When Scottish Sages Christened “Liberal” (Daniel Klein, 12/10/24, Law & Liberty)
Several Scotsmen, including George Turnbull, David Hume, and Adam Ferguson, had made pregnant remarks using “liberal”—remarks that may have suggested using the adjective to describe a political attitude. But the “liberal” christening was really kicked off by William Robertson in 1769, and in 1776, Adam Smith went all-in, in The Wealth of Nations. The political meaning was, essentially, a policy posture, premised on a stable, functional system of governmental authority. The policy posture is one of leaving people be, of “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way,” within the bounds of commutative justice. The “liberal” christening took.
Hayek Was Right
In 1960, Hayek questioned the consensus view that “liberal” first obtained a political meaning after 1800 on the Continent, from which Britain then imported the term. Hayek suggested otherwise:
I am more inclined to believe that it derives from the use of the term by Adam Smith in such passages as W.o.N., II, 41: “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation” and p. 216: “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.”
Hayek’s view had had little hope of overturning the consensus. Before the digitization of millions of texts, mounting a case for Hayek’s view would mean spending years gathering a few score quotations. Tedious quotations, cherry-picked by one of those Hayek votaries with an axe to grind, from the vast uncharted forests of innumerable texts, could not get far. Such curiosa could easily be ignored and dismissed.
But, around 2012, the data came readily to hand, thanks to the Google Books Ngram Viewer.