LAISSEZ-FAIRE IN THE AMERICAN TRADITION

A few months before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations. Contemporaries eager to find connections between the Wealth of Nations and America’s birth celebrated the concurrence. “The nativity of the science is to be dated from that event, and the coincidence is to be remarked that it was contemporaneous with our Declaration of Independence in 1776.”¹ By all accounts Smith’s book was positively received in early America. The Wealth of Nations helped justify America’s revolution, and the Scotsman also had influence over the Constitution framers at Philadelphia. Nearly 30 percent of the