Eamonn Butler

Oh, golly.

He'd think it's in a great pickle.

I think he'd actually think that it's one of the most tyrannical systems that he'd ever discovered.

The idea that government should be taking 40% of the national income in taxes of one sort or another

Not just direct taxes on income, but taxes on everything you spend, taxes on air travel, all sorts of hidden taxes, taxes on work, taxes on jobs.

He would think that this is the most oppressive regime in the whole world.

That is Eamon Butler.

I'm a director of the Adam Smith Institute, which is a free market think tank based in London.

The Wealth of Nations, his big book published in 1776.

What a great year that was.

It really is a polemic.

It's a polemic against economic centralism and restrictions on trade.

So who, in your mind, did he write The Wealth of Nations for?

Oh, for the politicians of the day, because the politicians of the day were stuck in this idea that you had to resist foreigners bringing goods into your country.

And similarly, you want to export as much as possible.

So that was his main target, people who wanted to control international trade and people who thought that the key to wealth was getting lots of gold and silver in rather than producing stuff.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, there's lots of material in the Wealth of Nations, which is very supportive of the colonists in terms of getting out of the control of the UK control of trade.

I mean, the first edition of the Wealth of Nations was actually published in Russia,

I've seen an edition which has got Hamilton's signature on it.