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Forum: The Madisonian Moment
Adam Smith's Reception among the American Founders, 1776–1790
Samuel Fleischacker
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DESPITE all the recent scholarship on the impact of Scottish thought on the American founding, curiously little attention has been paid to the influence of Adam Smith. Brilliant, if speculative, arguments have been made for the influence of Francis Hutcheson on Thomas Jefferson's thought in the Declaration of Independence, of David Hume on James Madison's conception of the Constitution, and of Thomas Reid on James Wilson's jurisprudence. No comparable inquiry has been conducted into the importance of Smith. Yet, it is well known that Smith was extremely interested in America, and there is good evidence that many of the founders, including Jefferson, Madison, and Wilson, were reading his work. Indeed, the American founders were among the earliest readers of Smith's Wealth of Nations, and their readings constitute a significant episode in the history of the book's reception. In addition, a specific connection between Smith and Federalist No. 10 clarifies the role Madison saw for society, as opposed to government, in shaping individual behavior. There are also a number of other resonances between Smith's views on virtue and how to foster it and the views of his American readers. The relationship between politics and virtue in late eighteenth-century thought can be understood better by examining Smith and the founders from each other's perspective.1 |
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Circumstantial evidence figures prominently in scholarly work on early American intellectual history. The founders hardly ever discussed their intellectual heritage explicitly, and in their writings, they often failed to let the reader know whom they were quoting. The arguments for Hume's influence on Madison, Hutcheson's on Jefferson, and Reid's on Wilson have been supported almost entirely by identifying verbal echoes, coupled with evidence that the relevant Scottish writings were taught in colleges and owned by American libraries. By these evidentiary standards, the case for Smith's importance does very well. |
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Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments did not share the central place of Hutcheson's moral sense theory in pre-revolutionary college curriculums, but it was taught and, before 1776 and from 1777–1790, it had a greater presence in American libraries than either Reid's or Hume's philosophical writings. John Witherspoon incorporated it into his teaching at Princeton (the "College of New Jersey"); he had brought a copy with him for the Princeton library when he emigrated from Scotland. Jefferson included the book in a 1771 list of titles recommended for a private library, and John Adams devoted a chapter of his Discourse on Davila to a long excerpt from it. Benjamin Rush quoted the Theory of Moral Sentiments during a 1774 lecture on American Indians, and Wilson seemed to allude to it in his 1790–1791 lectures on American law.2 |
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