1 00:00:00,810 --> 00:00:09,810 Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to see such a large audience for this year's this year's Bestival lecture. 2 00:00:09,810 --> 00:00:16,380 I am retired, obviously one of the directors of the Bestival Centre for the Enlightenment, along with Nicholas Cronk, 3 00:00:16,380 --> 00:00:26,490 and I have the pleasure of welcoming David Hooton, who is one of the most stimulating, interesting and Wide-Ranging intellectual historians around. 4 00:00:26,490 --> 00:00:34,500 It took me a very long time to recite all David's achievements, so I shall be extremely selective. 5 00:00:34,500 --> 00:00:43,350 He is inversely professor of history at the University of York. He began by writing about the early modern atheism. 6 00:00:43,350 --> 00:00:48,390 The very difficult subject for research was naturally, ethicists didn't publicise their views, 7 00:00:48,390 --> 00:00:54,150 but that led to his first book about how Lusardi, the historian of the Council of Trent. 8 00:00:54,150 --> 00:00:59,910 He ran a great deal of the history of political thought, especially Hobbs. 9 00:00:59,910 --> 00:01:11,610 Most recently, he got into the history of science, a very fascinating and very eye-opening book called Bad Medicine, subtitled Doctors Doing Harm. 10 00:01:11,610 --> 00:01:17,940 He's written a biography of Galileo and very recently, a huge book, 11 00:01:17,940 --> 00:01:24,450 an absolutely fascinating book on the scientific revolution called The Invention of Science. 12 00:01:24,450 --> 00:01:26,550 Recently out in paperback, 13 00:01:26,550 --> 00:01:38,640 which I recommend as an absolutely fascinating read a lot of shows that David knows far more about science and technology than most art academics. 14 00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:47,620 His next book. Will be based on the Carlisle lectures, which you gave. 15 00:01:47,620 --> 00:01:57,250 In Oxford, I think two, three years ago, and some materials for that book will be will be presented now under the title. 16 00:01:57,250 --> 00:02:01,900 Adam Smith Poverty and sending it over to you. 17 00:02:01,900 --> 00:02:16,540 Thank you very much. This passing Woodford, and on the 6th of March 1795, he gathered for dinner with three guests and his niece, 18 00:02:16,540 --> 00:02:25,660 and they had a couple of boiled chicken and pig's face, very good pea soup, a boil to ramp up beef, very fine. 19 00:02:25,660 --> 00:02:33,280 A prodigious, fine, large and very fat cock turkey roasted macaroni batter, custard pudding with jelly, 20 00:02:33,280 --> 00:02:43,360 apple fritters, tarts and raspberry puffs, dessert baked apples, nice nonpareil brandy, cherries and filbert. 21 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:48,340 Mr. Custom's, one of the guests we are told at very heartily. 22 00:02:48,340 --> 00:02:50,590 There was plenty to to drink wines. 23 00:02:50,590 --> 00:03:01,450 Port is multi-course, strong beer bottles, porter and so on, and I'm going to be returning to Parson Woodford and his dinner as we go along. 24 00:03:01,450 --> 00:03:11,840 And you want to remember the 1795? That's a contemporary cookbook, and, of course, is the food was not served as a series of separate courses. 25 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:16,070 It was a big table with all these different dishes on it at once. 26 00:03:16,070 --> 00:03:23,270 Many of you will have realised that my title is an implicit reference to a famous book by a March Assen entitled Poverty and Famines, 27 00:03:23,270 --> 00:03:31,040 which appeared in 1981 and played an important part in winning him a Nobel prise for economics in 1998. 28 00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:34,210 Sen is perhaps most famous. 29 00:03:34,210 --> 00:03:43,060 Outside the world of development economics for having claimed that there has never been a famine in a democracy, a claim he made in 1991. 30 00:03:43,060 --> 00:03:51,280 Poverty and famines, published a decade earlier, was directed against the view that what causes famines is simply and solely a shortage of food. 31 00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:55,000 Sen argued that famines could occur when there was plenty of food if a group 32 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,680 within society lacked the ability to acquire that food by exchanging something, 33 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:07,210 whether it's labour or money for it. Famines were caused immediately by a failure of what he called exchange entitlements, 34 00:04:07,210 --> 00:04:14,260 not by a simple failure of food availability sent analysed in particular the Bengal famine of 1943, 35 00:04:14,260 --> 00:04:19,000 which had witnessed as a youngster in which more than two million people died. 36 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:26,470 And he argued that it was the result of a crisis, not of supply, but of demand, and thus argued that one could have, 37 00:04:26,470 --> 00:04:32,920 in the words of the great Irish leader Daniel O'Connell speaking about the contemporary Irish famine in 1931. 38 00:04:32,920 --> 00:04:41,120 Starvation in the midst of plenty. There's a big debate about whether Sen was right about the Bengal famine of 1943, 39 00:04:41,120 --> 00:04:45,350 I don't think I'm not going to go into that debate and it doesn't matter for what I'm going to say. 40 00:04:45,350 --> 00:04:55,000 His broader argument is what I'm going to rely on. Starvation in the midst of plenty. 41 00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:02,470 You shouldn't be surprised, then, to learn the last person word for tucked into his dinner, the poor in his parish were on the point of starvation. 42 00:05:02,470 --> 00:05:06,730 They were being supplied with subsidised brown bread and bread and coal. 43 00:05:06,730 --> 00:05:10,810 It was a bitter winter and like spring, were occasionally delivered free to them, 44 00:05:10,810 --> 00:05:16,060 paid for by collections in church on Sundays and the first months of 1795, 45 00:05:16,060 --> 00:05:22,630 there were 72 bread riots in England and this in the next year a year which some would want to call years of famine. 46 00:05:22,630 --> 00:05:32,170 Though they are perhaps better described in the careful words of John posted as years of terrible shortages marked by pockets of starvation. 47 00:05:32,170 --> 00:05:38,770 How should we respond to the juxtaposition of Woodford's generous dinners and the near starvation of his parishioners? 48 00:05:38,770 --> 00:05:43,300 In 1955, his editor, John Beresford, remarked, Fortunately for the poor, 49 00:05:43,300 --> 00:05:47,380 the founder of eighteenth century charity seems to have flowed with generous freedom, 50 00:05:47,380 --> 00:05:56,780 and bread and coal were given for many months, swapped squalor, customs and Parson Woodford, each subscribing £10 to the General Collection. 51 00:05:56,780 --> 00:06:04,190 He describes the charitable stream as flowing freely on all and every occasion of distress. 52 00:06:04,190 --> 00:06:10,850 The great socialist historian David Thomson, on the other hand, took a more cynical view. 53 00:06:10,850 --> 00:06:13,820 Remarking that Woodford, who suffered horribly from gout, 54 00:06:13,820 --> 00:06:23,200 had been crippled by an excess of rich food but nevertheless did not flinch before his continuing duty to his own dinner. 55 00:06:23,200 --> 00:06:28,930 Thompson's comment comes in an essay which is perhaps even more famous than Sen's book, 56 00:06:28,930 --> 00:06:34,930 entitled The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th century and published in past and present in 1971. 57 00:06:34,930 --> 00:06:41,770 Thompson's essay argues that riots in the 18th century were not random or disorderly acts of violence. 58 00:06:41,770 --> 00:06:46,150 Restaurants were directed at performing the function previously performed by the magistrate 59 00:06:46,150 --> 00:06:51,430 of ensuring that grain flour and bread were brought to market and sold at a fair price. 60 00:06:51,430 --> 00:06:59,020 Branches would often take over a baker's shop, sell the bread at the traditional price and leave the money collected behind them when they left. 61 00:06:59,020 --> 00:07:06,370 Riots often resulted in interventions by the local establishment to subsidise or free to distribute bread. 62 00:07:06,370 --> 00:07:09,070 Hannah Moore wrote a poem discouraging riots. 63 00:07:09,070 --> 00:07:18,040 Her views are expressed by Jack Anvil, who resolves So I'll work the whole day, and on Sundays, I'll seek at church about all the wants of the week. 64 00:07:18,040 --> 00:07:25,000 The gentle folks who will afford us supplies, they'll subscribe and they'll give up their puddings and pies, 65 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:31,110 though, as we've seen Parson Woodford had not given up his puddings and pies. 66 00:07:31,110 --> 00:07:39,090 Thompson's essay is famous for introducing the concept of a moral economy, sends book for introducing the concept of exchange entitlements. 67 00:07:39,090 --> 00:07:47,190 Both believe that hunger is a political problem. That Thompson's preferred solution is socialism and sentence is democracy. 68 00:07:47,190 --> 00:07:51,390 Both are concerned with the urgent need to redistribute resources to the poorest. 69 00:07:51,390 --> 00:08:01,800 At times of crisis, whether that crisis originates in the failure of the harvest or in a failure of incomes to keep up with prices. 70 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:07,740 This lecture addresses a topic on which Senator Thompson would have been unable to agree. 71 00:08:07,740 --> 00:08:16,200 Thompson So Adam Smith, a summarising and codifying a hard faced and hard hearted commitment to a laissez faire approach to the grain market, 72 00:08:16,200 --> 00:08:20,400 which was to lead eventually the arguments of Edmund Burke on the horrors of the Great 73 00:08:20,400 --> 00:08:28,490 Irish famine of 1845 252 to what Michel Foucault called the policy of laissez moodier. 74 00:08:28,490 --> 00:08:33,110 Sand has always emphasised the ways in which Smith was sympathetic to the needs of the poor, 75 00:08:33,110 --> 00:08:38,000 and since the 1990s is co-author to whom he is related by the accident of marriage, 76 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:45,990 Emma Rothschild has argued extensively that Smith properly understood was a radical rather than a conservative. 77 00:08:45,990 --> 00:08:54,060 At the end of 1795 that year again, Smith was invoked by those calling for a minimum wage as a solution to hunger. 78 00:08:54,060 --> 00:09:00,030 At a time when the day's wages of a labourer would not buy a balilo for Balilo being a great step down, 79 00:09:00,030 --> 00:09:05,610 of course, from a Wheaton life, one passage in Smith was seised on both then and now. 80 00:09:05,610 --> 00:09:14,490 Smith said that when wages are regulated, it is to benefit employers so that when occasionally one does find a regulation which benefits employees, 81 00:09:14,490 --> 00:09:22,770 it is always, he said, just an equitable. An example he gives is requiring wages to be paid in money, not goods. 82 00:09:22,770 --> 00:09:25,260 Payment in goods often involving cheating. 83 00:09:25,260 --> 00:09:33,660 Smith was not saying that any possible regulation of wages to benefit employees is a good thing, which is often what he described as saying. 84 00:09:33,660 --> 00:09:40,890 He merely said that in the England of his day, where the ruling class, as we might posit, legislated for its own behalf. 85 00:09:40,890 --> 00:09:48,240 Any legislation that you came across which favoured the employees was remarkably just inequitable and extremely unusual. 86 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:56,280 Despite the efforts of Rothschild, while can't find in Smith an argument for a legislated minimum wage. 87 00:09:56,280 --> 00:10:03,730 According to Rothschild. Only with the publication in 18:00 of Edmund Burke thoughts and details on scarcity, 88 00:10:03,730 --> 00:10:13,450 originally written in 1795 to six again the same year did a mistaken hardline free market reading of Smith become established. 89 00:10:13,450 --> 00:10:21,500 And the question of the relationship between Smith and book on the subject of famine is one to which I will be returning. 90 00:10:21,500 --> 00:10:27,110 The 19th century reading of Smith is, Rothschild has argued, a mistaken reading. 91 00:10:27,110 --> 00:10:36,870 Smith, like Sand and Thompson, would have had no difficulty in recognising the need to intervene to break a famine. 92 00:10:36,870 --> 00:10:44,040 My topic is Adam Smith on poverty and famine, and my task is to choose between two views of Smith, 93 00:10:44,040 --> 00:10:51,090 one which sees him as a hard hearted spokesperson for a market which unchecked allows the poor to starve in the midst of plenty, 94 00:10:51,090 --> 00:10:58,040 and the other which sees him as a defender of the poor, especially when faced with famine. 95 00:10:58,040 --> 00:11:05,570 Before we proceed, let me sketch in a bit of background. The most sophisticated economic theory before the publication of the wealth of nations 96 00:11:05,570 --> 00:11:11,420 in 1776 was that of a fizzy occurrence and Smith refers to as the economists, 97 00:11:11,420 --> 00:11:15,890 the fizzy currents had campaigned endlessly for free trade in grain, 98 00:11:15,890 --> 00:11:21,950 and there had been a long process of liberalisation of the grain trade in France, beginning in 1754. 99 00:11:21,950 --> 00:11:25,610 Prior to that, there had been restrictions on the movement of grain between provinces, 100 00:11:25,610 --> 00:11:31,280 imposed prices and other extensive forms of interference with the market. 101 00:11:31,280 --> 00:11:39,860 In 1776, the French government abandoned the new free trade policies in the face of bad harvests and popular protests, 102 00:11:39,860 --> 00:11:46,430 a crucial attack on the free trade was the publication of the dialogues of Fernando Galliani in 1770, 103 00:11:46,430 --> 00:11:51,350 a work which had an immediate and extraordinary success and a profound cultural impact. 104 00:11:51,350 --> 00:12:01,310 It's from editing those dialogues by his friend Galliani that I was supposed to have learnt how to write dialogues himself in England in Smith's day. 105 00:12:01,310 --> 00:12:04,550 There was a bounty on the export of corn in normal years, 106 00:12:04,550 --> 00:12:11,060 and this was intended to encourage production and thus provide a buffer and years of bad harvest within the country. 107 00:12:11,060 --> 00:12:21,410 There was, in principle, a complete free trade. This very brief summary introduces the following points. 108 00:12:21,410 --> 00:12:26,210 First, the question of whether there should be a free trade in grain was not a marginal issue. 109 00:12:26,210 --> 00:12:33,560 It was a central issue for the new political economy. The economy of the physio crats and Smith as a successor to them. 110 00:12:33,560 --> 00:12:39,950 Second, the question was a burning question when Smith was writing the wealth of Nations published in 1776. 111 00:12:39,950 --> 00:12:43,670 The Bad Harvest of 1774 was not only a crisis in France, 112 00:12:43,670 --> 00:12:49,730 where it led to the abandonment of the ocratic policies, but also in England, where there were food riots. 113 00:12:49,730 --> 00:12:56,720 Smith was actively engaged with the subject when he was writing. He was not just repeating platitudes or views he'd formed in the past. 114 00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:03,920 Smith refers to the wealth of nations to a French book published in 1775 in Defence of Free Trade, 115 00:13:03,920 --> 00:13:08,180 and he had in his library another book published in November of 1774. 116 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:14,720 Although it bears the date, 1770 1770 had been held up by the census until November 1774, 117 00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:20,120 a reply to Galliani, although there is no evidence that Smith read Galliani himself. 118 00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:27,460 He certainly responds to the arguments of Galliani in the wealth of nations. 119 00:13:27,460 --> 00:13:30,910 That's the contract is very much on Smith's mind when he wrote the book. 120 00:13:30,910 --> 00:13:33,940 And on the minds of his first readers when they read it, 121 00:13:33,940 --> 00:13:40,180 Smith's discussion of the subject is entitled A Digression concerning the corn trade and corn laws. 122 00:13:40,180 --> 00:13:44,530 Calling the discussion a digression signalled his distance from the physio Krantz, 123 00:13:44,530 --> 00:13:48,580 for whom the topic lay at the core of that whole intellectual system. 124 00:13:48,580 --> 00:13:52,930 But in policy terms, Smith's views were identical with those of the physician krauts, 125 00:13:52,930 --> 00:13:58,390 and he would have expected this to be evident to every informed reader. 126 00:13:58,390 --> 00:14:03,160 Now, there are several difficulties in trying to understand how to interpret Smith's view of famine. 127 00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:12,820 But the first is straightforward. Smith believed all famines are made by governments he believed and I quote in an extensive corn 128 00:14:12,820 --> 00:14:18,400 country between all the different parts of which there was a free commerce and communication, 129 00:14:18,400 --> 00:14:25,390 the scarcity occasioned by the most unfavourable seasons can never be so great as to produce a famine. 130 00:14:25,390 --> 00:14:29,290 And the scanty crop, if managed with frugality and economy, 131 00:14:29,290 --> 00:14:38,340 will maintain through the year the same number of people that are commonly fed in a more affluent manner by one of moderate plenty. 132 00:14:38,340 --> 00:14:42,000 When Smith talks about corn, he presumably means in the first place wheat, 133 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:51,390 but also oats and barley oats were corn in Scotland in the north of England because corn was the word used for the main GrainCorp in any region. 134 00:14:51,390 --> 00:14:59,100 Smith's claim is that harvest failure is never the cause of famine in any large country, practising free trade within its borders. 135 00:14:59,100 --> 00:15:06,900 Even leaving aside the possibility of imports from abroad. Indeed, he says, a famine has never arisen from any other cause. 136 00:15:06,900 --> 00:15:17,250 But the violence of government attempting by improper means to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth, a dearth being a period of scarcity. 137 00:15:17,250 --> 00:15:21,600 You notice that the emphasis on on large countries as opposed to small ones, 138 00:15:21,600 --> 00:15:27,420 that was a concession to Galliani had discussed at length what he thought the situation of Geneva was. 139 00:15:27,420 --> 00:15:30,120 And then having made an exception for small countries, 140 00:15:30,120 --> 00:15:35,760 Galliani had then applied the same exception to frontier provinces and then to provinces next to frontier provinces, 141 00:15:35,760 --> 00:15:38,610 and he'd run a slippery slope argument by which in the end, 142 00:15:38,610 --> 00:15:45,030 every society was just like Geneva and every society needed to control its contract in the same way that Geneva did. 143 00:15:45,030 --> 00:15:51,050 Smith allows part of that argument and steps away from the slippery slope. 144 00:15:51,050 --> 00:15:56,720 We need to put Smith's claim that harvest failures never caused famines in context. 145 00:15:56,720 --> 00:16:00,740 First, Smith is talking about what he calls corn, not about rice or potatoes. 146 00:16:00,740 --> 00:16:07,370 He specifically says that rice may be an exception, and it was a well established argument, then a country as diverse as England. 147 00:16:07,370 --> 00:16:13,440 A dry year will be good for the crops in some parts of the country. A wet year will be good for crops in another. 148 00:16:13,440 --> 00:16:20,030 Thus, the effects of the weather tend to balance out. Smith realised that this might not apply in rice growing countries, 149 00:16:20,030 --> 00:16:25,910 and he had little interest in potatoes and most certainly not to know that they were much more prone to disease than grain crops. 150 00:16:25,910 --> 00:16:30,350 Potato blight to bring the cause of the Great Irish famine and that stored potatoes, 151 00:16:30,350 --> 00:16:36,300 unlike grain, are destroyed by frost as they were in Ireland in 1740. 152 00:16:36,300 --> 00:16:41,070 But his claim that harbours failures did not cause famines was basically sound. 153 00:16:41,070 --> 00:16:47,340 There was no occasion in Smith's lifetime when two back-to-back Maoists were more than 20 percent below the average in 154 00:16:47,340 --> 00:16:56,120 yield and an individual harvest falling more than 20 percent below the average only occurred once every 20 years or so. 155 00:16:56,120 --> 00:17:02,810 Over the previous centuries, the difference in yields between good years and bad years have been slowly and steadily diminishing. 156 00:17:02,810 --> 00:17:06,230 The weather was much less of a threat than it had once been, 157 00:17:06,230 --> 00:17:11,810 partly presumably because of improved agricultural techniques and surely also because of increased dependence, 158 00:17:11,810 --> 00:17:19,820 because increased dependence on the market had encouraged specialisation so that poor and unsuitable soil was no longer used to grow grain crops, 159 00:17:19,820 --> 00:17:28,340 but had been turned over to pasture. Moreover, both national and international markets had become steadily more integrated, 160 00:17:28,340 --> 00:17:32,540 ensuring the supplies were spread more efficiently across the globe. 161 00:17:32,540 --> 00:17:42,440 This extraordinary graph, using London as its reference point, shows how from seven 1840 through to 1795, 162 00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:48,800 the markets of the world moved towards each other in the price of grain and then joined the French Revolution. 163 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:55,800 After 1795, they moved sharply apart and then in the 19th century, they moved very rapidly towards once. 164 00:17:55,800 --> 00:18:06,240 But you've got the railways and you've got steamboats very rapidly towards a common position. 165 00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:13,140 National and international markets have become steadily more integrated. The problem, of course, is that prices were much more volatile than supplies. 166 00:18:13,140 --> 00:18:23,490 Smith himself provides figures show that the price of wheat tripled between 1796 and 1799 and halved between 1740 and 1743. 167 00:18:23,490 --> 00:18:30,920 So 25 per cent movement in supply led to a doubling or tripling of price. 168 00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:39,710 Smith massively underestimated the risk of famine within a free market economy, but one can see why he might be tempted to do so. 169 00:18:39,710 --> 00:18:47,840 One basic reason for his underestimating the risk was that there had been no significant famine in England for more than a century. 170 00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:58,130 But what are improper means, he said, I'm quoting the violence of government attempting by improper means to remedy the inconveniences of a death. 171 00:18:58,130 --> 00:19:05,450 Smith certainly had in mind the magistrate, forcing merchants to bring grain to market or imposing a fair price upon them. 172 00:19:05,450 --> 00:19:10,100 Both measures would be bound to discourage new suppliers being brought into a regional state, 173 00:19:10,100 --> 00:19:15,050 with such measures were being imposed and thus would have the opposite of the intended effect. 174 00:19:15,050 --> 00:19:18,950 Smith directly criticises the bread riots described by Thompson, 175 00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:26,630 and one can see why he would hold such interventions were liable within a market economy to be counterproductive. 176 00:19:26,630 --> 00:19:32,060 But Smith goes well beyond an attack on the old moral economy of the just price. 177 00:19:32,060 --> 00:19:36,770 He argues that the interest of the corn merchant and other population are identical. 178 00:19:36,770 --> 00:19:44,660 He says it is the corn merchants interest to raise the price of corn as high as the real scarcity of the season requires, 179 00:19:44,660 --> 00:19:53,090 and it can never be as interest to raise it higher by raising the price, he discourages the consumption and puts everybody more or less. 180 00:19:53,090 --> 00:19:59,430 But particularly the inferiore ranks of people upon thrift and good management. 181 00:19:59,430 --> 00:20:05,490 In other words, according to Smith, the market price should always be accepted as if it were the right price, 182 00:20:05,490 --> 00:20:11,130 I say as if it were because he is very aware that the market price is often the wrong price doesn't matter. 183 00:20:11,130 --> 00:20:14,220 It's the only price that you should rely on. 184 00:20:14,220 --> 00:20:21,300 It is important to note that the whole of Smith's digression on the corn trade is directed at what we might call the old moral economy, 185 00:20:21,300 --> 00:20:26,670 which sought to set maximum prices on false corn merchants to bring corn to market. 186 00:20:26,670 --> 00:20:35,320 He makes no mention of what we might call the new model on the economy, the moral economy of Parson Woodford of subsidies and subscriptions. 187 00:20:35,320 --> 00:20:40,740 Though this moral economy had been in existence at least since 1740 in 1757, 188 00:20:40,740 --> 00:20:46,740 one Bristol Parish alone supplied twelve thousand pounds of cheap bread to 700 families. 189 00:20:46,740 --> 00:20:56,190 In 1766, the city's merchant ventures purchased 6000 or 6000 bushels of wheat and Doncic to ensure supplies. 190 00:20:56,190 --> 00:21:02,550 While the principal gentlemen of Norwich promised to raise £8000 to import corn from abroad, 191 00:21:02,550 --> 00:21:13,590 it's possible to draw up a very long list of employees is ascribed usually £50 or £100 each in 1766 to subsidise or distribute free ride. 192 00:21:13,590 --> 00:21:18,120 Particularly because it was a way of buying the next election. 193 00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:24,430 It's essential here to distinguish between poor relief and the new moral economy legislation authorised 194 00:21:24,430 --> 00:21:30,900 local authorities to tax householders in order to pay for the relief of the unemployed and the unemployable. 195 00:21:30,900 --> 00:21:38,250 These taxes fell on the wealthy, but also on those with modest incomes who could ill afford to pay them in years of high food prices. 196 00:21:38,250 --> 00:21:42,240 Subsidies and charitable distributions were quite different. 197 00:21:42,240 --> 00:21:50,070 They were funded by voluntary contributions and thus were not based on taxation and do not represent a form of state intervention. 198 00:21:50,070 --> 00:21:58,620 And they primarily benefited not those on poor relief, but those whose wages were too low for them to be able to afford bread, Smith discusses. 199 00:21:58,620 --> 00:22:05,550 Poor relief is critical of it because the poor have to be relieved in their home parish and are consequently prevented from moving in search of work. 200 00:22:05,550 --> 00:22:10,470 Smith was a great get on your bicycle sort of person if the bicycle had existed at the time. 201 00:22:10,470 --> 00:22:19,050 On the subject of charity, however, Smith is mysteriously silent and that silence the preoccupies me. 202 00:22:19,050 --> 00:22:23,790 Or rather, to be Frank Smith, implies that charity is unnecessary. 203 00:22:23,790 --> 00:22:30,210 He compares the corn merchant to the master of a ship which is becalmed at sea with supplies running low. 204 00:22:30,210 --> 00:22:34,530 The corn merchant acting out of self-interest happens to treat the people. 205 00:22:34,530 --> 00:22:43,440 As I quote, the prudent master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to treat his crew when he foresees that provisions are likely to run short. 206 00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:53,580 He puts them upon short allowance. Though from excessive caution, he should sometimes do this without any real necessity. 207 00:22:53,580 --> 00:23:00,030 Yet all the inconveniences which his crew can thereby suffer are inconsiderable in comparison of the danger, 208 00:23:00,030 --> 00:23:05,940 misery and ruin to which they might sometimes be exposed by less provident conduct. 209 00:23:05,940 --> 00:23:11,100 We should trust the con merchant not because he is deliberately acting to protect us from starvation, 210 00:23:11,100 --> 00:23:14,820 but because he is simply the agent of impersonal market forces and the 211 00:23:14,820 --> 00:23:21,320 information in the market is superior to the information held by any individual. 212 00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:26,210 But of course, on a ship, rations can be handed out equally in real life. 213 00:23:26,210 --> 00:23:33,080 There is no such equality. Smith distracts our attention from this basic fact by sleight of hand. 214 00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:41,720 The corn merchant he writes by raising the price of corn discourages the consumption and puts everybody more or less, 215 00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:47,760 particularly the inferior ranks of people upon thrift and good management. 216 00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:54,540 In his example of the captain on his ship, all the crew are presumably not all the officers are treated the same. 217 00:23:54,540 --> 00:23:58,470 But, of course, in real life, everyone isn't in the same boat. 218 00:23:58,470 --> 00:24:03,150 Some keep their jobs. Others lose them. Some have friends and family to whom they can turn. 219 00:24:03,150 --> 00:24:07,110 Others do not. Some have children to feed. Others do not. 220 00:24:07,110 --> 00:24:11,670 Some have a cottage garden from which to supplement their diet. Others do not. 221 00:24:11,670 --> 00:24:21,450 In the Burmese famine of 1943, the death toll amongst women was much higher than amongst men in the Dutch hunger winter of 1944 to 1945. 222 00:24:21,450 --> 00:24:27,930 Every effort was made to equalise rations as if the German occupied Netherlands really were ship at sea. 223 00:24:27,930 --> 00:24:32,340 It was the elderly men who died. Famine does not come for everybody. 224 00:24:32,340 --> 00:24:38,910 More or less it comes hand in hand with disease. It takes away one person and it leaves another. 225 00:24:38,910 --> 00:24:46,350 Prices may be a form of rationing. No form of rationing can be fair because the circumstances of human beings vary. 226 00:24:46,350 --> 00:24:54,390 Prices are a particularly unfair form of rationing because different people have different financial resources and other resources, 227 00:24:54,390 --> 00:25:00,930 such as market gardens. Now, Kalyani understood this in his dialogues. 228 00:25:00,930 --> 00:25:07,440 He has his spokesperson argue against someone who thinks, as Smith does answer. 229 00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:14,910 I see that you do not yet know what a famine is. You think a famine is a universal catastrophe. 230 00:25:14,910 --> 00:25:23,460 You are mistaken in a famine. Everyone suffers as a result of a catastrophe, which strikes individuals one by one. 231 00:25:23,460 --> 00:25:33,660 During a famine, the rich, the well-to-do do not suffer and grain merchants even benefit, but all shudder at the sight of the most dreadful spectacle. 232 00:25:33,660 --> 00:25:41,940 One sees people dying of hunger. The impact of this is powerful because it is a response to the sight of the most cruel suffering. 233 00:25:41,940 --> 00:25:49,320 The catastrophe of a famine strikes a small number, but empathy ensures that all suffer even the hardest. 234 00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:50,970 Hearts are touched. 235 00:25:50,970 --> 00:26:03,160 One single person dying of hunger in the street makes a whole town full of people who have dined, well, sad and throws them into a state of despair. 236 00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:07,510 Giuliani understood perfectly well that people can be dying of hunger in a town 237 00:26:07,510 --> 00:26:12,040 where most people have dined well instead of there being rationing for all. 238 00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:17,530 For some, there is life nearly as normal for others. Death by starvation. 239 00:26:17,530 --> 00:26:25,000 Let's imagine for a moment that Smith had turned his mind to those who donated bread to the poor or subsidised the price of bread. 240 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:26,950 Those, like Parson Woodford, 241 00:26:26,950 --> 00:26:34,330 one might think that that behaviour could be compared to a petty officer bank behind the prudent masters back and handing out extra rations. 242 00:26:34,330 --> 00:26:37,000 He might, meanwhile, but he would not be helping. 243 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:44,320 This, you might think, is precisely the less provident conduct that is liable to lead to danger, misery and ruin. 244 00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:49,930 Arguments such as this were used to justify non-intervention in the 19th century. 245 00:26:49,930 --> 00:26:55,790 But Smith would not. I think if he had thought about the matter, have reached this conclusion. 246 00:26:55,790 --> 00:27:00,610 For there is no prudent master in the market, which is the market which sets the price. 247 00:27:00,610 --> 00:27:08,950 So when charitable subscribers buy bread to distribute to the poor or subsidise bread, what they do is push up the price of bread in the market. 248 00:27:08,950 --> 00:27:14,620 The corn dealers, knowing how much they have in stock, will not allow their supplies to be used up all at once, 249 00:27:14,620 --> 00:27:20,710 but will raise the price until other purchases drop out. Buying less or giving up altogether. 250 00:27:20,710 --> 00:27:24,580 In other words, what the new political economy, the new moral economy does. 251 00:27:24,580 --> 00:27:29,800 What charity does is spread the need for what Smith calls thrift and good management. 252 00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:33,160 More widely, it makes rationing fairer. 253 00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:40,840 It reduces the pressure on the poorest and increases the pressure on the middling sort, the donations of people like Parson Woodford. 254 00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:44,170 We're not undermining the market's role in rationing supply. 255 00:27:44,170 --> 00:27:49,450 They were simply making the nation more like a ship in which rations were doled out equally. 256 00:27:49,450 --> 00:28:00,380 Smith ought to welcomed that new moral economy. Moreover, in his chapter on wages, Smith had provided a very careful account of how in years of death, 257 00:28:00,380 --> 00:28:04,220 when food prices rise, wages do not rise to keep up. 258 00:28:04,220 --> 00:28:10,910 Rather, they fall as food prices rise, expenditure on non-food items falls. 259 00:28:10,910 --> 00:28:15,290 People stop buying shoes and dresses and so on. Servants are laid off. 260 00:28:15,290 --> 00:28:20,450 Craftsmen and shopkeepers lay off their employees and eventually they go bust. 261 00:28:20,450 --> 00:28:26,630 As the numbers of unemployed grow, wages naturally fall as a quite straightforward scissors effect. 262 00:28:26,630 --> 00:28:30,350 As food prices rise, wages go down. 263 00:28:30,350 --> 00:28:39,480 What we are looking at here is precisely precisely the sorts of process analysed by a march to send a failure of exchange entitlements. 264 00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:48,210 Is there a limit to this process? Smith says that in the end, the floor for wages is set by what he calls common humanity, 265 00:28:48,210 --> 00:28:55,050 a phrase he uses three times in the chapter on wages but does not use anywhere else in any of his other writings. 266 00:28:55,050 --> 00:28:59,900 Employers want their workers to survive from one year to the next. 267 00:28:59,900 --> 00:29:01,820 But wages were set each year at Michaelmas, 268 00:29:01,820 --> 00:29:07,820 just after the main wheat harvest and long before it was possible to predict how prices would move in the coming year. 269 00:29:07,820 --> 00:29:14,450 And Smith was well aware that masters and years of death drove as hard a bargain as they could. 270 00:29:14,450 --> 00:29:20,720 This is what he says, masters of all sorts, therefore frequently make better bargains with their servants India than in cheap 271 00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:26,610 years and find them more humble and dependent in the former than in the latter. 272 00:29:26,610 --> 00:29:34,980 The floor for wages is bound to be low and may quickly prove to be too low when prices start to rise. 273 00:29:34,980 --> 00:29:39,660 Now, common humanity is precisely what drove past and Woodford's donations to the poor. 274 00:29:39,660 --> 00:29:47,190 Grants and subsidies were more attractive than raising wages, and not just because it might be difficult to lower wages once they've been raised. 275 00:29:47,190 --> 00:29:51,450 Shopkeepers, craftsmen and small farmers could easily have been broken if they'd been forced to pay 276 00:29:51,450 --> 00:29:56,640 higher wages just as easily as if they'd been forced to pay higher up higher poor rates. 277 00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:03,330 Woodford, on the other hand, because easily afford his donations out of his vast income of £400 a year, 278 00:30:03,330 --> 00:30:11,190 grants and subsidies had the same effect as higher wages without as higher wages would have done, forcing an increase in unemployment. 279 00:30:11,190 --> 00:30:17,590 They improved the exchange entitlements of the employed poor without reducing the number in employment. 280 00:30:17,590 --> 00:30:25,000 But precisely at the point where he invokes common humanity, Smith fails to ask how this humanity ought to express itself. 281 00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:34,300 He fails to discuss charity. He fails to discuss grants and subsidies. 282 00:30:34,300 --> 00:30:40,090 That was an alternative to grants and subsidies, and that was make work projects during the desert. 283 00:30:40,090 --> 00:30:49,570 The dearth or famine of 1771 to 1773. The French economist Togo, who was a free trader and had been appointed entend of the limousine, 284 00:30:49,570 --> 00:30:55,540 used government funds to feed the impotent poor, but the able bodied poor, including women and children. 285 00:30:55,540 --> 00:31:01,720 He set to work on road building so they could earn a living at a time when many weapons thrown out of work. 286 00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:09,460 Emma Rothschild thinks that Smith would have approved such projects, although he never, ever says that government should intervene to create jobs. 287 00:31:09,460 --> 00:31:14,500 There is no evidence that Smith would have thought this a proper means of remedying the problem of unemployment during a 288 00:31:14,500 --> 00:31:24,280 dearth of such schemes paid out of taxation would have the same stifling consequences for economic activity as poor relief. 289 00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:29,470 Now, you may want to say now that I am wondering from the point I persist in discussing famine, 290 00:31:29,470 --> 00:31:34,330 forgetting that Smith insists that it is interference of the market which causes famine. 291 00:31:34,330 --> 00:31:40,390 His central claim is that if there is no interference with the market, there will be no famine deaths caused. 292 00:31:40,390 --> 00:31:49,090 What he gently causes calls, inconveniences, inconveniences which the people can suffer, he says, from high prices. 293 00:31:49,090 --> 00:31:57,030 They are not to be confused with famine. In the first place, Smith knew that this was to understate the problem. 294 00:31:57,030 --> 00:32:03,810 He knew that, as he puts it, years of death are generally amongst the common people years of sickness and mortality. 295 00:32:03,810 --> 00:32:09,960 He discussed how the children of the poor tend to die because their parents cannot feed them or care for them properly. 296 00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:16,380 In the Highlands of Scotland, he remarked, it is common for a woman to have 20 children, only two of whom survive to adulthood. 297 00:32:16,380 --> 00:32:19,650 Smith knew perfectly well that the greatest inconvenience here, 298 00:32:19,650 --> 00:32:25,230 but death was the increased mortality amongst children and the old calling this an inconvenience. 299 00:32:25,230 --> 00:32:33,580 He is, I think, an abusive language, and it's important to recognise that while Smith calls it orders on what others would call a famine. 300 00:32:33,580 --> 00:32:44,670 It's helpful here to compare Smith's language with that of Sir James Stewart, who was also a free trader and who published a decade before Smith. 301 00:32:44,670 --> 00:32:50,910 Stewart at least gave some thought to the inconveniences of a death. 302 00:32:50,910 --> 00:32:58,050 It is far from being true. He says the same number of people consume always the same quantity of food and years of plenty. 303 00:32:58,050 --> 00:33:04,950 Everyone is well fed. The price of the lowest industry can procure subsistence sufficient to bear a division. 304 00:33:04,950 --> 00:33:09,240 Food is not so frugal. He managed a quantity of animals, a facet for use. 305 00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:15,750 All sorts of cattle are kept in good heart and people drink more, largely because all is cheap. 306 00:33:15,750 --> 00:33:19,050 A year of scarcity comes the people are ill fed, 307 00:33:19,050 --> 00:33:24,570 and when the lower classes come to divide with their children, the portions are brought to be very small. 308 00:33:24,570 --> 00:33:28,380 There is great economy upon consumption. Few animals are fattened for use. 309 00:33:28,380 --> 00:33:35,630 Cattle look miserably and a poor man cannot indulge himself with a cup of general sale. 310 00:33:35,630 --> 00:33:39,830 Smith also knew or should have known that his cheerful claim that famine could 311 00:33:39,830 --> 00:33:44,580 be dismissed by political economists as the result of government meddling. 312 00:33:44,580 --> 00:33:49,500 Was open to dispute. In fact, it was simply false. 313 00:33:49,500 --> 00:33:53,970 In 1740 to 42, approximately 10 percent of the Irish population, 314 00:33:53,970 --> 00:34:01,980 some 300000 people died of famine and of famine related disease deaths were heavily concentrated in Munster. 315 00:34:01,980 --> 00:34:08,080 What 20 percent may have died? This is a sort of Thompson contract. 316 00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:17,530 It's a written by the populous have dumped Dublin defending their insurrection against the grain traders and the bakers. 317 00:34:17,530 --> 00:34:21,250 But I want to quote from the grounds of Ireland. 318 00:34:21,250 --> 00:34:27,110 Sir, the author says, I have been absent from this country for some years and on my return to it last time, 319 00:34:27,110 --> 00:34:34,990 I found it the most miserable scene of universal distress that I've ever read off in history, wanton misery and every face. 320 00:34:34,990 --> 00:34:41,410 The rich unable almost as they were willing. I'm going to read that a second time because I don't know how to read it. 321 00:34:41,410 --> 00:34:48,210 The rich unable almost as they were willing to relieve the poor. 322 00:34:48,210 --> 00:34:51,210 If as that means, if for what it means, the rich, 323 00:34:51,210 --> 00:34:56,580 unable almost as they were willing to relieve the poor, the roads spread to the dead and dying bodies, 324 00:34:56,580 --> 00:35:00,870 mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles which they are fed on two or three, 325 00:35:00,870 --> 00:35:05,610 sometimes more on a car going to the grave for one to Barrows to carry them. 326 00:35:05,610 --> 00:35:13,920 And many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished. This universal scarcity was interviewed by fluxes and malignant fevers, 327 00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:22,220 which swept multitudes of all sorts whole villages or laid waste by wanton sickness and death in various shapes and scarce and house. 328 00:35:22,220 --> 00:35:32,600 The whole island escaped from tears and mourning. Smith was surely aware of the desperate situation in Ireland caused by recurring famines, 329 00:35:32,600 --> 00:35:41,480 but he had on his bookshelves two sets of the complete works of Jonathan Swift, who has a good claim to being Smith's favourite contemporary author. 330 00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:46,640 He thus had two copies of Swift's modest proposal of 1729. 331 00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:50,620 1729 was, of course, a famine year. 332 00:35:50,620 --> 00:35:56,920 I expect many of you are familiar with that work in which with its graphic account of how the poor of Ireland were so reduced to 333 00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:04,800 the utmost extremes of want that it would be sensible for them to sell their children as livestock to be butchered and eaten. 334 00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:10,170 Swift writes, I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young, 335 00:36:10,170 --> 00:36:18,990 healthy child well nursed is that a year old and most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether the stewed or roasted, baked or boiled? 336 00:36:18,990 --> 00:36:22,740 You can imagine the Parson's meal, can't you? 337 00:36:22,740 --> 00:36:27,330 And I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragu. 338 00:36:27,330 --> 00:36:31,680 A child will make two dishes and entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, 339 00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:35,700 the four hind quarter will make a reasonable dish and seasoned with a little pepper. 340 00:36:35,700 --> 00:36:40,080 Salt would be very good oiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. 341 00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:46,200 I grant this food will be somewhat dear and therefore very proper for landlords who, as they have already devoured. 342 00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:51,360 Most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. 343 00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:58,260 Now, one thing is immediately apparent to a reader of the modest proposal and of accounts of the famines of 1720 to 21, 344 00:36:58,260 --> 00:37:06,000 17, 28, 29 and 17 40 to 42 people did not starve in Ireland because there was no food. 345 00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:10,590 They starved because they could not pay for the food that was available in the markets. 346 00:37:10,590 --> 00:37:14,040 Swift solution After all, it's not that they should be given food, 347 00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:19,020 but that they should be given an income through the sale of their children and in the worst years of famine. 348 00:37:19,020 --> 00:37:25,740 Relief was provided sometimes a soup, but also in the form of money or delayed collection of rents or make work schemes. 349 00:37:25,740 --> 00:37:36,620 In one case, the building of an enormous obelisk. Smith claims to have made a careful study of European famines over the last two centuries. 350 00:37:36,620 --> 00:37:42,320 I've searched around to find what he'd been reading. There is, I think, only one book that remotely fits the bill. 351 00:37:42,320 --> 00:37:46,880 It's not in his library, so we can't be sure, but I think it has to be this report. 352 00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:53,480 Obey's factors, which have made for high grain prices in France and England of 1768, 353 00:37:53,480 --> 00:38:01,610 a hardline free market to track it's a very simple fact that all the tracks about the contract and famine in Smith's library, 354 00:38:01,610 --> 00:38:03,950 a hard line free market trends. 355 00:38:03,950 --> 00:38:10,250 It just seems very likely that Smith's reading have been largely confined to the history of famine in England and France, 356 00:38:10,250 --> 00:38:21,550 and that he had made no careful study of Ireland. What the mighty have said to explain Irish famines, particularly the devastating famine of 1740 42. 357 00:38:21,550 --> 00:38:26,230 Now, one might argue that Ireland was not an extensive corn country, 358 00:38:26,230 --> 00:38:31,510 but I can't see that argument being taken seriously because Ireland had excellent transport connexions with England 359 00:38:31,510 --> 00:38:37,420 and the English had no ban on the export of grain in those years so that Ireland size large smaller in between. 360 00:38:37,420 --> 00:38:45,540 However you want to classify it would seem to be irrelevant. One might argue that the Irish famine was caused by government intervention. 361 00:38:45,540 --> 00:38:51,240 But there was virtually no government intervention. At one point, they finally banned the export of grain. 362 00:38:51,240 --> 00:38:57,680 That's all they government to do. So why did the Irish start? 363 00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:03,740 The modern answer is that a major factor was the absence of any institutionalised system of poor relief in Ireland. 364 00:39:03,740 --> 00:39:08,480 Absentee landlords were relatively uninterested in contributing to subscriptions. 365 00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:13,190 There were no communities gathered around the parish church, as in Parson Woodford's England. 366 00:39:13,190 --> 00:39:19,640 Smith himself emphasised the plight of the Irish, whose economy was misshapen as a result of their colonial relationship to England, 367 00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:27,530 and his ruling class were particularly hard hearted because of the religious differences that came between landlords and their tenants. 368 00:39:27,530 --> 00:39:32,180 He describes the relationship between Irish landlords and their tenants as grounded. 369 00:39:32,180 --> 00:39:38,690 I quote in the most odious of all distinctions those of religious and political prejudices distinctions which more 370 00:39:38,690 --> 00:39:45,320 than any other and make both the insolence of the oppressors and the hatred and indignation of the oppressed, 371 00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:52,980 and which commonly render the inhabitants of the same country more hostile to one another than those of different countries are. 372 00:39:52,980 --> 00:40:02,370 The best solution Smith thought for the situation of Ireland was a union with England and Scotland on the model of the Anglo Scottish Union of 1787, 373 00:40:02,370 --> 00:40:10,200 which he believed had liberated the poor in Scotland from the oppression of their landlords as well. 374 00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:14,580 So here's the problem Ireland in 1740 to 42 starved. 375 00:40:14,580 --> 00:40:20,340 Not because of a bad harvest or two, but because of the insolent oppression of its English speaking landlords, 376 00:40:20,340 --> 00:40:29,910 because of the absence of poverty and of the new moral economy. England, on the other hand, in the dreadful famine years of 1795 to 96, 377 00:40:29,910 --> 00:40:37,950 avoided starvation very largely because it had poor relief and it had what I'm calling the new moral economy. 378 00:40:37,950 --> 00:40:42,900 Smith was wrong. The market alone was not a solution to the problem of famine. 379 00:40:42,900 --> 00:40:48,270 And if he had paid attention to Ireland, he would have seemed that he was wrong. 380 00:40:48,270 --> 00:40:53,580 Of course, you might say if the Irish have been fed, someone else would have had to go without. 381 00:40:53,580 --> 00:41:02,760 And since the Irish starved someone else could be fed, the English in 1740 to 42 were busy subsidising prices and making grants to the poor. 382 00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:07,800 A really hard line, Smithson would surely argue that this may have saved English lives, 383 00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:14,910 but only at the expense of Irish lives for grain, which would otherwise have been available for export to Ireland remained in England. 384 00:41:14,910 --> 00:41:20,520 Smith himself recognises that countries are bound to be competing amongst each other when supplies are limited. 385 00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:25,200 Arguably, relief in England did not actually work. 386 00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:33,270 It simply exported starvation from England to Ireland. It is the Irish who paid the price for English interference with the market. 387 00:41:33,270 --> 00:41:38,520 So to one mobile, want to argue with regards to Togo's make work schemes and the limits on that? 388 00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:42,270 The gains in one province must surely have been made at the expense of its neighbours, 389 00:41:42,270 --> 00:41:47,170 and if few starved in the limousine, more must have starved elsewhere. 390 00:41:47,170 --> 00:41:54,640 That argument might have some merit, I'm. It's an unpleasant argument, but unpleasant arguments are sometimes true. 391 00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:59,680 It can't follow that Togo or even and Woodford were at fault. 392 00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:04,000 Surely not to blame for the inaction of others. And Smith was right. 393 00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:10,940 Even in bad years, that was enough to go around if it was distributed fairly. 394 00:42:10,940 --> 00:42:17,330 In the course of this lecture, we have looked at three approaches to poverty, death and famine. 395 00:42:17,330 --> 00:42:21,140 The exchange entitlements approach of how much and where famine occurs, 396 00:42:21,140 --> 00:42:26,120 when people are priced out of the market, the moral economy approach of it with Thomson, 397 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:30,350 where markets should be made subservient to the needs of the people and the 398 00:42:30,350 --> 00:42:34,310 laissez faire approach of Adam Smith's digression on the contract where famines, 399 00:42:34,310 --> 00:42:39,470 we are assured, will never occur if the markets are allowed to operate unchecked. 400 00:42:39,470 --> 00:42:46,700 I have argued I hope persuasively that attempts to read Adam Smith, as if he shared Sen's views are deeply implausible for Smith, 401 00:42:46,700 --> 00:42:50,840 had nothing to say about improving the exchange entitlements of the poor. 402 00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:59,480 Though he understood exactly how in times of death, exchange entitlements of death, exchange entitlements are eroded and eliminated. 403 00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:05,150 Nevertheless, he failed even to mention the new moral economy of subsidies and subscriptions. 404 00:43:05,150 --> 00:43:08,720 He failed to ask himself why there were famines in Ireland. 405 00:43:08,720 --> 00:43:14,930 He failed to acknowledge the extent of the inconveniences suffered by the poor in years of death. 406 00:43:14,930 --> 00:43:19,820 Instead, when it came to the corn trade, he simply repeated the arguments that the physio crats, 407 00:43:19,820 --> 00:43:29,600 although their policies had already failed in France, he never bothered to read, I think, the key attack on their arguments Galliani stomachs. 408 00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,570 On the profoundly important subject of poverty and famine, 409 00:43:32,570 --> 00:43:41,060 I think there is no way of defending Smith for the simple reason that he failed to address the issue of starvation in the midst of plenty. 410 00:43:41,060 --> 00:43:45,230 He had to hand all the components of an exchange entitlement theory, 411 00:43:45,230 --> 00:43:53,890 but he failed to assemble those components and failed to acknowledge the inadequacy of the arguments of the physical acts which he had inherited. 412 00:43:53,890 --> 00:43:58,720 Why, what went wrong? The key to answering this question, I think, 413 00:43:58,720 --> 00:44:06,580 is to compare Smith's digression with Edmund Burke's thoughts on scarcity written during the crisis of 1795 to six, 414 00:44:06,580 --> 00:44:15,560 with which I began the crisis, with which I began this lecture and published during the next subsistence crisis in Hs300. 415 00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:20,900 Buck runs a straightforward free market argument. With one crucial exception, 416 00:44:20,900 --> 00:44:28,820 he acknowledges that the wages of labourers may sink so low that it becomes impossible for them to feed themselves and their families. 417 00:44:28,820 --> 00:44:33,230 He's against a minimum wage or controls on the grain market. 418 00:44:33,230 --> 00:44:39,650 What then, is the solution? The answer of the only possible answer if you take this position is charity. 419 00:44:39,650 --> 00:44:43,340 Let compassion be shown in action, he writes. The more the better. 420 00:44:43,340 --> 00:44:50,620 According to every man's ability, without all doubt, Charity to the poor is a direct. 421 00:44:50,620 --> 00:45:01,340 And obligatory duty upon all Christians and is this charity, which he believes has warded off famine. 422 00:45:01,340 --> 00:45:08,060 I got a. Read again, a passage where there's a richness, which I don't quite know how to read, but we'll see. 423 00:45:08,060 --> 00:45:16,100 Even now, he says in November of 1895. I do not know of one man, woman or child that has perished from famine. 424 00:45:16,100 --> 00:45:23,690 Fewer, if any, I believe, than in years of plenty when such a thing may happen by accident. 425 00:45:23,690 --> 00:45:31,250 This is owing to a care and superintendence of the poor, far greater than any I can remember. 426 00:45:31,250 --> 00:45:36,500 Why didn't Smith invoke charity in this book and the way? 427 00:45:36,500 --> 00:45:42,320 The reasons I think are obvious for Smith's claim was that free market policies would lead to general prosperity. 428 00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:49,070 He says the natural effort of every individual to better his own condition when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security 429 00:45:49,070 --> 00:45:57,590 is so powerful a principle that it is alone and without any assistance capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity. 430 00:45:57,590 --> 00:46:03,260 Burke did not believe in general prosperity. He was prepared to acknowledge that poverty was, as he believed, 431 00:46:03,260 --> 00:46:08,660 an irremediable aspect of the human condition so he could acknowledge the need for charity. 432 00:46:08,660 --> 00:46:13,730 Where Smith could not second, Smith's claim was that the hidden hand, as he called it, 433 00:46:13,730 --> 00:46:18,560 ensured that individuals pursuing their own selfish interests served the general good, 434 00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:23,480 that there was a natural congruence between market forces and public welfare. 435 00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:30,380 His account of how at times of death wages are eroded and unemployment is spread simply didn't fit into this story. 436 00:46:30,380 --> 00:46:37,310 He makes no mention of it in his optimistic account of how the market is only benevolent consequences in the distribution of grain. 437 00:46:37,310 --> 00:46:43,550 He can't afford to address the issue of exchange entitlements without bringing into question the providential scheme, 438 00:46:43,550 --> 00:46:51,350 which underpins the whole argument of the wealth of nations. The extent to which Smith's whole argument is providential is disputed, 439 00:46:51,350 --> 00:46:57,860 but I'm I'm persuaded by those who suggest he can't face the fact that a benevolent God would not 440 00:46:57,860 --> 00:47:02,930 have designed the world in which we find ourselves where people starve in the midst of plenty. 441 00:47:02,930 --> 00:47:09,680 This was no problem for Burke, who believed in original sin, which provided him with a satisfactory explanation. 442 00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:15,110 Thirdly, Burke knew that his arguments had profound implications for moral philosophy. 443 00:47:15,110 --> 00:47:24,260 And off, he remarked, had not fully grasped the extent of the obligation to charity when he described it as a duty of imperfect obligation. 444 00:47:24,260 --> 00:47:31,520 Burke responded by saying that one can take pleasure in the fact that one has control over when, where, how and to whom. 445 00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:37,340 One exercise is charity, but one is fully obliged to perform acts of charity. 446 00:47:37,340 --> 00:47:42,860 It's a duty of perfect obligation. Chun dismiss wealth of nations, 447 00:47:42,860 --> 00:47:49,580 and you will find no similar emphasis on an obligation for the better off to come to the assistance of their less fortunate neighbours. 448 00:47:49,580 --> 00:47:55,400 When Smith writes about sympathy, he does not mean the sort of sympathy which leads one to share the sufferings of 449 00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:59,660 one's neighbours and the wealth of nations and the theory of moral sentiments. 450 00:47:59,660 --> 00:48:06,150 Ferguson said that it was an abuse of language. That's where I caught this phrase abusive language, Ferguson said. 451 00:48:06,150 --> 00:48:12,860 And it was by an abusive language that Smith said that he felt sympathy with the man who pays his bills on time. 452 00:48:12,860 --> 00:48:19,040 In other words, we approve of him. We think well of him. That's what Smithy and sympathy largely is. 453 00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:23,210 I'm sure Smith thought well of those who gave money to charitable purposes, 454 00:48:23,210 --> 00:48:29,270 but he was far from presenting charity as a perfect obligation in writing about famine. 455 00:48:29,270 --> 00:48:34,670 Smith faced a test. He knew the subject was important, and so he gave it considerable thought. 456 00:48:34,670 --> 00:48:43,700 He did a great deal of research, but he failed the test and he found it not just in one way, but in four separate and distinct ways. 457 00:48:43,700 --> 00:48:48,770 He got his facts wrong. He forgot about Ireland. He got his emotions wrong. 458 00:48:48,770 --> 00:48:52,910 He failed to empathise with the suffering. He got his theory wrong. 459 00:48:52,910 --> 00:49:00,440 He failed to recognise that a country is not like a ship at sea because it contains people of wildly varied circumstances and conditions. 460 00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:06,010 And he got his morality wrong. He fails to consider the obligation to charity. 461 00:49:06,010 --> 00:49:13,750 Why? Because he was wedded to a system to use a phrase he himself was soon to use in the last edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 462 00:49:13,750 --> 00:49:18,070 He was, in the end, a man of system. 463 00:49:18,070 --> 00:49:27,070 I don't want to go too far in defending book for I've always thought of myself as being on the side of pain of Wollstonecraft and indeed of Smith. 464 00:49:27,070 --> 00:49:33,190 I'm rather shocked to find that I've written a lecture in support of book but book for all 465 00:49:33,190 --> 00:49:38,410 his faults and failings at a much better understanding of poverty and famine than Smith did. 466 00:49:38,410 --> 00:49:42,100 And this may well have had something to do with the fact the book was Irish. 467 00:49:42,100 --> 00:49:52,780 He was 11, 12, 13 years old during the dreadful hunger years of 1740 to 42 and surely saw the dead and the near dead just as there an unspoken, 468 00:49:52,780 --> 00:49:56,350 unacknowledged personal experience at the heart of immature ascends. 469 00:49:56,350 --> 00:50:02,250 Great book on famine. So too, there must be the very same experience at the heart of books. 470 00:50:02,250 --> 00:50:04,650 OK, had been there, unlike Smith, 471 00:50:04,650 --> 00:50:13,920 he had seen with his own eyes what Kalyani describes the people dying of hunger who can be seen wandering in the streets, spectres, hideous skeletons. 472 00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:19,380 His skin is burnt red with bleary eyes and then covered with sores and vermin. 473 00:50:19,380 --> 00:50:26,280 You see them approach you with a shuffling gait, asking in a horse whisper and with trembling hand for a piece of bread. 474 00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:40,258 And sometimes the moment you try to help them, you see them fall at your feet and die in the dirt.