Adam Smith on Justice, Rights, and Law

Abstract

THE UNEXECUTED ACCOUNT OF LAW AND GOVERNMENT “I shall in another discourse,” Adam Smith reported in the final paragraph of The Theory of Moral Sentiments , “endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society” (TMS, VII.iv.37). Smith's announcement of this future volume on the general principles of law and government - originally presented in the 1759 first edition of his moral treatise - was then reissued over the next three decades in all the subsequent editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments published in Smith's own lifetime. Even the heavily revised sixth edition of 1790, published in the year of Smith's death, retained the passage; although by this time, Smith acknowledged that his “very advanced age” left him “very little expectation” of completing “this great work,” which some thirty years earlier he “entertained no doubt of being able to execute” in its entirety (TMS, “Advertisement,” p. 3).

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