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Commerce, Virtue, and Politics: Adam Ferguson's Constitutionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Gary L. McDowell
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Extract

Adam Ferguson was one of several moral philosophers who contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment, a period aptly described as one of “remarkable efflorescence.” The works of Ferguson and his fellow Scotsmen — Adam Smith, David Hume, Dugald Stewart, Lord Kames, Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid — were widely distributed, seriously read, and vigorously debated during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The greatest contribution of this Scottish school to the history of political thinking was the refinement of the idea of commercial republicanism, the synthesis of modern notions of polity and economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 536 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1983

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References

1 Clive, John and Bailyn, Bernard, “England's Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 11 (1954), 200–243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Lundberg, David and May, Henry F., “The Enlightened Reader in America.” American Quarterly, 28 (1976), 262–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Thompson, Dennis F., “The Education of a Founding Father: The Reading List for John Witherspoon's Course in Political Theory, as taken by James Madison,” Political Theory, 11 1976, pp. 523–529Google Scholar; Adair, Douglass, ed., “James Madison's Autobiography,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 1945, pp. 191–209Google Scholar; Hutchinson, William T. et al. , The Papers of James Madison (Chicago, 1962–1977), 1: 131Google Scholar; 134; 148–49; vol. 6: 62–115; and Adair, Douglass, “James Madison,” in The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton, ed. Thorp, William (Princeton, 1946), pp. 137–157Google Scholar.

4 Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 177–220Google Scholar. See also, Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975) pp. 449–501Google Scholar; and Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar.

5 See Cropsey, Joseph, Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam Smith (The Hague, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Forbes, Duncan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967)Google Scholar. All references are to this edition, hereinafter cited as Essay.

7 See Lerner, Ralph, “Commerce and Character: The Anglo-American as New-Model Man,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 36, no. 1 (01 1979), 3–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Essay, p. 65.

9 Small, John, “Biographical Sketch of Adam Ferguson,” Edinburgh Review, 125, no. 225 (1867)Google Scholar.

10 Witherspoon, John, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. Collins, Varnum Lansing (Princeton, 1912), pp. 38–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The young Madison apparently learned his lessons well. After leaving Princeton, he not only searched for a copy of Ferguson's Essay for his personal library, but also included Ferguson's works on a 1783 list of books “to be imported for the use of the United States in Congress Assembled.” Beyond his bibliographic interests, Madison's own political thinking revealed striking similarities with the Scottish school generally, and with Ferguson in particular. It is tempting to attribute an intellectual debt from Madison to the Scots. But short of any explicit statement (which has yet to surface), such attribution is an inherently risky business. For the similarities between Madison and the Scots, see Branson, Roy, “James Madison and the Scottish Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 40 (04–06 1979), 235–250CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the dangers of attribution consider Wills, Garry, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; and Hamowy, Ronald, “Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Critique of Garry Wills' Inventing America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 36, no. 4 (10 1979), 503–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Greig, J. Y. T., ed., The Letters of David Hume (Oxford, 1932), volume 2, pp. 125, 131Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 12.

13 Marx, Karl, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York, 1936), p. 110Google Scholar

14 Avineri, Shlomo, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1972), p. 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lukacs, Georg, The Young Hegel (London, 1975), pp. 40Google Scholar; 55; 323; 402; and Knox, T. M., ed., Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Oxford, 1967), p. xGoogle Scholar.

15 Duncan Forbes, “Introduction,” Essay, p. xiii. The sociological works are Bryson, Gladys, Man and Society (Princeton, 1945)Google Scholar; Lehmann, William C., Adam Ferguson and The Beginning of Modern Sociology (New York and London 1930)Google Scholar. See Kettler, David, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Columbus, 1965)Google Scholar. Kettler fails to take Ferguson's thought as seriously as he should. He dismisses what he sees as “ambiguities” in Ferguson's thought as merely the result of his “roles” in Scottish society. In fact, Kettler goes so far as to assert that one can understand Ferguson's thought only by reference to his social circumstances (see pp. 140, 182). See also Kettler, David, “History and Theory in Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society,” Political Theory, 5, no. 4 (11 1977), 437–460CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Lerner, “Commerce and Character.”

17 Lerner, “Commerce and Character,” pp. 5–8. For an interesting consideration of Smith and Hume by Ferguson see Adam Ferguson, “Of the Principle of Moral Estimation,” Ernest C. Mossner, ed., The Journal of the History of Ideas.

18 See Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Canaan, Edward (New York: Modern Library, 1937), pp. 734–740Google Scholar; 740–48. See also, Cropsey, Polity and Economy, pp. 88–95. For a treatment of Ferguson's relationship with Smith see the appendix to Hamowy, Ronald, “The Social and Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson: A Commentary on his Essay on the History of Civil Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1969)Google Scholar.

19 Hume, David, “Of Commerce,” in Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford, 1963), pp. 262–269Google Scholar. See Adair, Douglass, “‘That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science’: David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 20 (1957), 343–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Ferguson, Adam, Principles of Moral and Political Science, 2 vols. (1792), I:252Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., I: 265–66; II: 509.

22 Essay, p. 237.

23 Ibid., p. 261.

24 Ibid., pp. 261–63; 177–79; 205.

25 Ibid., p. 180.

26 Ibid., p. 181.

27 Ibid., p. 225.

28 Ibid., p. 181.

29 Ibid., p. 184.

30 Ibid., p. 186.

31 Ibid., p. 199.

32 Ibid., p. 53.

33 Ibid., p. 54.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., p. 190.

36 Ibid., p. 191.

37 Ibid., p. 127.

38 Ibid., p. 128. Compare with The Federalist, Nos. 10 and 51; and Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, passim.

39 Essay, p. 129.

40 Ibid., pp. 162–63.

41 Ibid., p. 136.

42 Ibid., p. 140.

43 Ibid., p. 141.

44 Ibid., p. 143.

45 Ibid., p. 144.

46 Ibid., p. 146. Compare with The Federalist, Nos. 51 and 55; and with Madison's speech of 20 June 1788 before the Virginia ratifying convention; and his essay on the “Republican Distribution of Citizens” in the National Gazette of 5 March 1792.

47 Essay, pp. 160–62. Ferguson's embrace of the Spartan model indicates just how far removed his theory of politics was from that of David Hume. See “Of Commerce” in Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, pp. 262–69. See also Stourzh, Gerald, Alexander Hamilton & the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, 1970), pp. 69–73Google Scholar; 133–39; and Lerner, “Commerce and Character,” pp. 11–21.

48 Essay, p. 156.

49 Ibid., p. 165. See The Federalist, No. 51.

50 Essay, p. 167.

51 Ibid., p. 199.

52 Ibid., p. 200.

53 Ibid., p. 201.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., p. 225.

56 Ibid., pp. 278–79.

57 Ibid., p. 279.