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Separate but intertwined, these trends posed problems for American Christianity. Some historians point to the Atlantic trade and growth of a new mercantile class in the 17th and 18th centuries as ushering in the close of the previous feudal order, delineating the birthplace of capitalism as we know it. However, the American economy only remotely began to resemble our current market economy with the infrastructure projects of the early 19th century, which connected disparate geographies into a single economic unit. The construction of canals and advent of the steamboat, and later the construction of railroad networks, encouraged geographic specialization—shipping and manufacturing in the North, agriculture in the Midwest, and cotton in the slave economies of the South. Instead of locally producing necessities, communities could easily import goods from afar and concentrate on a single type of economic activity. Trade no longer took place among neighbors but between distant and nameless participants in the national market. Market integration marked a turning away from traditional moral norms. Whereas local customs and notions of fairness once mediated exchange between neighbors, participants of the national economy conducted business in a marketplace so big that no individual or local community could affect price or the flow of goods. Throughout the 18th century, local communities often regulated the price of bread and other essential commodities through food riots and intimidation of merchants when prices exceeded what they considered fair levels. Consumers could not as easily enforce notions of fairness in the 19th century when they did not know where their food came from in the first place. The profit motive went unchecked, becoming the sole determinant of economic activity. Regardless of the economic efficiencies created by greater transportation infrastructure, Americans at the time experienced a profound moral crisis as traditional values of fairness and obligation failed to apply in the new economy they found themselves in. Political economy offered both a normative and descriptive account of these changes. Political economists argued that prosperity could be achieved precisely through what traditional norms protected against: self-interest. Four months before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. The treatise covered broad topics, including the division of labor, origins of money, and factors of productivity. Most famously, Smith introduced the concept of the “invisible hand.” He argued that individuals could best benefit society by pursuing their own self-interest. In modern parlance, we would say that price, as determined by equality of supply and demand, efficiently allocates scarce resources and maximizes welfare. However, Smith and his immediate successors wrote before the so-called marginal revolution of the 1860s and 70s when the modern discipline of economics came into being—before the use of calculus and advanced mathematical models and before supply and demand curves. Both Smith and Wayland wrote entirely in prose with limited use of quantitative analysis. Smith summarized his argument, elevating self-interest as the glue that held society together, in the infamous quotation, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” Of course, political economy involved more than the invisible hand. After Smith, Thomas Malthus investigated the relationship between population and wages; and David Ricardo described the theory of comparative advantage and advocated for free trade. However, it was the basic endorsement of self-interest that prompted Christian skepticism of political economy—and for good reason. God was completely absent from The Wealth of Nations. Smith did not even dignify the invisible hand with a divine dimension. While Christians questioned Smith’s faith and his atheism, a more fundamental problem lingered: how was the pursuit of self-interest compatible with demands of charity and sacrifice so clearly commanded in the Gospels?
+++ Wayland’s success at resolving the paradoxes facing early 19th-century Christians derived precisely from his reluctance to face the paradox head on. Wayland rose above the question of ethical consistency, or lack thereof, by establishing the laws of political economy as scientific, and thus God-given. Popular history often suggests that since the days of Galileo, religion has opposed scientific progress. Complicating this narrative, Wayland drew from a lineage of natural theology, a school that attempted to prove the existence of God precisely through rational observation of the natural world. In the late 18th century, English clergyman William Paley crystalized the state of natural theology by describing God as a watchmaker—a metaphor used by previous thinkers, such as Newton and Descartes, but most fully formulated by Paley. He argued that the existence of intricate laws governing the natural world proved the existence of a lawgiver. As watchmaker, God created those rules by which the temporal realm (i.e. watch) operates. Wayland extended the conception of natural laws beyond the realms of physics and biology to include principles of political economy. In the preface to Elements, Wayland wrote, “It is obvious, upon the slightest reflection, that the Creator has subjected the accumulation of the blessings of this life to some determinate laws.” Following this thread, the rest of the textbook becomes an exploration of God’s divine will. Wayland does little to explain why the existence of a central bank or the elimination of trade tariffs, for instance, reflect manifestations of divine will and not simply the exigencies of strictly mortal concerns. He inserts terms like “obvious” and “self-evident” to substitute for analysis. In the most extended reflection on the topic, Wayland writes, “This science [political economy] has been, to say the least, most successfully cultivated by men who had no belief in the Christian religion. And yet, reasoning from unquestionable facts in the history of man, they have incontrovertibly proved that the precepts of Jesus Christ, in all their simplicity, point out the only rules of conduct, in obedience to which, either nations or individuals can become either rich or happy.” Wayland subtly identified the criteria to determine whether an economic theory came from God: “either nations or individuals can become either rich or happy.” In other words, God’s laws governing the economy, properly followed, are utility-maximizing. Following the logical conclusions of Wayland’s argument, religiously guided economic activity collapses into a roundabout utilitarianism. And as Smith had already demonstrated, the pursuit of self-interest coordinated in the free market ensures optimal wealth and happiness. Concurrent to the development of political economy, utilitarianism as a moral philosophy also emerged from the British Isles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Crudely put, utilitarianism defines moral action in terms of the maximization of happiness and minimization of suffering. American evangelicals entirely opposed utilitarianism as heretical. As much as Adam Smith ignored God, Jeremy Bentham, regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism, actively denied the existence of God. Evangelicals asserted that utilitarianism failed to regard religious salvation as the highest moral good— Wayland himself argued as much in his writings on moral philosophy. And yet, the principle of utility maximization unconsciously underpinned Wayland’s support of economic self-interest. If Christian virtues of charity and sacrifice were strictly premised on human welfare, Wayland could be said to have successfully accomplished his goal of elevating political economy, as a means to maximize welfare, to divine significance. However, the mainstream evangelical community, of which Wayland was a leading member, considered good works not to be ends in themselves but as a consequence of salvation. It is on this crucial point, in many ways the lynchpin of the Protestant Reformation itself, where Wayland’s justification for self-interest faltered. At this juncture, Wayland’s writings provide no further clues to tease out an internal consistency. If we cannot explain away the conflict between Wayland’s evangelicalism and the utilitarian core of his polit-
ical economy, at best, we can explore what made Wayland’s cognitive dissonance possible—how he rationalized the contradictions to himself. +++ After Wayland retired from Brown in 1855, he returned to the clergy as pastor of Providence’s First Baptist Church. Francis Wayland the pastor discussed economic self-interest in markedly different language from Francis Wayland the political economist and textbook writer. Whereas the economist upheld a system undergirded by the pursuit of personal gain, the pastor preached forebodingly on the dangers of greed, especially in commercial life. These dual personalities reflect the bifurcation of economics and morality—a wholly constructed division between public and private life. In his sermon “The Perils of Riches,” Wayland discussed the spiritually corrupting influence of gratuitous accumulation. Wayland not only admonished greed in the abstract but situated the evil in the context of the emerging market economy. Wayland observed, “Our greatest moral dangers arise, not from direct but indirect temptations.” He went on to describe how modern modes of trade tempt our worst impulses more so than outright theft. “We would not pick his [our business partner’s] pocket of a shilling … We might, however, take great pains to accomplish an exchange with him, by which we should receive a full equivalent for all that we part with, and besides this a very large amount for which we have rendered no equivalent.” Although improper business dealings have occurred across history, Wayland’ concerns took on increased importance in the impersonal and large-scale trading environment of the early 19th century. By the end of the sermon, Wayland admonished businessmen to subsume their self-interest to their devotion to Christ, which required donating much of their wealth to missionaries, schools, and other charities. Wayland’s religious condemnation of greed does not necessarily undermine the economic theories he advanced in Elements. In his sermon “Moral Law of Accumulation,” Wayland remarked, “The desire of accumulation within these limits [determined by the Bible] is lawful; beyond them, it is sinful.” He continued, “It is not only fatal to our spiritual interests, but in the end, it is ruinous to even our temporal prosperity ... as necessary to our prosperity to limit our desires as to possess the desire itself.” Wayland rehabilitates self-interest as the sober counterpoint to passionate greed. The greedy man carelessly exhausts his resources, while the sober man invests and saves. The basis for political economy remains relatively unscathed so long as prudent self-interest runs counter to the exploitation and injustice associated with avarice—an assumption more difficult to hold after considering the basis of the Southern gentry’s vast wealth. Aside from Wayland’s generous impression of self-interest, the integrity of The Elements of Political Economy remains solid because potentially contradictory ethical pronouncements were confined to sermons, entirely removed from Wayland’s economic writing. In the preface of Elements, Wayland warned readers that he would not be “intermingling them [ethical and economic matters], but has argued economic questions on merely economic ground.” Herein lies the central explanation of Wayland’s dissonance for which we have been searching. Economics is a science, Wayland said, not to be limited by religious or moral concerns. Wayland himself remained unaware of the utilitarian foundation upon which his discipline rested. Although mathematical formalism remained decades away, Wayland laid the groundwork for the aloof posture of economics within the social sciences: the dismal science is the study of what is, not of what ought. And yet, early 19th-century economists transformed the moral and religious landscape of America for centuries to come. BILAL MEMON ’22.5 reps Wayland Arch dorm.
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