On Adam Smith, Patronage, and the law of gratitude.
Regular interlocuter of these Impressions, Liam Kofi Bright (LSE), has an especially clear new analysis of the contemporary political circumstances in a blog post, “More Stuff and Fewer People To Share It With.” One reason to read it is that he develops the implications of this digression in especially acute fashion. Do check it out.
Be that as it may, today’s post is partially pilfered from an essay that I have just revised (here) “Of Corruption and Clientelism in Montesquieu, Hume, and Adam Smith in the rule of Law.” (Usually, first looks are reserved for the blog.) My main reason for sharing some of this material here today is that I am hoping somebody can point me to secondary literature on the idea that Smith’s account of merit is fine-tuned for a patronage system. So, all leads welcome.
First, it is common to treat Adam Smith as a critic of corruption and rent-seeking in politics, as Lisa Hill (2006) puts it, “whereby corruption is seen to consist in deviations from a natural (broadly liberal) state.” (Review of Politics, p. 661) Smith advocates legal reforms that make impartial, rule of law more likely. So far so good.
But, second, as regular readers know, one of Smith’s arguments in advocating for parliamentary union between the American Colonies and Great Brittain is Smith’s thought that it will make the management of patronage more effective and less costly. Smith kept the argument in revised versions of Wealth of Nations even though the American crisis had passed. (WN 4.7.C.69-73. For the details go read the paper; or this paper forthcoming in Social Philosophy and Policy.)
Eighteenth century political parties were not modern mass membership associations; but rather themselves networks of patronage centered on a number of powerful, landed families, who were themselves sources of favors or who, when in charge of the executive, could help dispose many government offices and positions. This was needed to secure loyalty to a coalition. In fact, the lesson of eighteenth-century politics was that “a manager and disposer of patronage, was necessary for any working government.” (Max Skjönsberg (2021) The persistence of party: Ideas of harmonious discord in eighteenth-century Britain. Cambridge, p. 204.)
Men of letters like Smith and Hume were entrenched and participated in these systems of patronage, which included government jobs, university appointments, and lucrative positions in wealthy families’ households (including tutorships and secretarial duties). If one studies Smith’s Correspondence, one immediately notices that Smith himself is very much part of the patronage system.* For example, on December 13, 1775, Smith wrote Henry Dundas to intercede on behalf of Robert Skene to be selected as a candidate for an MP vacancy. Recently appointed as lord advocate in 1775, Dundas was just starting his career as “Scottish manager” which allowed “him to build up a personal party and a network of supporting alliances.” David Brown (1998), p. 266.)
The underlying logic of patronage is expressed by Smith, who notes about Skene, “I am thoroughly convinced, [he] will be an equally faithful supporter of whoever supports him.” Of course, by interceding on Skene’s behalf with Dundas, Smith is also describing Skene’s expected attitude toward Smith and his own relationship toward Dundas. Smith vouches for Skene’s character, and puts his own on the line, “I will pawn my head that he makes no dishonourable use of any confidence you chuse to put in him.” Smith owes Dundas, and he is assuring his patron that his services can be counted on when called upon in the future.
Smith’s letter to Dundas shows that Smith was not free-lancing here. He had already consulted with the “Sollicitor General and Andrew Stuart concerning the Politicks of fifeshire.” Andrew Stuart (who had just been elected MP) was connected to the powerful Hamilton family. And Smith was aware of the fact that other prospective candidates had already been put forward to Dundas: “The Sollicitor General, I understand, has recommended to you, in the first place, his friend Sir John Hackit; and supposing that he should decline standing, Mr Stuarts nephew, Mr Henderson: If Sir John Hackit is a candidate, there is an end of the Business. Collonel Skeene will not oppose his nearest relation and his best friend.” When Smith (and Hume) wrote about patronage they did not do so just as theorists, but, thus, as observer-participants in existing networks of patronage.
One might think that Smith treated participating in systems of patronage as merely a necessary evil. He was, after all, reforming for institutions and policies that may have led him to reasonable hope that the exchange of favors as a means of getting things done could be minimized even abolished. On this reading of Smith he kind of anticipates Bentham’s attack on ‘vested’ and ‘sinister interests.’ After all, Smith’s defense of a market economy seems to be motivated be the ways in which it removes circumstances of servility and allows relationships of mutual respect. (It’s the kind of argument Darwall has suggested going back to 1999; see also my (2017) book, pp. 26-33 on WN 1.2.1., p. 25.) And, indeed, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) repeatedly exhibits great concern over the ‘corruption’ of the moral sentiments as an effect of systems of privilege (e.g., TMS 1.3.1.1., p. 61). But it would be a mistake, I think, to see patronage as such as a species of corruption and servility in Smith’s moral philosophy.
Smith’s moral philosophy is divided into two main kinds of moral judgments: judgments of propriety (and impropriety) and judgments of merit (and demerit). The former are judgments of situations, the latter judgments of character. (See, e.g., TMS 2.1. Intro, p. 67) In what follows, I am only interested in Smith’s account of merit.
In fact, Smith’s treatment of ‘merit’ is itself fine-tuned on the gratitude owed to an effective patron. For example, Smith explicitly appeals to the impartial spectator to distinguish among “The man who solicits an office for another, without obtaining it, is regarded as his friend, and seems to deserve his love and affection.” With “the man who not only solicits, but procures it, is more peculiarly considered as his patron and benefactor, and is entitled to his respect and gratitude.” (TMS 2.3.2.2, p. 97) This is not an isolated instance (e.g., TMS 2.1.3.2, p. 72 & 2.3.1.5, p. 95).
One of my favorite passages occurs when Smith explicitly defends acting as if one is grateful for favors received. He advocates this not because it is instrumentally useful, but rather in terms of our duty under the law of gratitude. We owe our benefactors certain kind of behavior in virtue of the demands that gratitude makes on us:
The man who has received great benefits from another person, may, by the natural coldness of his temper, feel but a very small degree of the sentiment of gratitude. If he has been virtuously educated, however, he will often have been made to observe how odious those actions appear which denote a want of this sentiment, and how amiable the contrary. Though his heart therefore is not warmed with any grateful affection, he will strive to act as if it was, and will endeavour to pay all those regards and attentions to his patron which the liveliest gratitude could suggest. He will visit him regularly; he will behave to him respectfully; he will never talk of him but with expressions of the highest esteem, and of the many obligations which he owes to him. And what is more, he will carefully embrace every opportunity of making a proper return for past services. He may do all this too without any hypocrisy or blamable dissimulation, without any selfish intention of obtaining new favours, and without any design of imposing either upon his benefactor or the public. The motive of his actions may be no other than a reverence for the established rule of duty, a serious and earnest desire of acting, in every respect, according to the law of gratitude. (TMS 3.5.1, p. 161 [emphases added])
For Smith, we are under moral obligations (viz. “reference for…the…rule of duty”) to act if we can’t muster the real feelings, “as if” we are grateful to our patron under all circumstances.
My interest here is not to defend Smith’s moral philosophy on this point. But rather to note that it his view. In so far as Smith thought that patronage was a fact of life its practices generated genuine moral obligations even so far as to regulate the expression of one’s feelings in engaging in the practice.
That’s all I wanted to digress on today. (I do hope somebody suggests where this point has been anticipated in the scholarly literature.) But two further thoughts occurred to me. First, in so far, as patronage networks are a feature of British political life, and constitutive of the way parties worked, Smith, thus, recognizes that this part of political life is governed by a set of fine-grained moral obligations.
Second, in so far contemporary moral and political theorists think of clientelism as a form of corruption, it is no surprise that interest in his moral philosophy is limited to his account of propriety. But Smith clearly also thought one could make impartial and objective judgments of the virtue of characters; even if these operated in a gift economy that we may ultimately disapprove of.
*I thank my research assistant, Jenny Li, who is doing a study of this.