‘peace, easy taxes, and justice’

Abstract

Smith wrote on the role of government for legislators and those who influenced them. Unfazed by a non-existent mass electorate (Adam Smith did not have a vote under the existing franchise), ministers, lords and MPs were sensitive, however, to their image among their peers, and were not comfortable with anything likely to undermine the social respect they expected from their ‘inferiors’. Smith understood this and he chose his words accordingly and his style is fairly clipped and, except in ‘a compleat history of all the chartered companies in Great Britain’ (WN731-58; Corr263-4), it is devoid of rhetoric.¹ The inordinately long section on church governance (WN788-814) contrasts starkly with the section he wrote on government spending on public projects to facilitate commerce (WN724-31).