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Classical Liberalism: Some Historical Influences from Religion and Natural Law
Erik W. Matson
Draft for Routledge Handbook of Classical Liberalism
January 2024
**
1. PREFACE
I was invited to write a chapter for this volume on the history of classical liberalism.
Overwhelmed by the enormity of the task—and not confident in my abilities to write a
general historical overview of so venerable a topic—I have written a chapter surveying
selective historical influences on the development of the political philosophy originally
called “liberal” in eighteenth-century Britain.1 Although I do present a brief, high-level
historical narrative on the development of this philosophy out of the seventeenth century,
my focus is on certain intellectual influences of religion, particularly Protestantism, and
aspects of early modern discourses in natural law.
The positive role of religion in the development of classical liberal thought is sometimes
insufficiently appreciated by classical liberals. This is perhaps due to tensions between
many religions’ claims to possess a privileged access to truth and the contemporary
classical liberal’s emphasis on pluralism and subjective experience. Perhaps it is simply
due to the historical abuses, oppressions, persecutions, and restrictions on freedom that
have been perpetrated in the name of God. But it is nonetheless clear that theological
elements played an important role in the formation of the intellectual framework and moral
presuppositions within which classical liberal thought and practice developed.
The notion of the moral equality and dignity of individuals—and arguably the Western
concept of the individual itself (Siedentop, 2014)—drew from Christian streams of thought
and developments of the doctrine of the imago Dei. The science of political economy in
Britain, from which classical liberals have derived much of their thinking about
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spontaneous order and the redundancies and harms of many coercive regulations, was
closely bound up with discourses in natural theology (Viner, 1972; Waterman, 2004;
Oslington, 2018). “The laws of commerce…are the laws of nature…and consequently the
laws of God,” wrote Edmund Burke (1800 [1795], p. 32). The invisible hand metaphor was
made famous by Adam Smith; but something very similar can be found repeatedly in
earlier theological discourses, perhaps most notably the sermons of Bishop Joseph Butler,
where the concept clearly derived from the doctrine of divine providence.2
Many of the American Founders, who drew deeply from canonical authors in the classical
liberal tradition including Locke, Montesquieu, Hume, and Smith, appreciated the
formative influence of Christianity in liberal political practice. George Washington
described “religion and morality” as “indispensable supports” of “political prosperity” (
Washington, 1913 [1796], p. 16). John Adams later remarked that the American
“Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people” (Adams, 1854, p. 229). It
was no small part due to their belief in Nature and Nature’s God, as Thomas Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, that the American Founders ascribed to each
individual a set of inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (cf.
Hall, 2023).
No claim is made that the following discussion provides a comprehensive survey of the
intellectual history of classical liberalism. I neglect important streams of thought, for
instance utilitarianism and the social contract tradition, which has become increasingly
important to some contemporary versions of classical liberalism (e.g. in the thought of
James Buchanan). Nor do I wish to claim an outsized influence for religious developments
on classical liberal thought and practice. Many historical classical liberals were, of course,
not particularly religious, and many were and are hostile towards religion. My aim here is
more modest: to clarify the general character of the approach to politics that came to be
explicitly called “liberal” in English by 1776 and to flag several strands of religious and
natural law influences that contributed to its formation.
3
Section 2 treats the rise of “liberal” as a political term in English discourse, culminating in
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Section 3 expounds classical liberal sensibilities at
greater length. Taking a cue from Smith’s articulation of the “liberal plan” as a plan of
“equality, liberty, and justice” (Smith, 1981 [1789], p. 664), Sections 4-6 discuss some
theological aspects of the classical liberal notions of these three concepts and influences
from modern natural law discourse. Section 7 provides a very brief discussion of the
intellectual role of political economy, and Section 8 offers short concluding remarks.
2. “LIBERAL” AS A POLITICAL ADJECTIVE
The word “liberalism” did not enter the English lexicon until the nineteenth century. The
Oxford English Dictionary cites the January 29, 1816 issue of The Morning Chronicle as an
early use: “The King [of Spain]., condemned fifteen persons accused of the crime of
liberalism…to hard labour, banishment, &c.” The passage reinforces the common
narrative that the political meaning of the English word “liberal” derived from continental
European discourse, specifically from the 1812 Spanish constitution and the Liberales
(Bell, 2014, p. 12). It is true that in Britain “liberal” as a specific party term started up only
in nineteenth century. “Liberal,” however, had started being used late in the seventeenth
century as a more general descriptor of certain political sensibilities, and by 1776 it was
clearly used to designate a specific political outlook (Klein, 2024).
Following the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Church of England looked to reassert
authority and influence. The reassertion manifested in a series of laws targeting theological
dissent and nonconformist religious associations. The centerpiece of these efforts was the
1662 Act of Uniformity, which has been described by Mark Goldie as “the last attempt in
English history coercively to create a church that was indefectibly the whole
commonwealth at prayer” (Goldie, 1993, p. 212). Men like Anthony Ashely Cooper, the First
Earl of Shaftesbury fought against these Restoration Anglican ambitions. They argued the
Act of Uniformity and related legislation of the 1660s—sometimes called the Clarendon
Codes—infringed upon longstanding English liberties, established Protestant freedoms,
and the rule of law (cf. A. Mansfield, 2022, p. 978). They perceived a dangerous alliance
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emerging between high church clergy and the crown—an alliance that came to be called
“priestcraft” (Goldie, 1993).
In mounting arguments for more extensive religious toleration—and for what they
considered to be a more reasoned approach to religion generally—Shaftesbury’s party,
which came to be known as the Whig party, appealed to the Christian virtue of liberality or
generosity with respect to the views of others (cf. Rosenblatt, 2018, pp. 16–17). Such
appeals, as one finds for instance in the writings of John Locke, helped “reintroduce the
adjective ‘liberal’ into the English political lexicon” (Pocock, 1993, p. 270). To be “liberal”
in this seventeenth century context was to be generous, elevating persuasion over force
and giving some latitude in matters of religious faith and practice.
In the eighteenth century, “liberal” then came to be used in Britain—especially in
Scotland—more broadly to describe certain policy regimes and systems of government. In
Volume I of his History of England (1761), David Hume wrote: “Alfred took care to temper
these rigours by other institutions favourable to the freedom of the citizens; and nothing
could be more popular and liberal than his plan for the administration of justice” (Hume,
1983 [1761], p. 77). In 1769, William Robertson described “liberal ideas concerning the
nature of government” and “liberal ideas concerning justice and order” (Robertson, 1840
[1769], pp. 62, 77 fn xxx). Both Hume and Robertson used “liberal” to describe extensions
of freedom within a regularized administration of justice, and it is in a similar sense that
Adam Smith used the term in 1776 in key passages of The Wealth of Nations. Smith wrote
in defense of what he called “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation”
and “the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice” (A. Smith, 1981 [1789], pp. 538, 664).3
Surveys of the use of word “liberal” in English political discourse seem to support Hayek’s
contention in 1960 in The Constitution of Liberty that the original political meaning of
“liberal” “derives from the use of the term by Adam Smith” (Hayek, 2011 [1960], p. 529 n.
13). Indeed, Smith’s “liberal views,” as his younger contemporary Dugald Stewart
described them in 1794 (Stewart, 1982 [1794]), proved highly influential in intellectual and
popular discourse. In the 1770s phrases like “liberal principles,” “liberal government,”
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“liberal ideas,” and “liberal policy” became widely used in English public discourse (Klein,
2024). The sensibilities underneath such phrases underlie the classical liberal political
tradition.
3. CLASSICAL LIBERAL SENSIBILITIES
Classical liberalism is better described as a set of conclusions and sensibilities than as a
coherent set of premises (cf. Brennan et al., 2018; Mack & Gaus, 2009). One reason for this
is that there are many different sorts of philosophical defenses of classically liberal ideas.
David Hume and John Locke, for example, give different accounts of the sources of
political authority, Hume from convention and utility and Locke from social contract. But
both men agreed that the state is to protect the property and liberty of its citizens, and not
do much more. Another reason is that many in the classical liberal tradition—Hume,
Smith, Burke, Tocqueville, Hayek—have viewed deductive approaches to political
philosophy with skepticism. The latter thinkers preferred explications of experience,
intuition, and tradition over constructions from first principles. “Knowledge…is obtained,”
Hayek wrote, “in the continuous process of sifting a learnt tradition” (Hayek, 1988, p. 75).
Hayek’s words characterize some of the distinctive aspects of the English and Scottish
Enlightenments—the intellectual movements out of which the political ideas first called
“liberal” emerged. These Enlightenments had a decidedly “conservative” aspect (Pocock,
1985a), which drew inspiration in part from institutional context, but also from beliefs
about the limits of human understanding.4
What then characterizes classically liberal conclusions? Hayek described classical
liberalism as “the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous
evolution” (Hayek, 2011 [1960]). Deirdre McCloskey (2019) describes it in terms of the
Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you, and don’t to do others
what you would not have them do to you. In the most general terms, we can say that the
classical liberal soul (Buchanan, 2000) exhorts each to live and let live, and to peaceably
interact through persuasion and commerce rather than violence and government coercion.
These sensibilities build from a conviction of the dignity and reasonableness of the
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individual, and also from the belief that respecting the dignity and agency of others entails
mutual benefits for individuals and nations. Anticipating such benefits, the religious
skeptic Hume “pray[ed] for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even
France itself” (Hume, 1994 [1777], p. 351). The Scotsman and American founder James
Wilson declared, “it may be uncommon, but it is unquestionably just to say, that nations
ought to love one another” (quoted in Lawson, 1915, p. 620).
In ideas about political practice, these sensibilities coalesce around a presumption of
liberty, understood in a negative sense as freedom from unwarranted external restraint.
Policy proposals that would encroach upon a person’s property, promises due from
contract, and correlate freedoms of movement, expression, and association bear the
burden of proof. The burden of proof can be and is overcome on various occasions for
reasons including concerns about political stability. Many in the classical liberal tradition
believed that the realization of liberty in practice requires certain exertions of coercive
authority. “Liberty,” wrote Hume, “is the perfection of civil society,” but political “authority
must be acknowledge essential to its very existence” (Hume, 1994 [1777], p. 40). Lord
Acton said that to be real liberty “must be circumscribed” while emphasizing that liberty
“is not a means to a higher political end” but “is itself the highest political end” (Acton,
1985 [1877]). Following Hume and Acton, we can say that the classical liberal tradition
views the arena of politics instrumentally. The classical liberal holds a decidedly modern
view of political life. Politics is not, like it was for the ancient republican, an arena for glory,
self-determination, and the modeling of virtue. It is as an arena in which governmental
policies and institutions are formed and reformed towards the end of securing to each
person his or her life, liberty, and property.
4. CLASSICAL LIBERAL EQUALITY
The foundational moral and political sensibilities of classical liberalism have long
histories. Michael Novak (1990) argued they stretch back to the Christian humanism of
Thomas Aquinas; in so doing he may as well have pointed to Aristotle who, in addition to
inspiring Aquinas’s philosophical approach, presented compelling arguments in defense
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of private ownership (Aristotle, 1996, p. 37). Wilhelm Röpke (1969, p. 91) pointed to Stoic
philosophy. Lord Acton emphasized ancient Hebrew thought, particularly Hebrew
teachings on the existence of a divine law above the will and legislation of any human ruler
(Acton, 1985). These are of course different and diverse intellectual traditions. But by the
eighteenth century they had begun to be sifted and sorted into a body of political and
social thought emphasizing the dignity and jural primacy of the individual human person,
the existence of law above legislation, and the vital importance of civil liberty.
A central statement of classical liberal sensibilities, again, comes from Adam Smith. In
addition to being one of the early political uses of the word “liberal,” his concise
formulation in The Wealth of Nations of the “liberal plan” of “equality, liberty, and justice”
provides a useful way into thinking further about the substance and intellectual sources of
classical liberal ideas. We can proceed by considering the focal meanings of “equality,”
“liberty,” and “justice” in the tradition that Smith represents.
There are two main senses of equality at play in Smith’s liberal plan and classical
liberalism generally: moral equality—all individuals count equally, in ethical terms—and
equal treatment under the law. There is a certain logical connection between the two. If
there is a moral equality between individuals, we ought to strive for political arrangements
that operate by rules applying equally to all. If all are moral equals, no individual should be
able to circumvent the rules of the political community at will.
The moral equality one discerns in Smith’s liberal plan has historical roots in Stoicism and
Christianity. (These, it should be noted, are not entirely independent traditions. In the
eighteenth century they were quite consciously blended together in the moderate Scottish
Presbyterianism to which Smith, Francis Hutcheson, and others subscribed (cf. Sher,
2015, pp. 175–186).) On the Stoic front, we find principles of equality within discourses on
cosmopolitanism stretching back to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (Stanton, 1968).
Marcus Aurelius taught that we are all jointly citizens of a “common city” of humankind,
and as such should not prefer our own pleasure to that of others (quoted in Moore &
Silverthorne, 2008, p. 49). We are all, according to Stoic cosmology, part of a united body.
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We should thus no more prefer our pleasure to that of our neighbor—or a stranger on the
other side of the world—than a foot should prefer its welfare than a hand belonging to the
same body (Stanton, 1968, p. 186).
Stoic sensibilities were adapted by members of the British Enlightenment—notably by
Smith’s teacher Francis Hutcheson—to argue that true virtue consists in acts of
benevolence in service of our fellow human beings, who warrant service and attention on
account of their moral equality and dignity, and on account of our mutual connectedness.
A moral equality of persons is presupposed in, for instance, Hutcheson’s contention that
“the ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good” (Hutcheson, 1755, p.
266); that presupposition is even more apparent in his famous statement that the “Action
is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest numbers” (Hutcheson,
2008 [1725], p. 125). The happiness of society is to be understood in terms of the
happiness and well-being of its individual members (cf. Himmelfarb, 2004, p. 174).
On the Christian front, we can clarify of the notion of equality by considering the
theological provenance of the notion of individuality itself (Siedentop, 2014). Although
there have of course always been individual human beings, there was no “individual” in the
ancient world along the lines of our contemporary Western sensibilities (cf. Taylor, 1989,
pp. 3–24). The concept of the “individual” in our contemporary sense involves
metaphysical conceptions that have not always been held, even though they seem self-
evident to many of us today.
In the ancient world identity seems to have subsisted in the family, which functioned both
as a religious cult and a metaphysic. Each member of the family, although physically
distinctive, was understood to be subsumed within a larger ontological whole. Morality and
purpose alike came down through the family via the paterfamilias, who was effectively the
priest of the family cult. It was a world of hierarchy, inequality, and strictly collective
purpose. One gets a sense of the lack of a sense of the individual through a survey of
ancient marriage customs. Marriage involved an identity change—a woman would
temporarily become a non-person through disassociation with her birth family, only to
9
become a new person as her new husband carried her across the threshold into his family
dwelling, upon which she would adopt his ancestral gods and collective practices
(Siedentop, 2014, pp. 7–15).
Christianity shattered these understandings. Especially through the teachings of Paul and
Augustine, a new locus of moral obligations emerged, not between a person and her
family, but between a person and God, in whose image each human being has been
created, and with whom all can, through faith in the Christ, freely commune. Such
teachings “provided an ontological foundation for ‘the individual,’ through the promise that
humans have access to the deepest reality as individuals rather than merely as members
of a group” (Siedentop, 2014, p. 63). This ontological foundation had phenomenological
implications: Christianity has contributed substantially in the West to notions of
inwardness and conscience, which today so define our self-understanding (cf. Taylor
1989). But more important for present purposes are political implications.
Politically speaking, the idea of the moral equality and dignity of souls before God elevates
persuasion over violence as the key principle of social organization. One finds an emphasis
on persuasion over coercion very early in the Christian tradition, for example in the writings
of the early church father Tertullian, who affirmed the natural freedom of conscience. The
idea that each should enjoy a freedom of conscience is in fact an essentially Christian
notion, albeit one that has been applied by professing Christians quite unevenly
throughout the centuries (Wilken, 2019). In the seventeenth century, Locke argued for
toleration and more extensive religious freedoms from within a Christian framework: “true
and saving Religion consists in the inward perswasion of the Mind; without which nothing
can be acceptable to God” (Locke, 2010 [1689], p. 13). Elsewhere he anchored broader
arguments for liberty in the observation that each human being is God’s “Workmanship”
with a corresponding right to self-preservation and property (Locke, 1988 [1689], p. 273).
The role of theology in Locke’s thought is contested, but it is not simply window dressing
(Capaldi & Lloyd, 2016, pp. 1–13; Waldron, 2002). He was certainly interpreted by some of
the American founders along the lines of orthodox Protestant theology, and his ideas
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square well with the practical implications and political teachings of Calvinistic theology
(Foster, 1927).
Related to Christian teachings on moral equality is what Charles Taylor calls “the
affirmation of ordinary life”—the affirmation of “those aspects of human life concerned
with production and reproduction, that is, labour, the making of things needed for life, and
our life as sexual beings, including marriage and the family”—as dignified and not
inherently less important than a life devoted to, say, philosophical contemplation and
learning (Taylor, 1989, p. 211). Such ideas are not often emphasized in overviews of the
classical liberal or the liberty tradition, but they are historically and conceptually
significant.
Classical liberalism, again, entails a “live and let live” attitude. Adam Smith described it in
Wealth of Nations as morally authorizing each person to pursue his interest his own way. It
is an attitude that presumptively smiles upon each person’s efforts to honestly cultivate
his or her interests. It recognizes that each individual has principles of motion other than
those that might be imposed upon him by others, and it presumptively affirms those
principles of motion. The historical development of that attitude—an attitude dubbed the
“Bourgeois Revaluation” by Deirdre McCloskey (2011, p. 10)—relates to Protestantism. A
centerpiece of the Reformation, both Lutheran and Calvinist, was the rejection of medieval
perspectives on mediation. We need not rely on the priesthood to commune with God.
Through the Christ each can directly commune with God and partake of the sacred even in
the humdrum activities of everyday life. This is the essence of Luther’s idea of the
priesthood of all believers. That idea came to have significant political and cultural
implications. On the cultural front, one eventual effect was to enhance individuals’ self-
understanding as they pursued secular, commercial callings (cf. I. Hart, 1995; Valeri,
2010). The butcher, the brewer, the baker—the entire British nation of shopkeepers—could
conceive of themselves as partaking of God’s design. David Hume was highly skeptical of
these theological ideas (and he viewed them as sources of political instability in English
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history); but he understood them to have influenced the ascendance of liberal attitudes in
English political and economic psychology by the eighteenth century (Matson, 2024).
The way of thinking about ordinary work and commerce conveyed by Protestant
perspectives contributed to enhanced estimations of individual initiative and work (cf. J. J.
Ballor & van der Kooi, 2019). The result was expressed in Tocqueville’s observation about
New England: “professions [there] are more or less laborious, more or less profitable; but
they are never either high or low; every honest calling is honorable” (Tocqueville, 2000
[1835], p. 256). Appreciating the causes of the gradual honoring of individual efforts is
important for understanding the rise of commercial society in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century; but it is also significant for understanding the larger moral and
religious context out of which the ethics of classical liberal individualism at least partially
emerged.
Understandings of human beings as moral equals, again, partly motivated the emphasis of
equality under the law in classical liberal discourse. “To hurt in any degree the interest of
any one order of citizens,” Smith wrote, “for no other purpose but to promote that of some
other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign
owes to all the different orders of his subjects” (Smith, 1981 [1789], p. 654). It is improper
for any person to privilege himself or herself above others given our natural moral equality;
an impartial spectator will sympathize with the natural resentment of those who are
slighted through violations of fair play (Smith, 1982 [1790], p. 83). There are
complementary reasons beyond direct appeals to moral equality to insist that government
operate by general, fixed, equal rules—reasons pertaining to considerations of
predictability, stability, and pluralism. Hume captured some of this logic in his advocacy
for “general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members [of a
government] and to all their subjects” (Hume, 1994 [1777], p. 41). But those reasons are
perhaps better treated under the heading of justice.
5. CLASSICAL LIBERAL JUSTICE
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Discussions of classical liberal ideas about justice sometimes begin with the Dutchman
Hugo Grotius. Grotius was cited extensively throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
century in parliamentary debates and philosophical works alike. The First Lord
Shaftesbury, for example, records references to Grotius made in English parliament in his
famous Letter from a Person of Quality to His Friend in the Country (1675)—a
controversially publicized account of proceedings in the House of Lords. David Hume
wrote in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals that his theory of justice followed
in the line of Grotius. Grotius’s ideas also spread widely through his influence on Samuel
Pufendorf (see Buckle, 1991). Pufendorf was a central figure in Scottish studies of natural
jurisprudence and ethics in the eighteenth century. Hutcheson complained in 1725 that
Pufendorf “has been made the grand instructor in morals to all who have of late given
themselves to the study,” at the cost of almost “banish[ing]” the old emphasis on “natural
affections, kind instincts, the sensus communis, the decorum, and honestum”
(Hutcheson, 1750 [1725], p. 7). In his own jurisprudence and political economy, however,
Hutcheson followed his teacher Gershom Carmichael and drew deeply on Pufendorf’s
ideas (A. S. Skinner, 1995).
Grotius’s approach was shaped by the immediate concerns of the early seventeenth
century—the wars of religion. Writing his major works in 1609 and 1625, he sought to
develop a natural law theory that might stabilize politics during a time of conflict, a time
during which traditional grounds of theological consensus were rapidly eroding. He sought
a natural law theory that might work irrespective of theological and religious sensibilities.
In this sense, we can perhaps say that Grotius brought forth a new paradigm in natural law,
which was to be carried forward in different ways by Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, and others.
At the very least, Grotius foregrounded elements in his approach to natural law that had
previously been less emphasized.
Grotius attempted to dwell on descriptive realities of human nature and consequent
requirements for the preservation of the individual and the social order (Buckle, 1991, p.
16). Those requirements in themselves, he believed, gave rise to a set of natural rights
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pertaining to self-preservation and the necessary conditions for the existence of society
(Haakonssen, 1996, pp. 26–27). To respect these natural rights of others for Grotius was to
fulfill the duties of special kind of justice. This “Expletory Justice, or Justice proper”
(Whewell, 1853, p. 3), 5 was mostly negative in character. Adam Smith, who called this kind
of justice “commutative justice,” said that we may “often fulfill all [its duties]…by sitting
still and doing nothing” (Smith, 1982 [1790], p. 82).
Natural rights in the Grotian tradition and the duties of commutative justice orient around
the concept of one’s own. That concept corresponds to the Latin word suum. Suum begins
with our person. Each individual has an in-born desire for self-preservation. In his first
work, Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), Grotius depicted that desire as a kind of innate
principle of motion or innate idea. In so doing, he seemed to follow Thomas Aquinas’s
analysis in the Summa Theologica: “every substance seeks the preservation of its own
being, according to its nature; and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of
preserving human life and warding off its obstacles belongs to the natural law” (quoted in
Buckle, 1991, p. 12). The innate drive of self-preservation, for Grotius, confers on each a
use-right to take from what God has given humankind in common. Use-rights expand to
broader rights of ownership—rights to possession apart from immediate use—as we
reflect on what makes life possible with others (Haakonssen, 1996, p. 27). Humans exist in
groups that naturally desire peaceable, stable social order. Stable social order requires
conventions around ownership to avoid constant conflict over resources. Without the
existence of these conventions, at least in some rudimentary form, society and humanity
itself would go to pieces.
It is at this point that Grotius’s argument against those who would deny the natural law—
sceptics and dissidents—becomes apparent. If we claim the right of each in his person
and property as “moral knowledge and act accordingly, we can have society and thereby
the fundamental elements of moral life, whereas if we deny it and act on the basis of such
denial, we can have neither society nor humanity” (Haakonssen, 1996, p. 27). In Grotius we
see, in other words, a nascent account of a kind of natural law attempting to derive a basic,
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universal moral grammar that serves, as H.L.A. Hart described it much later, “the
minimum purpose of survival which men have in associating with each other” (H. L. A.
Hart, 2012, p. 193).6 This grammar to ensure the preservation of the individual and
peaceful coexistence with others does not, it would seem, depend on one’s theological
views. Here we can appreciate Hume’s claim to follow in Grotius’s footsteps. Hume was
skeptical of approaches to natural law anchored in theological reflection. But he had no
doubt that there exist certain “laws of nature” that are “obvious and absolutely necessary”
and “inseparable from the species” (Hume, 2000 [1740], p. 311); he believed these laws
must be reflected to some extent in local moral sensibilities and positive laws for a social
group to prosper—or to extend at all out of a primeval state (cf. Matson & Klein, 2022).
Politically, Grotius’s ideas were taken in different directions. Grotius seemed to have been
especially concerned with limiting the reach of “power-hungry churches” in his native
Dutch Republic, and he himself inclined towards a quasi-absolutist vision of the secular
state in pursuit of that end (Collins, 2011, p. 261). But Grotius’s ideas oriented discourse in
an increasingly pluralistic landscape around the idea of a baseline, individualistic
conception of justice, which he argued could be executed among equals prior to the
formal development of civil society, and the preservation of which came to be understood
as the essential role of the state. In Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, James Madison,
Edmund Burke and others we see the focal notion of justice to be a narrow concept
pertaining to the rights of property and contract, and the correlate freedoms of association
and expression. Both from their necessity for social intercourse and the resentment their
violation excites, the rules of this narrow kind of justice form the lodestar for warranted
state coercion in the classical liberal tradition. This is certainly the case in Adam Smith’s
liberal plan, under which the main activities of the state are to protect “as far as possible,
every member of society from the injustice or oppression of every other member” (Smith,
1981 [1789], p. 687). It also rings out in Locke’s emphasis that the ends of political society
and government are the “mutual Preservation of [individuals’] Lives, Liberties, and
Estates,” which he glosses as “Property” (Locke [1689], 1988, p. 350), and in James
Madison’s contention that “that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to
15
every man, whatever is his own” (Madison, 2000 [1792]). Breaches of commutative justice
on the part of the state, again, are sometimes called for by classical liberals. But they bear
a burden of proof.
6. LIBERTY
The word “liberal” itself comes from the Latin liber, meaning free. To be a liberal person in
classical antiquity required the cultivation and exercise of “a moral and magnanimous
attitude” (Rosenblatt, 2018, p. 9). One was to be an educated, informed citizen actively
participating in the collective politics of the city. The neo-Roman tradition of the
Renaissance built ideas about liberty around similar sensibilities concerning self-
governance (for discussion, see Q. Skinner, 2012). Liberty in the classical liberal tradition
means something else.
If commutative justice is the spine of classical liberalism, liberty is the heart. This is true in
two senses. First, protecting the liberty of the individual is a chief goal in political life for the
classical liberals. Liberty depends on authority and political stability, but liberty is not a
means to any higher political end in particular; liberty is the perfection of civil society, and
perfection in this sense is pursued for the non-political ends it enables. Second, liberty for
the classical liberal unfolds within the rules of commutative justice. It can be conceived of
as the natural reciprocal of justice. If each person has no right to another’s person and
property, it follows that each person has liberty to use his or her person or property in any
way the he or she pleases, so long as that usage doesn’t violate the person or property of
another. Smith showed himself to have this view at several points in The Wealth of Nations.
We might even say that for Smith liberty, in its main sense, is “virtually synonymous with
justice” (Young, 1997, p. 126; see also Klein, 2021a, 96), and for Hume a similar
interpretation can be advanced (Klein & Matson, 2020).
An important statement elaborating the classical liberal notion of liberty comes from
Benjamin Constant—whose formative intellectual years, we should note, were spent in
Edinburgh (see Capaldi, 2003). Liberty is
16
the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put
to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is
the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to
dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and
without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone’s right to
associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the
religion which they and their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days
or hours in a way which is most compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally
it is everyone’s right to exercise some influence on the administration of the
government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations,
petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay
heed. (Constant, 1819)
The history of this modern, classical liberal notion of liberty is complex. Part of the story
involves developments in mechanical philosophy of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and the consequent overturning of Aristotelian physics. In early modern physics,
especially of course with Newton, motion came to be appreciated as a natural state of
bodies, and it was not perceived as requiring a continuous application of external force to
sustain itself. To stop a body in motion did, however, require the intervention of an external
force. On the supposition that the human body and spirit participate completely in the
natural physical order, the conclusion might follow that the natural state of the individual
person is self-sustaining motion. To halt that motion requires a forceable intervention,
which can be seen as unnatural, or at least less natural than the original principle of
motion. Original motion in line with the driving principles and passion of the human frame
is liberty; the cessation or alteration of that motion violates liberty. Hence we see
Hobbes’s definition of liberty in Leviathan to be: “the absence of externall Impediments”
(Hobbes, 1996 [1651], p. 91). Outside of civil society, each has complete liberty, according
to Hobbes, and a right to everything—"even to anothers body” (ibid.). Civil society is a
matter of mutual expediency. Covenants of restraint and submission are entered into to
17
maximize the sphere of each individual body’s secure lane of subjective motion, that is,
their liberty.
Although Hobbes outlines no less than nineteen “Eternal and Immutable” “Lawes of
Nature” (Hobbes, 1996 [1651], p. 110), his conceptions of liberty and natural law do not of
course rely on theological premises, and their relation to the classical liberal tradition is
complicated. But despite their differences, Hobbes’s ideas of liberty (which we should
note also dovetail to a degree with the individualism of Grotius) are in fact compatible with
aspects of sixteenth century developments of natural law theory. The scholars in the
School of Salamanca laid the theological groundwork for an understanding of “right” not as
“properly ordered action,” as had been maintained by Aquinas, but “free power” within the
circumscribed domain (cf. Brett, 1997; Collins, 2011, p. 259). The content of rights, in other
words, came gradually to be viewed as subjective rather than objective. The salient aspect
of law on this view is permissive rather than preceptive (Tierney, 2014)—law is about what
specifically one ought not do, not what one should do. (The changing view of law here is
often attributed to the voluntarist teachings of Ockham.) On this conception, within
boundaries circumscribed by the will of the sovereign, the individual has a right to exercise
his own will in those ways he deems fit. Each is to continue in his natural arch of motion.
The affinity to Hobbes and Grotius is apparent, notwithstanding the differences in the
paths along which Hobbes, Grotius, and the Second Scholastics travelled to reach their
conclusions.
These developments gelled with contemporary—and not independent— developments in
Protestant political theology, popular and philosophical. As highlighted above, the
Protestant emphasis on each believer’s inward communion with God gradually enhanced
estimates of the properness and even sanctity of ordinary activities. That emphasis, and
the consequent perception of God as familiar and approachable, altered perceptions of
political authority. If the throne of God Himself might be approached directly through the
Christ, without trepidation, why should one feel the least afraid in approaching his earthly
18
political sovereign? David Hume, in his history of the English civil war, made the following
observation about King James I:
[He] had remarked in [his] Scottish brethren a violent turn towards republicanism,
and a zealous attachment to civil liberty; principles nearly allied to that religious
enthusiasm, with which they were actuated. He had found, that being mostly
persons of low birth and mean education, the same lofty pretensions, which
attended them in their familiar addresses to their Maker, of whom they believed
themselves the peculiar favourites, induced them to use the utmost freedoms with
their earthly sovereign. (Hume, 1983, Vol. 5, p. 11)
Hume understood the diminished respect for hierarchy and established authority inherent
in the Protestant movement, in other words, as contributing to the rise in ideas and
convictions of popular sovereignty, which oriented around an understanding of liberty as
freedom from arbitrary, unwarranted restraint (Matson, 2024). Such ideas bore
responsibility for the tumult of English politics in the seventeenth century. Under Charles I,
even debates “concerning tonnage and poundage went hand in hand with…theological or
metaphysical controversies” and “the merchants who should voluntarily pay these duties,
were denominated betrayers of English liberty, and public enemies” (Hume, 1983, Vol. 5,
p. 215).
These ideas about liberty we see amongst certain English Protestants were not, of course,
just an aspect of popular psychology; they found mature articulation in the writings of
Protestant philosophers and divines. For example the 1674 Westminster Confession, a
central English Reformed statement of faith, asserted that “God alone is Lord of the
conscience.”7 That assertion implies a political doctrine concerning the freedom of religion
and the limits of legislation by the divine natural law. In the nineteenth century Lord Acton
pointed to Jesus’s teaching in the Gospel of Mark (12:17) on the separate domain of Caesar
and God as the “repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom” (Acton, 2007,
p. 29). It was certainly treated as such by certain early modern Englishmen—and
Americans, whom Josiah Tucker called the disciples of Locke and the Protestants of
19
Protestantism (Tucker, 2021 [1775], p. 381). The teachings of especially Calvinist theology
dovetailed with developments in the new natural law tradition and came to emphasize
“fundamental law, natural rights, contract and consent of the people, and resistance.”
These have been called the five points of “political Calvinism” (Foster, 1927, p. 487), and
they played an outsized role in the normative commitment to liberty in America, especially
mixed as they were with the ideas of John Locke. The religious skeptic Pierre Bayle
reported, “Locke’s Civil Government proves that the sovereignty belongs to the
people…This is the gospel of the day among Protestants” (quoted in Morrison, 2005, p. 82).
7. ECONOMICS AND SPONTANEOUS ORDER
However one might tell a history of the classical liberal idea of liberty, it is evident that one
important line of argument for liberty amongst the classical liberals historically came from
reflections on its consequences for human happiness. It is especially here that one
appreciates the historical significance for classical liberalism of the science of political
economy. Through studies of the workings of social and economic order, classical liberals
came to appreciate that within the appropriate political and cultural environment, liberty—
allowing each to pursue his interests in his own way—very often serves the common good
of humankind.
Ideas about the beneficial consequences of liberty are sometimes treated under the
heading of “spontaneous order.” The concept of spontaneous order is often described
using the words of Adam Ferguson about “nations stumbling upon establishments which
are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design”
(Ferguson, 1995 [1767], p. 119). The concept reflects the notion that human affairs often
have a beneficial tendency absent any central plan. Two individuals might successfully
coordinate their plans and execute their intended actions; those actions, so long as they
are voluntary and bounded by the rules of commutative justice, normally have beneficial
effects on others outside of the intention of the original agents—they help bring order and
improvement to the whole social system. Each individual’s attempt to overcome the
problems associated with barter lead to gradual the emergence of money, which
20
dramatically reduces transaction costs and facilitates a more extensive division of labor,
capital accumulation, and so forth. Coercive state action, classical liberals believe, often
obstructs, distorts, or corrupts the coordinating tendencies of free, peaceful interactions
(see Hayek, 1945).
The history of spontaneous order-theorizing is itself complex (cf. Hamowy, 2005; C. Smith,
2006). But for present purposes the point is simply that such theorizing invigorated
classical liberal advocacy of liberty. A larger number of writers from numerous European
countries in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century—Pieter de la Court, Josiah
Child, William Petty, Nicholas Barbon, Dudley North, Pierre Le Pesant (Boisguilbert), Pierre
Nicole, John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and many
others—ushered political-economy considerations into the heart of political deliberations.
Through careful investigations into what Hume called “the science of man”—i.e., the
principles of human action—they gained insights into the logic of commerce. Commercial
activity within the bounds of commutative justice came to be seen, at least by some, for
instance Joseph Butler, Tucker, Hutcheson, Burke, and arguably Smith, as a mode of
cooperating with the Deity in serving the good of humanity (Matson, 2023a, 2023b;
Oslington, 2017). It was so perceived for its material and cultural effects—increased
standards of livings for a rising population, new and refined products, extensive sympathy
with strangers. Hume described commerce as catalyzing an “indissoluble chain” of
“industry, knowledge, and humanity” (Hume, 1994 [1777], p. 271). These effects require an
extensive liberty within the rules of justice. Attempts to replicate them by central direction
will be self-defeating. For one, as Francis Hutcheson pointed out, indolence will replace
industriousness where freedom is absent—individuals will be much less willingly to work if
they expect the returns of their efforts might be confiscated for the benefit of strangers
(Hutcheson, 2008 [1725], p. 188).
A broader dimension of classical liberal argumentation on this head is knowledge. Writers
in the liberal tradition had long investigated political and social dynamics in situations in
which truth claims are contested. The natural law tradition in the vein of Grotius proposed
21
rules for an increasingly pluralistic society that would allow for the peaceful exploration
and coexistence of competing claims. Investigations in political economy enriched
reflections on problems of knowledge that had come forth in different contexts. Writers
explained the practical difficulties of what we now call central planning. The state does
not—and cannot possibly know—how to make a beneficial distribution of society’s
resources at any point in time, let alone prudently discern how to direct production as time
progresses. A key point that emerges from the discourse of the early British classical
liberals is that it not just improper for the state to intervene through violence in the dealings
of the individual, but also unproductive. The state of economic affairs at any given point is
the product of a vastly complex division of labor and market process, about which any
single individual knows very little. In terms of material productivity, the classical liberals
believed, a permissive liberty within the rule of law served the good of society.
8. CONCLUSION
Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1843, “the work of Adam Smith is a treatise upon universal
benevolence…nations are associates and not rivals in the grand social enterprise”
(Bentham, 1843, p. 563). Bentham’s description captures the spirit of classical liberal
thought as it had emerged by the turn of the eighteenth century in Britain. The classical
liberal outlook emphasizes the dignity and equality of individuals, the central importance
of commutative justice, and an expansive liberty within the rule of law. Rooted in a
commercial humanism (Pocock, 1985b, p. 50), classical liberal ideas were articulated as a
way to promote the good of the many, in cultural and material terms, and to accord to each
his natural dignity and right. Understanding some of the historical influences on classically
liberal political attitudes contributes to our understanding of how to preserve an approach
to politics that still, in my view, has much to offer us. Classical liberalism in practice grows
from convictions of the nature of the person and her rights and responsibilities; those
convictions, in turn, grow out of broader cultural foundations that have in the past been
built in no small part from religious sensibilities (cf. Hayek, 1988, pp. 135–140).
22
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1 Readers interested in a more focused historical narrative might consult Collins (2011), who dwells
in seventeenth-century English discourse from Hobbes to Locke. For a wider narrative ranging from
the seventeenth to the twentieth century, see Davies (2022).
2 “…By merely acting from regard (suppose) to reputation, without any consideration of the good of
others, men often contribute to the public good. In both instances they are plainly instruments in
the hands of another, in the hands of Providence, to carry on ends, the preservation of the
individual and the good of society, which they themselves had not in view or intention” (Butler,
2017 [1725], p. 19). On anticipations of Smith’s ideas in Butler and his chaplain Josiah Tucker, see
Oslington (2017) and Matson (2022a).
3 On connections between the political and pre-political meaning of “liberal” in Adam Smith, see
Matson (2022b)
4 For a discussion of the conservative nature of the liberalism of Hume, Smith, and Burke, see Klein
(2021b). On the connection between epistemology and politics in Hume see (Livingston, 1984;
Matson, 2019; Merrill, 2015)
5 Whewell (1853) is an abridged translation of De Jure Belli ac Pacis.
6 Grotius, it should be mentioned, went to lengths to distinguish his position from the idea that
morality is to be equated with expediency. For Grotius, the natural law is expedient, but expediency
29
is not the natural law, as it was to be for Hobbes. The natural law serves to sustain society, but that
is because it is an outflow of human nature, which, for Grotius, has been created in a particular
way by God. But the important point is that his account, strictly speaking, seems not to require that
belief.
7 “Westminster Confession of 1646,” Accessed at
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/ccc/westminster/Of_Christian_Liberty.cfm.
