David Hume and Adam Smith on War and “American Affairs”

Ecem Okan ()
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Ecem Okan: IDEA - Interdisciplinarité dans les Etudes Anglophones - Interdisciplinarity in English Studies - UL - Université de Lorraine

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Abstract: David Hume and Adam Smith are both well known for their pessimism about public debt. While they had divergent opinions regarding the consequences of public debt, they both emphasized its negative impacts on the economy and on the political order of Britain. Having said that, they both acknowledged, in their own way, its beneficial effects on the economy. The present paper aims to emphasize that the problem of British public debt was essentially a political and polemical one which was inextricably associated with the North American colonies. This outlook thereby offers a possible explanation as to why the two Scots did not attempt to provide a throughout comparison of the positive and negative impacts of public debt on the economy. Their opposing views on the colonies also explain the different political outcomes of the debt they envisaged for Britain.

Date: 2023
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Published in The Adam Smith Review, 2023, 13, ⟨10.4324/9781003359395-10⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03171084

DOI: 10.4324/9781003359395-10

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