Anglican Social Thought and the Shaping of Political Economy in Britain: Joseph Butler, Josiah Tucker, William Paley and Edmund Burke

Abstract

The story of political economy is often told beginning with Adam Smith and his Scottish Enlightenment friends, then migrating to England where it took shape as a discipline in the early nineteenth century. This telling of the story neglects the role of eighteenth century Anglican natural theological thinking about the evolving market economy. We know that Joseph Butler’s writings on the relationship between self-interest and the common good were important for Hume and Smith and other political economists, as was the more explicitly economic work of Josiah Tucker. William Paley’s theological utilitarian framework and analysis of population and growth was the starting point for important nineteenth century political economists. Edmund Burke’s vigorous economic policy advocacy has its roots as much in the eighteenth century Anglicans as Smith, and Burke was an important conduit for the idea of a harmonious free market order into the nineteenth century and beyond.

Keywords:

• Political economy
• English enlightenment
• anglicanism
• Adam Smith
• Joseph Butler
• Josiah Tucker
• William Paley
• Edmund Burke

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank participants at the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia Annual Conference, participants at the David Nichol Smith Workshop on 18th C Studies at the University of Sydney, and the journal referees for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The paper could be titled ‘What would the history of economics look like without Adam Smith?’. A referee suggested an alternative counterfactual that might be investigated: ‘If Butler, Tucker, Paley and Burke had not existed (but Smith and the WN had existed), would English political economy have been significantly different?’

2 An important question raised by Viner (1978), Faccarello (1999) is the influence of French Jansenist thought on political economy in Britain, from Pierre Nicole, Jean Domat, Boisguilbert, through Mandeville to Smith. Further investigating this alternative line of theological influence on political is beyond the scope of the present paper.

3 Butler Tucker Paley and Burke were all Englishmen and members of the established Anglican Church, though as noted below Butler’s family background and early education were nonconformist, and Burke’s early years were spent in Ireland. All fit within Anglican social thinking as described by Viner (1978), Waterman (1991) and others.

4 Further information about Butler’s life is available in Cunliffe (2004), which is a much more balanced account than Leslie Stephen’s (1899) earlier treatment of Butler (and his treatments of Josiah Tucker and Paley). The clash between Wesley and Butler is described in F. Baker (1980) ‘John Wesley and Bishop Joseph Butler: A Fragment of Wesley's Manuscript Journal August 1739’. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 42 (May): 93–100. I am grateful to the editor and a referee for pointing out the recent PhD thesis and forthcoming article by Peter Xavier Price (2016) on Butler and Tucker. Price’s emphasis on the role of Butler in providing the theological and moral philosophical framework for Tucker’s economic writings complements my argument, though I am unconvinced by Price’s characterisation of this framework as neo-Stoic, in contrast to the Augustinian-Epicurean framework of Mandeville and Hobbes.

5 A reassessment of Butler’s role in the history of economics implicitly repositions Hobbes role, since Hirschman (1977) and Myers (1983) saw Smith as responding to Hobbes’ argument that the state of nature was chaotic and nasty, and that state power was the solution to this problem. Smith on their account was arguing, against Hobbes, that state power is not needed achieve economic order. Smith could not afford to acknowledge debts to notorious atheists Hobbes and Mandeville, though Smith at one point in TMS sets his own moral theory against Hobbes, criticising Hobbes for supposing there is no natural distinction between right and wrong, making these a matter for the arbitrary will of the civil magistrate. Hobbes appears only incidentally in the WN. If Butler was responding to Hobbes, and Butler influenced Hume and Smith, then Hobbes has more historical influence on political economy than is commonly recognised. Hont (2005) gives a quite different account of the connection between Hobbes, Hume and Smith, where the Scots add an economic dimension to Hobbes purely political natural law theory.

6 Mossner (1936) and Penelhum (1988) discuss the relationship between Butler and Hume. Further biographical evidence that Butler was respected by Hume and Smith is provided by Ross (2010). Raphael and Macfie’s introduction to Smith TMS, 11 suggests that the connection between Butler and Smith was mediated through Hutcheson, though the evidence for this suggestion is unclear.

7 Many of these doctrines are part of the mainstream Christian tradition. The distinctively Anglican contribution is in how they were worked out in the social theory of the writers we are considering.

8 Further information about Tucker’s life and works may be found in Shelton (1981, 1987) and Cornish (2004).

9 The exchange between Tucker and Hume is discussed by Rotwein (1955), Semmel (1965), Berdell (1996) and Hont (1983, 2005). Hume suggested in his essay ‘On Money’ in 1752 that trade between rich and poor country cannot generate limitless wealth for the rich country, because trade caused by the coincidence of its advantages and lower wages in the poor country will eventually be dampened as trade increases wages rise in the poor country. When Hume read a revised fragment in 1758 via Kames of Tucker’s Elements (the fragment was later published as Tucker 1774) where Tucker suggested that expansion of the market would counteract the effect of rising wages so that trade could continue to enrich both countries. Hume revised his view in a new essay ‘On the Jealousy of Trade’ added in 1758 to his Political Essays. As Hont (2005) points out, both Hume and Tucker’s arguments contained the idea of mutually beneficial trade and international specialisation. Tucker claimed victory in the exchange, but Hume viewed ‘On the Jealousy of Trade’ as merely clarifying his original argument.

10 A striking but theoretically inconsequential example is Tucker’s remark that England is a nation of shopkeepers. This appears in Adam Smith, is quoted by Napoleon, and many others down to Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s.

11 Paley’s clerical career was rumoured to have been curtailed by the discomfort caused to Anglican authorities by the so-called pigeon passage in his PMPP: ‘If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got, into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves, but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men’ (Paley PMPP, 63). This passage indicates Paley’s understanding that the harmony of interests was by no means perfect – just as Smith was aware of the disharmony flowing from cartels.

12 Further biographical information about Paley may be found in Le Mahieu (1976), Cole (1988, 1991) and Waterman (2010). Paley’s place in an English Enlightenment to which social and economic improvement was central is discussed by O'Flaherty (2010). Waterman (1996, 2010, 2016) discusses Paley’s relationship to Adam Smith and describes Paley’s sophisticated model of population and growth in PMPP that led Keynes to call him ‘the first of the Cambridge economists’. Paley probably read Smith’s WN 1776 before finalising his PMPP in 1785. According to Waterman (2016), the influence of Smith is the most likely explanation of the increased emphasis on economic analysis in PMPP compared to Paley’s earlier Cambridge lectures, a manuscript of which has been recently discovered. Waterman (2016) also has a fascinating discussion of Paley’s Cambridge contemporary John Hey’s lectures which may also have been important for the development of Paley’s thinking on economic matters. We cannot rule out reports of Paley’s Cambridge lectures influencing Smith, though this is much less likely. Paley’s enormous influence on English social and economic thinking is discussed by Norman (1976, 9).

13 Paley’s providential ‘finger of God’ (PMPP, p. 42) has received much less attention in the literature than Adam Smith’ ‘invisible hand’.

14 Paley was dying of painful cancer while writing his natural theology. There is no mention of this in the text, though perhaps the comment about bodily pain reflects this experience. (Natural Theology ch26, 255ff.). Paley is no Dr Pangloss, and unlike Voltaire’s famous character from Candide recognises imperfection and evil are realities of a created order.

15 Seeing Burke and Smith as parallel, though linked, sources of nineteenth century economic thinking was suggested by Winch (1996). I am emphasising the Butler–Paley–Malthus line as an influence on economic theory and Burke as an influence on policy and popular discussion. Winch (1996, 373) also elevated Malthus as a ‘joint founder’ with Smith of the discipline of political economy.

16 The standard life is probably now Bourke (2015). He emphasises the consistency of Burke’s philosophy, with the tensions others have identified often being due to different problems Burke was addressing.

17 Since Smith died in 1790 this claim must refer to Burke’s early work, ruling out from consideration Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as his Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. The claim could refer to student essays published in the Trinity College Dublin Reformer where Burke discussed political economy, or more likely his Observations on The Present State of the Nation 1769 which contains detailed arguments about the benefits of trade with the colonies, supported by statistical evidence.

18 Balanced perspectives on Burke’s economics are provided by JGA Pocock’s (1982) reading of the Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Renee Prendergast’s (2000) survey of the economic content in Burke’s other writings.