James is still definitely within the circle of the Mercantilist's ideas, since he holds so strongly that it is wise for the statesman to direct industry and commerce into the right channels; though he realizes, as few of his predecessors had done, that this is a most difficult and delicate operation.
6. The way was now fully prepared for the gemius of Adam Smith to give a new turn to the old inquiries, and thus to revolutionize the whole nature of economic doctrine. Like all strokes of genius, what he did was extremely simple, and it was none the less a stroke of genius because the work of preceding writers had so far paved the way that they public were able to appreciate the merits of The Wealth of Nations at the moment when it appeared. He was prepared to go one step further than Sir James Steuart. The latter had aimed at, though he did not attain, an ideal scheme of national economy, while Adam Smith held that no such system was necessary. His predecessors had believed that the statesman must play upon private interests so as to force them to conduce to the public good, and the maintenance of national power. In Sir James Steuart this guiding aim becomes a mere abstraction, and the chief point to be considered in adjusting that aim is another abstraction—the spirit of the people. Truly the mercantile system was ready to vanish away. Adam Smith did not attempt to correct any previous system of economy, he was content to insist that all systems were idle, if not positively noxious. Other writers had begun with the requirements of the State, and had worked back to the funds in the possession of the people, from which these requirements could be supplied. Adam Smith approached the subject from the other end. The first object of political economy, as he understood it, was, 'to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people,' the second was, 'to supply the State or commonwealth, with a revenue sufficient for the public services.'[1] He simply discussed the subject of wealth; its bearing on the condition of the State appeared an afterthought. His great achievement lay in isolating the conception of national wealth, while previous writers had treated it in conscious subordination to the idea of national power.
So far as 'political economy considered as a branch of a science of a statesman' was concerned, it was now possible to regard material wealth as a main object in view; and if this was the main object in view, then the systems of policy which had preferred one kind of wealth to another, or one kind of trade to another, on political grounds, had simply lost their raison d'être. The system
- ↑ Works, iv. introduction.
