Another Publication Merits Happy Birthday

By John Hood

RALEIGH — In a few short weeks we will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Its approval by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia was a seminal moment not just in American history but in world history — a first-of-its-kind defense of individual liberty and the mission statement of a fateful experiment in civil government designed to restrain rather than embolden political ambition.

As important as the Declaration was, and remains, America’s semiquincentennial celebration is about far more than a single document or meeting. It began years ago with national commemorations of such events as the Boston Tea Party and the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. Here in our state, North Carolinians have celebrated the 250th anniversaries of the Edenton Tea Party, the Mecklenburg Declaration, the pivotal battle of Moores Creek Bridge, and the Halifax Resolves.

The Declaration of Independence itself was, in fact, just one of at least three documents published over the course of 1776 that helped shape our modern world.

On March 9 of that year, London-based publishers W. Strahan and T. Cadell released An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith. His discussion of supply and demand, the division of labor, and the role of prices in coordinating markets became a foundational text in the discipline of economics. And his argument against economic protectionism — which is always and everywhere a conspiracy against the public interest — retains its relevance and power today.

The third document I have in mind was also published in London by Strahan and Cadell. The first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire debuted on February 17, 1776. The initial run of a thousand copies quickly sold out. So, 250 years ago this week, Strahan and Cadell published a second edition. Other than correcting a few typos here and there, its primary innovation was to distribute the author’s copious notes at the bottom of each page, as footnotes, rather than grouping them into endnotes. It was a wise decision, displaying more prominently the author’s extensive research and strengthening the authority of his claims.

That author, Edward Gibbon, later said he was inspired to write the book during a 1764 visit to Rome. After many years, toil on other projects, and service in the House of Commons, Gibbon finally completed the first volume of what would be not only an influential history of ancient Rome but also a model of analysis that countless scholars would emulate and react to over the next two and a half centuries.

In a recent essay for The Independent Review, my Duke University colleague and friend Mike Munger argued that Gibbon’s Decline and Fall employed a “modern method” to present an old conception of human civilization, one not of inevitable social progress but of historical contingency. By chronicling changes over time in the political leadership, military organization, tax policies, and cultural practices of the Roman world, he wrote, Gibbon “changed the classic view (‘Rome fell because men declined’) into what we would now recognize as a social science-based comparative statics argument: ‘Rome fell because institutions changed incentives.’”

For Gibbon, the fate of the Roman state comprised far more than an interesting subject for academic study. He wanted to discover and share the causes of the decline and fall of one great empire in part because he wanted his own contemporaries to avoid the same fate. “I am proud of my birth in a free and enlightened country,” Gibbon wrote, “and the approbation of that country is the best and most honorable reward of my labors.”

While his Decline and Fall did not, of course, influence the crafting of the roughly contemporaneous Declaration of Independence, American Founders such as James Madison and John Adams soon became avid readers of the work. When the Constitutional Convention convened in 1787, observed conservative scholar Russell Kirk, “its details were vivid in the minds of the delegates at Philadelphia.”

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).