 464–9, 169–70.

    Google Scholar 

  159. Roche, Rousseau: Stoic and Romantic, p. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  160. Springborg, Western Republicanism, p. 63.

    Google Scholar 

  161. Montesquieu, Laws, 1. 7. 2, p. 98.

    Google Scholar 

  162. Reesor, The Political Theory of the Old and Middle Stoa, p. 16.

    Google Scholar 

  163. Institutes, p. 247.

    Google Scholar 

  164. But for reasons related to equity and ‘justice’ rather than asceticism: Whereas taxes on the 9 consumption of ‘ornament’ and ‘costly accommodation’ are acceptable, taxes on ‘the necessaries of life, are a tax on the poor’ and this is wrong. Institutes, pp. 256–8.

    Google Scholar 

  165. P.I., p. 243; History, p. 109.

    Google Scholar 

  166. Essay, p. 80.

    Google Scholar 

  167. Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’; Essays, pp. 278, 270–2, 276–7.

    Google Scholar 

  168. Hume, History, Vol. II. Ch. 23, p. 522.

    Google Scholar 

  169. Smith, WN. III.iv.5, pp. 412–14; III. iv. 11–18, pp. 419–22.

    Google Scholar 

  170. Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 157–8.

    Google Scholar 

  171. Smith, WN, I.i.10–11, pp. 22–4.

    Google Scholar 

  172. Sekora, Luxury, p. 104.

    Google Scholar 

  173. Essay, p. 237.

    Google Scholar 

  174. Lehmann, Adam Ferguson, p. 148.

    Google Scholar 

  175. History, p. 109.

    Google Scholar 

  176. Sekora, Luxury, p. 104.

    Google Scholar 

  177. Rousseau wrote: ‘[W]ithout insisting on the necessity of sumptuary laws, can it be denied that rectitude of morals is essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is diametrically opposed to such rectitude?’. ‘A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences’, in The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 17. An important difference, though, is that Ferguson did not endorse Rousseau’s view that the ‘dissolution of morals’ was a ‘necessary consequence of luxury’. Ibid., p. 19. My emphasis. Kames was particularly preoccupied with the theme of the pernicious effect of luxury, declaring it to be ‘the ruin of every state where it prevailed’. Cited in Scheffer, ‘Idea of Decline’, p. 168.

    Google Scholar 

  178. Nevertheless, some economists remained committed to the view that, because luxury was pernicious, a sumptuary law should be introduced. Thomas Alcock was one such advocate. Firth, ‘Moral Supervision and Social Order’, pp. 45, 48. See also, John E. Crowley, ‘The Sensibility of Comfort’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 104 (3) 1999, pp. 749–782.

    Google Scholar 

  179. Essay, pp. 231–2. See also P.I., p. 248.

    Google Scholar 

  180. ‘Luxury has turned her back on nature’. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 90, 19. p. 168.

    Google Scholar 

  181. Essay, p. 241.

    Google Scholar 

  182. P.II., p. 342.

    Google Scholar 

  183. Essay, pp. 248–51.

    Google Scholar 

  184. Essay, p. 216.

    Google Scholar 

  185. Institutes, p. 146. Hiroshi Mizuta makes this same point in ‘Two Adams in the Scottish Enlightenment’.

    Google Scholar 

  186. Institutes, p. 138.

    Google Scholar 

  187. P.I., p. 244.

    Google Scholar 

  188. P.II., p. 341.

    Google Scholar 

  189. P.II., p. 342.

    Google Scholar 

  190. To use Fania Oz-Salzberger’s words. Translating the Enlightenment, p. 113.

    Google Scholar 

  191. Essay, p. 253.

    Google Scholar 

  192. Essay, p. 245.

    Google Scholar 

  193. Essay, p. 240.

    Google Scholar 

  194. P.I., p. 245.

    Google Scholar 

  195. Essay, p. 237.

    Google Scholar 

  196. Essay, pp. 238–9.

    Google Scholar 

  197. TMS. I.iii.3. 6., p. 63.

    Google Scholar 

  198. TMS. VI. ii. 1.20–1, pp. 225–6.

    Google Scholar 

  199. Essay, p. 241.

    Google Scholar 

  200. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, Letter 7, 10. p. 43.

    Google Scholar 

  201. Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, p. 195.

    Google Scholar 

  202. Polybius, Rise of the Roman Empire, 6. 8. p. 308. See also Springborg, Western Republicanism, p. 66 for further discussion.

    Google Scholar 

  203. Reesor, Political Theory of the Old and Middle Stoa, p. 23.

    Google Scholar 

  204. Machiavelli, Discourses, 1. 2. p. 107.

    Google Scholar 

  205. Montesquieu, Laws, 1.8. 5, pp. 115–16.

    Google Scholar 

  206. P.I., p. 245.

    Google Scholar 

  207. Essay, p. 248.

    Google Scholar 

  208. History, pp. 277–8, 294.

    Google Scholar 

  209. Essay, p. 223.

    Google Scholar 

  210. Essay, p. 228.

    Google Scholar 

  211. Yet Ferguson is careful to explain that the pursuit of pleasure is natural but only if it is indulged in occasionally and temporarily. P.II., pp. 386.

    Google Scholar 

  212. Essay, p. 248.

    Google Scholar 

  213. Essay, p. 219.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

(2006). Corruption And Problems Of Modernity. In: The Passionate Society. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, vol 191. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3890-9_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics