“Conservatives who believe that free markets are the most optimal of imperfect economic systems thus need to rethink about how to integrate their case for markets into the broader conservative agenda,” says Samuel Gregg in this week’s Acton Commentary. “And here, I’d argue, the man whose thought gave birth to modern conservatism has much to teach us.”

Though widely considered modern conservatism’s intellectual progenitor, Edmund Burke’s economic views generally receive sparse attention. Burke’s conservatism is mainly linked to his religious orthodoxy, his defense of what he called “ancient liberties,” and his relentless criticism of the French Revolution’s destruction of many of the institutions that protected freedom and social order.

Rather fewer people know that Burke was mitted free trader, a strong defender of private property, and a skeptic of government economic intervention. He once described Adam Smith’sThe Wealth of Nationsas being “in its ultimate results,” “perhaps the most important book ever written.” Burke’s literary executors, French Laurence and Walker King, even claimed that Burke “was also consulted, and the greatest deference was paid to his opinions by Dr. Adam Smith, in the progress of the celebrated work on theWealth of Nations.” When Smith’s magnum opus appeared in 1776, Burke reviewed it for the widely-readAnnual Registrar. He sang the book’s praises as a text which managed to achieve that most difficult of goals: to “teach things that are by no means obvious.”

The full text of the essay can be found here. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton Commentary and other publications here.