Book review: 'Liberty and Liberalism'

Having quarrelled with his father, in 1887 he sold all his shares in Howard Smith to his brother and returned to Sydney and to the law. Later that year he published Liberty and Liberalism. Re-elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly for the seat of Glebe in February 1889, Smith became minister for public works in Parkes's last government, where he proved to be a capable minister although he consistently clashed with the premier. He replaced McMillan as treasurer in the government's dying months, his only experience of public office.

Smith primarily pursued his legal career during the 1890s, although he was an active supporter of the federation movement. He hoped, in vain, that federation would deliver free trade to the Australian people and remove "for all time" the potential for evil represented by the "growth upon our body politic" by the labour movement, new liberalism and socialism.

Smith was elected as the federal member for the Sydney suburban seat of Parkes in March 1901 and held it until he was defeated in 1919. By the early 20th century, the political tide had run against Smith almost completely and he was in perpetual opposition to the currents of the day. He opposed the white Australia policy, because it limited competition, and supported the enfranchisement of women and the principle of equal pay for equal work. Even when the free traders briefly held power federally in 1904, there could be no place for Smith in a government led by George Reid.

He was perhaps the most knowledgeable member of the Australian parliament in economic matters but he had little impact in an age that was becoming increasingly collectivist in sentiment. But his presence in parliament was a reminder that there was a tradition of classical liberalism.

Smith sought to defend not just classical free trade liberalism but a particular principled version of that liberalism. He detested Reid because he was a pragmatic politician: Reid was willing, for example, to win popular support and to court Labour by introducing income tax as a substitute for the tariffs that he abolished in NSW in 1894. For Smith, Reid was also a hypocrite who embraced the racist principles of white Australia as the price for becoming a potential prime minister of the new commonwealth.

As a political thinker, Smith was not engaging in arid abstract discussion. When he came to write Liberty and Liberalism, he was a man in his mid-thirties who had been a barrister, a member of parliament and the manager of a major company. The book was founded on principle and a wide experience of his society.

Smith was reacting against developments in the Victoria that he had only recently left and in which he had played a significant role as an employer spokesman. He was opposed to those who were engaged in "advanced legislative experiments" and who were attaching the term "liberal" to those experiments. This was not just an exercise in semantics. It was the intellectual manifestation of the very real struggles in which Smith had been involved.

Smith feared that these "new liberals" were attempting to reinstitute privilege through "class" legislation that conferred benefits on one section of the community, the working classes, "at the expense of the remainder of the community". A Victorian Liberal, he argued, was "one who is given to liberality with the public revenue, and in favour of class interests". This stood in stark contrast to Smith's view that liberalism should serve the community interest as opposed to sectional ones.

Hence Liberty and Liberalism is a forceful re-casting of the case for classical liberalism at a time when the radical spin doctors of David Syme's The Age, including Deakin, were attempting to steal and appropriate the word so that it would mean the opposite of its original meaning. It draws on evolutionary and Darwinian arguments because that was the way in which liberalism found its distinctive expression in Victoria in the second half of the 19th century. Consequently, Liberty and Liberalism is a forthright statement of the liberal case. Smith's involvement in Victorian industrial disputes had made him angry, and there is an uncompromising tone to the book.

Smith wanted to defend individual liberty. He defined liberty as "the freedom to do as one wishes; freedom from restraint subject to the same or equal freedom in our fellows". Such individual freedom would benefit everyone by enabling them to pursue their particular goals. Moreover, Smith argued, when every individual was allowed the maximum amount of freedom available, a community would also be able to maximise its happiness.

The role of liberalism was to guard over and to preserve the liberties of the citizens of a community. He believed that a science of politics existed. Its focus was the "happiness of all who comprise the state". Through the application of liberal principles on a scientific basis, individuals could enjoy the maximum amount of liberty and happiness available.

By this he meant the happiness not just of one generation, but of all. Hence he argued that legislation that only favoured the present generation was not a good thing: "we might all add indefinitely to our national debt … enjoy ourselves on the proceeds, throwing the burden on to those who come after us".