xxxThe Edinburgh Dinner Dialogue – 211

Around Adam Smith’s table in Edinburgh, Percy, Claire, and the Scots debate whether progress and sympathy can coexist, ending with a toast to “thrivance.”

---

Adam: Edinburgh has outdone itself tonight—pass the butter, if you please, before the lamb grows cold.

Stewart: Of course, James—though I warn you, Watt, you’ll spoil your appetite with too much bread.

Watt: Better bread than too much theory, Stewart.

Percy: Ha!

Adam: Claire, will you have more greens?

Claire: Thank you, yes. Though I find it curious—such feasting while half of Edinburgh shivers outside. Does philosophy taste so rich when the poor go hungry?

Stewart: Ha—listen to her, gentlemen, she wields a sharper fork than any of us.

Percy: Forgive me if I stir too soon. Adam, your Wealth of Nations sits on my mind like a guest at table. Tell me—do you truly believe commerce, like this feast, spreads itself fairly to all?

Adam: Fairness, sir, is not the hand of men but of exchange itself. Markets, when left unbound, are like rivers finding their course.

Percy: Rivers flood, Adam. And floods drown the weak before they water the fields.

Stewart: Easy now, Shelley—let him finish.

Adam: A river may be guided with levees, but never fully mastered.

Percy: Levees of law, perhaps. Yet law bends to power.

Claire: And who bends power, if not imagination? A nation must be imagined before it is built.

Watt: Dreams again! You poets would have engines made of moonlight.

Percy: Moonlight, yes, but also coal. One fuels the body, the other the spirit. Why should a people not have both?

Adam: More wine, Claire?

Claire: Gladly. It softens the edge of commerce.

Stewart: Ha! Some would say commerce itself is wine—it loosens the tongues of nations.

Percy: Or dulls them, Stewart. A drunk people can be led anywhere.

Stewart: Come now, Shelley, you distrust prosperity too much. Look at Watt’s engines—every puff of steam multiplies the strength of a hundred arms.

Percy: Yes, arms of iron. But iron has no conscience. Tell me, James, when your engines spread through Britain, will they carry liberty with them, or chains?

Watt: Chains? Man, you mistake me. The pump and piston free children from hauling buckets and horses from endless turns at the wheel.

Claire: And yet, the freed children must still eat, the freed horses must be sold. A tool changes work, but does it change justice?

Stewart: Well put, young lady. Justice is not in the engine, but in the use of it. And that, sir, is the charge of statesmen and philosophers, not mechanics.

Percy: Mechanics, merchants, poets—we are all guilty if we do not shape the future with care. What if, instead of wealth for the few, we imagine thrivance for the many?

Adam: Thrivance? A fine word, Shelley, though I have not heard it in Parliament. In my own writings, I have spoken instead of universal opulence, the progress of improvement, the annual produce of land and labor. Even in my first inquiries, answering Hume, I sought to show how sympathy and commerce together might elevate mankind.

Percy: Nor shall you, until poets stand there. Yet think of it, Adam: not mere wealth, not even prosperity, but a common flourishing—health, learning, dignity for all.

Adam: Hm. A noble dream. But markets do not deal in dreams, they deal in prices.

Percy: Prices, yes, but beneath every price is a human need. If the need is met broadly, is that not mass flourishing?

Adam: Perhaps, if law and custom temper greed. Otherwise, markets become wolves let loose.

Claire: And wolves must be fenced. But fences alone will not suffice. We need gardens, tended, where all may eat.

Watt: Ha! Gardens and wolves. You poets never lack metaphors.

Percy: Because metaphors keep truth alive, James. Your iron may thrash the ore, but words shape the heart. And only when heart and hand move together will thrivance be real.

Adam: Then perhaps we agree more than we differ. Engines without justice are dangerous. Justice without engines is weak. Together—together, perhaps, we may build more than wealth: a common good.

Stewart: A toast then. To thrivance, as the poet calls it.

All: To thrivance!