『国富論』と「アメリカ」(again) - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

作者: Nicholas Phillipson
出版社/メーカー: Penguin
発売日: 2011/05/05
メディア: ペーパーバック
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Nicholas Philipson Adam Smith: An Enlightened Lifeから；

So far, Smith's attack on the commercial system had been theoretical and based on his discussion of the division of labour and the natual progress of opulence in an nation unencumbered by the relics of feudalism and enjoying a system of free trade and perfect liberty. (…) what his theory and his attack on the commercial system had lacked was any strong example of a nation whose economic progress had actually followed the route laid out in an essentially conjectural analysis. He had naturally called attention to Scotland's free-trade union with England to illustrate his Glasgow lecutures, and he made copious use of Scottish examples to illustrate vsrious the Wealth of Nations. But Scotland, still encumbered by the sort of natural progress Smith had envisaged. His masterstroke was to introduce the experience of colonial America as the classic, and indeed the only possible, example of a society whose progress had been rapid and natural by comparison with that of Europe. (pp.227-228)

(…) American land was cheap, and inheritance – in some colonies at least – was unencumbered by primogeniture, entails and high tax. The colonists thmselves appeared educated, frugal, tractable and hardworking. They were natural Smithian improvers who invested their stock in agriculture and simple manufactures and, because labour was relatively scarce, paid their labourers high wages, which encouraged them to set up on their own. Above all, they possessed a spirit of equality that encouraged a 'republican' attitude to govenemnt. (…) the Ameican and West Indian colonies had developed a system of regional trade that was everything Smith could have longed for in Europe. (…) (p.228)

Smith's analysis was schematic and introdced what became a celebrated contribution to contemporary debate about Britain's future relations with America. It was also the basis of his crucial discussion of the consequences of colonial trade for the colonies and the mother country. Smith had to show that Navigation Acts and the various regulations that had turned trade with the colonies into a 'monopoly trade' had retarded the overall development of the British economy. (…) (pp.228-229)