Thomas Cooper; O. Cooley

Born in London and educated at Oxford, Cooper emigrated to the United States in 179'3. A man of strong opinions, he expressed him self freely on current public ques tions and was so critical of the Adams Administration that he was arrested and tried under the Sedition Act (the Alien a.nd Sedi tion acts are usually bracketed to gether). Cooper believed the act was unconstitutional, and the court so hela.He later wrote a book on freedom of speech.

1971 THOMAS COOPER: EARLY LIBERTARIAN 169 Cooper practiced law in Penn sylvania and beca.me a. judge. On recommendation of Thomas Jef ferson, he was appointed profes sor of natural science and law at the University of Virginia. From there he went to South Carolina College, where he taught chemis try and political economy. A man of parts, he was made president of the institution, a post he held for 12 years. Champion of Free Trade While head of South Carolina College, Cooper published his Lec tures on the Elements of Political Economy, a comprehensive treatise expounding the classical economics in a forthright manner. With es pecial vehemence, he championed free trade. One can imagine this did not detract from his popularity in a state that put great store upon the export of cotton to Great Britain .and the import therefrom of man uf~~tured goods. Indeed, Cooper aw,ears to have been hardly 198 influential than John C. CalhoWlllin egging on the South Carolinians to declare, in 1832, that the Federal tariff laws were null and void in their state. On the basis of the theory of state nullification, the doctrine of inter position has been put forward in recent years by Southerners who resented Washington's efforts to enforce racial integration.

For the most part, Cooper took his economics straight from Adam Smith. The private enterpriser knows best - far better than any government official - how to use his resources. Let self-interest reign. "If every man in the coun try trades beneficially for himself, he trades beneficially for the com munity, which does not exist inde pendently of the individuals who compose it."l Governments should be kept small. "The dreadful evil of all governments (I wish I could ex cept our own) is the evil of gov erning too much." All laws, suggested Cooper, should be reconsidered every ten years and, if found unnecessary, repealed. This recalls Jefferson's proposal that the Constitution should be reconsidered and over hauled every 20 years. Cooper warned especially of the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution: "There is no tyranny that it will not authorize." But it is against government strictures on foreign trade that he waxed most eloquent. "Shallow politicians have ... acted on the shopkeeping maxim that what one nation gains by commerce, some other loses. The fact is otherwise; each gets its wants supplied and both are gainers."

1 This and all other quotations in this article are from the Lectures (1826).

170 THE FREEMAN March He attacked the "infant indus try" argument for protective tariffs, saying that this theory seeks to justify injuring consum ers in the present for the hypo thetical benefit of producers that might be employed by the pro tected industry in future. Friedrich List, then sojourning in America, took critical notice of Cooper and his free trade opinions, implying that he was little less than an anarchist. List himself, it will be remembered, was an early promoter of the customs union which established free trade be tween the German states - but def initely not with the outside world. Champion of Foreign Trade Cooper felt that even Adam Smith had conceded too much to the protectionists. Smith had held that it might be advisable to pro tect an industry whose product promised to be of strategic impor tance in war. Cooper held that such products would not be wanting for they would be stockpiled by a provident government, and in any case, wars seldom if ever com pletely isolated a country from foreign sources of strategic goods.

The great service of the science of Political Economy, he said, was to teach the importance of free world trade. The following are hardly the words of an anarchist: "If Political Economy had rendered no other service to mankind than to make them just and rea sonable in this respect (in respect to foreign trade), it would be of incalculable benefit. It has taught us that human improvement and national prosperity are not pro moted in any particular nation by depressing every other but by aid ing, encouraging, and promoting the welfare of every nation around us; that we are all in turn cus tomers to each other, and that no man or nation can become wealthy by impoverishing his customers; (that) the richer other nations are, the more they are enabled to purchase, the cheaper they can af ford to sell, the more improved they become in all the arts of liv ing, in all intellectual acquirement, in everything desirable for other nations to imitate or improve upon; that if other nations become powerful by our assistance, we also of necessity become wealthy and powerful by our intercourse with them; and that peace and good neighborhoods are the means of mutual happiness among nations as among individuals .... "

In the Lectures Cooper ranged over the whole area of economic theory. On many facets of the sub ject, he was far ahead of his time. For example, cost of production, he said, does not determine value of a product. It must be in de mand. "No purchaser cares a cent 1971 THOMAS COOPER: EARLY LIBERTARIAN 171 what the prime cost of an article is; that is not his lookout. His only enquiry can be, .is it worth to me the price asked for it?" He admitted that the introduc tion of machines might create un employment but it would be tem porary. (He was, of course, as suming a free labor market). When printing presses were first put into operation in Paris, he said, 6,000 copyists lost their jobs, but "in Paris there are now 60,000 persons who live by printing." He attacked the policy of en dowing corporations with limited liability, holding that since the stockholders are allowed to enjoy unlimited profit, they should also endure whatever losses may be in curred.

Champion of Private Spending Rather Than Government Spending There were rudiments of a wel fare state even then, but Cooper would have none of it. "All relief to persons in this country able to work is absolutely indefensible and wrong," he said. "Even cases of disability should be left to pri vate charity .... " To combat pov erty, he urged the "modern remedy of Savings Banks," and suggested that the clergy teach people to save and accumulate deposits in such banks. He was, perhaps, aware that the first savings bank in the British Isles had been established by a Scottish dominie and that the first such banks in the United States were founded, not for profit, but for a charitable purpose. He condemned Sir Robert Peel's suggestion that a national debt might be a "national blessing" (Alexander Hamilton had averred as much) and argued that there was no merit in government spend ing as compared with private spending. To the extent that spending benefited the spender, it benefited society.

However, he was not averse to all public works. Whether govern ment should undertake a public work or not, he held, depends on how great a public benefit it is and whether it is too costly for in dividuals. Then follows a state ment which showed that he was quite familiar with the principle of cost-benefit analysis. "The guid ing rule ought to be that an under taking which is not likely at an early period of its completion to insure at least legal interest upon the capital expended after all de duction is not deserving of public encouragement. I think many of our canal schemes liable to this obj ection. Money can be laid out so as to produce this return. It is therefore misapplied when it does not. Wait until it will." Lawyer, chemist, political phi losopher, the versa tile Cooper was preeminently an economist. He 172 THE FREEMAN March saw the importance of "political economy" in determining the course of this country's history.

Written at a time when texts in that subject were few, his Lec tures must have made consider able impress on American think ing. Common Sense John Adams described him as "a learned, ingenious, scientific and talented madcap." Certainly he was outspoken. Unorthodox ut terances regarding religion are said to have brought about an end to his career at South Carolina College. He died in 1839. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY THE PERCENTAGE of correct decisions which individuals make is very high when they are risking their own money and their own future. The percentage of correct decisions is very low when made by politicians, so-called intellectuals, and others, regardless of their intelligence, who are not faced with the discipline of having to pay for their own mistakes with their own earnings. This is a major reason for the success of free enterprise and the free market. The percentage of correct decisions made by individ uals directly increases and is higher as they directly participate in the results of those decisions, whether good or bad. Individuals participating in this way quickly learn from their mistakes, and although they will make others, they will usually not make the same mistakes twice. This is common sense at work and only under the free enterprise system does common sense prevail.

A. W. STEWART From the "President's Column" of the Southern States Industrial Council Bulletin, January 1, 1971 ANTITRUSTHISTORY: The AmericanTobacco Case of 1911 D.T.ARMENTANO A LONG ACCEPTED assumption in the area of government and busi ness relations is that the "classic" monopoly cases of antitrust his tory clearly demonstrate the need for, and justify the existence of, the antitrust laws. The impression created by almost all the textbooks en this subject is that the busi ness monopolies or "trusts" in dicted in the past were - as the textbook theory suggests - actu ally raising prices, lowering out puts, exploiting suppliers, driving competitors from the market through predatory practices, and, generally, lowering consumer wel fare. Ironically, few if any of these same texts provide the stu dent of antitrust with the necesDr. Armentano is Assistant Professor of Eco nomics at the University of Hartford in Con necticut. This article is a chapter from his forth coming book, The Myth of Antitrust.