158 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
unhampered working of immediate individual desires and impulses. It 
is arguable that ‘ Liberty ’ may still be the best policy to. pursue in the 
matter of foreign trade. But the contention no longer starts with the 
immense presumption in its favour which it enjoyed so long as it was 
deemed the master key to a divine government of the world. 
3, 4. The individualistic or ‘ atomistic ’ conception of society, or of the 
State as its organised expression, and the doctrine of the identity of 
individual and social interests (in the sense that the pursuit of individual . 
interests must necessarily, in general, conduce to social interests) were, 
perhaps, not inevitably associated ideas. For society might be conceived 
of as a mere aggregation of individuals; and yet, within the society so 
formed, the pursuit of individual interests—since all individuals are not 
equally powerful—might conceivably be regarded as injurious to the 
majority, and, in that sense, to society itself. Some such view was incul- 
cated by Hobbes. From such a conclusion Smith and his followers were 
saved by their underlying confidence in Nature. For if each individual 
retained or should retain in society his natural rights, and if the final 
outcome was bound to be good, that could only be because the pursuit of 
individual rights resulted in the common advantage. It would be super- 
fluous to point out that the individualist view of the essential nature of 
society, and of the State as its organised expression, led to the limitation 
of State functions and to the policy commonly known as laissez-faire. 
As in the case of Natural Liberty we need not ask how the atomistic 
conception of the social union came to Adam Smith. That it characterises 
his school is very certain. But Smith was a man of wide reading, and knew 
too much to readily give himself away by generalities. It is interesting 
to see how his followers forced his ultimate principles into the open. A 
good example is furnished by McCulloch. Time has dealt hardly with 
McCulloch. His name has almost disappeared from modern treatises. 
But he was the man from whom the general British public mainly learnt 
its Political Economy between 1825 and 1850; and the republication of 
his first edition in cheap reprints secured currency for his teaching long 
after the middle of the century in certain circles, and that in its earliest 
and least qualified form. Peacock with his ‘MacQuedy’ in 1831, and 
Carlyle with his ‘ McCroudy ’ in 1850, knew well enough what they were 
about ; *t for McCulloch might reasonably be taken as ‘the typical econo- 
mist of the day.’ 
McCulloch has been employed in setting forth the general argument 
for individual enterprise. As is his wont, he does not scruple to appropriate, 
without marks of quotation, choice sentences of Adam Smith—as, less 
frequently, of Ricardo. 
Smith had written thus: ‘ Every individual is continually exerting 
himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever 
capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that 
of the society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage 
naturally, or rather, necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which 
is most advantageous to the society.’ 3 
31 In Peacock’s Crotchet Castle and Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets. 
32 Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, ii., p. 226. 
33 W. of N., Bk. IV., ch. ii. (Rogers’ ed., ii, 26.) 
