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HES-group: 
 
It is nice to see some discussion of the economic content of the thought 
and 
writing of the Founding Fathers. [The A. Smith and A. Hamilton thread. --  
RBE] 
 
With the greatest modesty, I can report that John Adams did have some 
familiarity with Wealth of Nations and Moral Sentiments, but it is hard 
to tell how much.  I refer to this topic briefly in "John Adams, Thorstein 
Veblen, and the Social Foundations of the Economy," Eastern Economic 
Journal, 25 (Fall 1997): 379-394.  I have actually leafed through Adams's 
copy of WON in search of annotations, of which he was normally a fierce 
marginal applier.  In this instance it is significant that there are none 
but some inserted paper markers suggest he read selected passages on 
public finance at some point and may have read Smith's sections on the 
Navigation Acts and the mercantile system. 
 
There are significant parallels between Adams and Veblen although no 
immediately direct line of connection.  Broadly said, their legal and 
philosophical backgrounds, and skepticism about European ideas and 
economic policies, make the economic ideas and visions of the Founding 
Fathers much more in tune with American institutionalism (Commons as much 
as Veblen) than with the classical-neoclassical strain. 
 
I have looked in a provisional fashion at a comparison of Hamilton and 
Jefferson's ideas on economic subjects and would like, now that I am in 
Virginia, to explore and contrast Madison and Monroe. 
 
My general sense is that the Founding Fathers were well-read in the 
economics of their times and coped on an everyday basis with their 
economic circumstances in a manner quite distinct from our modern selves.  
Jefferson and Adams farmed; Adams dealt as an attorney with law of the 
seas, wills, property disputes, and so on.  Although they were to say the 
least familiar with abstractions of the highest level and their practical 
significance, they regarded economic activities as part and parcel of 
commonplace life, not as a reified (reifiable) and detached system with 
its own orbit of principles. 
 
In the constitution as well as in the handling of their presidencies and 
cabinet posts, words and actions equally demonstrate a solid grasp of 
links between law and the economy, and public policies and the advantages 
of the national economy. 
 
Looking back, I am profoundly impressed by the degree to which they "got 
it right."  ("It" = first principles.)  Where they did not get it right, 
and arguably could not have got it right and been able to move ahead with 
a constitution of consent and union, as Adams, Jefferson, et al. 
understood plainly and sadly, was on the mix of property, political, 
human-rights, and economic issues bound up in slavery and its regional 
division.  Adams clearly saw the coming national catastrophe arising from 
this unfinished business. 
 
John Adams 
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