An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

to become sufficiently numerous.

In every civilized society, in every society where the

distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there

have been always two different schemes or systems of morality

current at the same time; of which the one may be called the

strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the

loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the

common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted

by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of

disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity,

the vices which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from

the excess of gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the

principal distinction between those two opposite schemes or

systems. In the liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton, and even

disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of

intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two

sexes, etc. provided they are not accompanied with gross

indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are

generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily

either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on

the contrary, those excesses are regarded with the utmost

abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always

ruinous to the common people, and a single week’s thoughtlessness

and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for

ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the most

enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people,

therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of

such excesses, which their experience tells them are so

immediately fatal to people of their condition. The disorder and

extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not always

ruin a man of fashion ; and people of that rank are very apt to

consider the power of indulging in some degree of excess, as one

of the advantages of their fortune ; and the liberty of doing so

without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which

belong to their station. In people of their own station,

therefore, they regard such excesses with but a small degree of

disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or not at

all.

Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people,

from whom they have generally drawn their earliest, as well as

their most numerous proselytes. The austere system of morality

has, accordingly, been adopted by those sects almost constantly,

or with very few exceptions; for there have been some. It was the

system by which they could best recommend themselves to that

order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan of

reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them,

perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain

credit by refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it

to some degree of folly and extravagance; and this excessive

rigour has frequently recommended them, more than any thing else,

to the respect and veneration of the common people.

A man of rank and fortune is, by his station, the distinguished

member of a great society, who attend to every part of his

conduct, and who thereby oblige him to attend to every part of

it himself. His authority and consideration depend very much upon

the respect which this society bears to him. He dares not do

anything which would disgrace or discredit him in it; and he is

obliged to a very strict observation of that species of morals,

whether liberal or austere, which the general consent of this

society prescribes to persons of his rank and fortune. A man of

low condition, on the contrary, is far from being a distinguished

member of any great society. While he remains in a country

village, his conduct may be attended to, and he may be obliged to

attend to it himself. In this situation, and in this situation

only, he may have what is called a character to lose. But as soon

as he comes into a great city, he is sunk in obscurity and

darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by nobody; and

he is, therefore, very likely to neglect it himself, and to

abandon himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice. He

never emerges so effectually from this obscurity, his conduct

never excites so much the attention of any respectable society,

as by his becoming the member of a small religious sect. He from

that moment acquires a degree of consideration which he never had

before. All his brother sectaries are, for the credit of the

sect, interested to observe his conduct; and, if he gives

occasion to any scandal, if he deviates very much from those

austere morals which they almost always require of one another,

to punish him by what is always a very severe punishment, even

where no evil effects attend it, expulsion or excommunication

from the sect. In little religious sects, accordingly, the morals

of the common people have been almost always remarkably regular

and orderly ; generally much more so than in the established

church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have frequently

been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.

There are two very easy and effectual remedies, however, by whose

joint operation the state might, without violence, correct

whatever was unsocial or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of

all the little sects into which the country was divided.

The first of those remedies is the study of science and

philosophy, which the state might render almost universal among

all people of middling or more than middling rank and fortune ;

not by giving salaries to teachers in order to make them

negligent and idle, but by instituting some sort of probation,

even in the higher and more difficult sciences, to be undergone

by every person before he was permitted to exercise any liberal

profession, or before he could be received as a candidate for any

honourable office, of trust or profit. if the state imposed upon

this order of men the necessity of learning, it would have no

occasion to give itself any trouble about providing them with

proper teachers. They would soon find better teachers for

themselves, than any whom the state could provide for them.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and

superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people were

secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to

it.

The second of those remedies is the frequency and gaiety of

public diversions. The state, by encouraging, that is, by giving

entire liberty to all those who, from their own interest, would

attempt, without scandal or indecency, to amuse and divert the

people by painting, poetry, music, dancing; by all sorts of

dramatic representations and exhibitions; would easily dissipate,

in the greater part of them, that melancholy and gloomy humour

which is almost always the nurse of popular superstition and

enthusiasm. Public diversions have always been the objects of

dread and hatred to all the fanatical promoters of those popular

frenzies. The gaiety and good humour which those diversions

inspire, were altogether inconsistent with that temper of mind

which was fittest for their purpose, or which they could best

work upon. Dramatic representations, besides, frequently exposing

their artifices to public ridicule, and sometimes even to public

execration, were, upon that account, more than all other

diversions, the objects of their peculiar abhorrence.

In a country where the law favoured the teachers of no one

religion more than those of another, it would not be necessary

that any of them should have any particular or immediate

dependency upon the sovereign or executive power ; or that he

should have anything to do either in appointing or in dismissing

them from their offices. In such a situation, he would have no

occasion to give himself any concern about them, further than to

keep the peace among them, in the same manner as among the rest

of his subjects, that is, to hinder them from persecuting,

abusing, or oppressing one another. But it is quite

otherwise in countries where there is an established or governing

religion. The sovereign can in this case never be secure,

unless he has the means of influencing in a considerable degree

the greater part of the teachers of that religion.

The clergy of every established church constitute a great

incorporation. They can act in concert, and pursue their interest

upon one plan, and with one spirit as much as if they were under

the direction of one man ; and they are frequently, too, under

such direction. Their interest as an incorporated body is

never the same with that of the sovereign, and is sometimes

directly opposite to it. Their great interest is to maintain

their authority with the people, and this authority depends upon

the supposed certainty and importance of the whole doctrine which

they inculcate, and upon the supposed necessity of adopting every

part of it with the most implicit faith, in order to avoid

eternal misery. Should the sovereign have the imprudence to

appear either to deride, or doubt himself of the most trifling

part of their doctrine, or from humanity, attempt to protect

those who did either the one or the other, the punctilious honour

of a clergy, who have no sort of dependency upon him, is

immediately provoked to proscribe him as a profane person, and to

employ all the terrors of religion, in order to oblige the people

to transfer their allegiance to some more orthodox and obedient

prince. Should he oppose any of their pretensions or usurpations,

the danger is equally great. The princes who have dared in this

manner to rebel against the church, over and above this crime of

rebellion, have generally been charged, too, with the additional

crime of heresy, notwithstanding their solemn protestations of

their faith, and humble submission to every tenet which she

thought proper to prescribe to them. But the authority of

religion is superior to every other authority. The fears which it

suggests conquer all other fears. When the authorized teachers of

religion propagate through the great body of the people,

doctrines subversive of the authority of the sovereign, it is by

violence only, or by the force of a standing army, that he can

maintain his authority. Even a standing army cannot in this case

give him any lasting security ; because if the soldiers are not

foreigners, which can seldom be the case, but drawn from the

great body of the people, which must almost always be the case,

they are likely to be soon corrupted by those very doctrines. The

revolutions which the turbulence of the Greek clergy was

continually occasioning at Constantinople, as long as the eastern

empire subsisted; the convulsions which, during the course of

several centuries, the turbulence of the Roman clergy was

continually occasioning in every part of Europe, sufficiently

demonstrate how precarious and insecure must always be the

situation of the sovereign, who has no proper means of

influencing the clergy of the established and governing religion

of his country.

Articles of faith, as well as all other spiritual matters, it is

evident enough, are not within the proper department of a

temporal sovereign, who, though he may be very well qualified for

protecting, is seldom supposed to be so for instructing the

people. With regard to such matters, therefore, his authority can

seldom be sufficient to counterbalance the united authority of

the clergy of the established church. The public

tranquillity, however, and his own security, may frequently

depend upon the doctrines which they may think proper to

propagate concerning such matters. As he can seldom directly

oppose their decision, therefore, with proper weight and

authority, it is necessary that he should be able to influence it

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