According to Adam Smith, what would be the proper role of government in society?
I’m not an Adam Smith scholar, but I’ll tell you what I know. Adam Smith did not publish a fully-developed theory of government, though at the time he died, he was writing a book about it. Unfortunately, he left instructions that all of his papers be burned after his death, so we don’t know what he was going to say. However, Smith said a few things about government in the two major works that he did publish: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. His remarks are not systematic, so we have to use them to deduce his theory of government. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith comes out fairly clearly for what classical liberals called “limited government:” the idea that government should stick to a small list of clearly-defined tasks, such as protecting people from criminals, and should otherwise leave everyone alone. Limited government was the fundamental idea of the US Constitution, though it is of course no longer observed. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Part I
