Disbanding Empire
Adam Smith could not imagine it would ever happen, but he nevertheless recommended that Britain grant independence to her colonies.
1776
King George III 1760-1820
Adam Smith could not imagine it would ever happen, but he nevertheless recommended that Britain grant independence to her colonies.
1776
King George III 1760-1820
Scottish economist Adam Smith regarded the British Empire as the best of its kind in history, but he still believed that it would be better for everyone if London abandoned her single market and meddlesome governance, and granted her colonies independence.
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TO propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war, as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be, adopted by any nation in the world.*
If it was adopted, however, Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishment of the colonies,* but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade.* It might dispose them not only to respect, for whole centuries together, that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in war as well as in trade, and instead of turbulent and factious subjects, to become our most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies.*
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‘Wealth of Nations’ was published in 1776, the year that the thirteen North American colonies declared independence, gaining sovereignty in 1783 after a bloody war. But Canada became self-governing in 1867, Australia in 1901, and New Zealand six years later; South Africa followed in 1910, the Irish Republic in 1922, and India in 1947. In the last two cases there were some armed confrontations, but no war.
Smith was of the opinion that operating a single market had dented gross domestic product through a lack of free trade and competition, that cronyism and waste was rife in Government, and that the spiralling costs of the Royal Navy were undermining fiscal responsibility: the The Seven Years’ War alone (1756-1763) had doubled the national debt.
The newly sovereign United States of America did conclude a friendly (though not free) trade deal with Britain, The ‘Jay Treaty’, though many campaigned on behalf of France precisely because of Britain’s attitude in 1776. Washington did not lend Britain military aid until the Great War of 1914-1918.
America fought as Britain’s allies for the first time in the Great War of 1914-1918. On the response of other colonies in the Great War, read John Buchan’s account in our post The Avengers.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What did Smith think no country would ever do?