John Medaille contributes:
Here is the passage from TMS. I leave the interpretation to others:
[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and
in spite of their natural selfishness and
rapacity, though they mean only their own
conveniency, though the sole end which they
propose from the labours of all the thousands
whom they employ, be the gratification of their
own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with
the poor the produce of all their improvements.
They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly
the same distribution of the necessaries of life,
which would have been made, had the earth been
divided into equal portions among all its
inhabitants, and thus without intending it,
without knowing it, advance the interest of the
society, and afford means to the multiplication
of the species..In ease of body and peace of
mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly
upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by
the side of the highway, possesses that security
which kings are fighting for .[1]
[1] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
6th ed., The Conservative Leadership Series
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Co., 1997), IV.I p. 249.
Smith's statement is so insensitive to the straits of the poor, and so blind
to the extravagances of the rich, that I am tempted to wonder if the
publisher, Regnery, didn't tamper with it. Maybe some Smith scholar will
check earlier editions lacking the tendentious title of "The Conservative
Leadership Series".
Mason Gaffney
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