Big data is often a big bust, but not always. Big data has resolved a longstanding debate about when “liberal” first acquired a political meaning.

　　And, what do you know, Friedrich Hayek was right.

　　I use big data in a scholarly article published in the Journal of Contextual Economics, showing decisively that a political meaning was christened “liberal’—for the first time—by a bevy of Scottish thinkers. The story, in short, is this: The adjective “liberal” had a long, rich history as a non-political word in moral discourse. Several Scotsmen, including George Turnbull, David Hume, and Adam Ferguson, had made pregnant remarks using “liberal”—remarks that may have suggested using the adjective to describe a political attitude. But the “liberal” christening was really kicked off by William Robertson in 1769, and in 1776, Adam Smith went all-in, in The Wealth of Nations. The political meaning was, essentially, a policy posture, premised on a stable, functional system of governmental authority. The policy posture is one of leaving people be, of “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way,” within the bounds of commutative justice. The “liberal” christening took.

　　Hayek Was Right

　　In 1960, Hayek questioned the consensus view that “liberal” first obtained a political meaning after 1800 on the Continent, from which Britain then imported the term. Hayek suggested otherwise:

　　I am more inclined to believe that it derives from the use of the term by Adam Smith in such passages as W.o.N., II, 41: “the liberal system of free exportation and free importation” and p. 216: “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.”

　　Hayek’s view had had little hope of overturning the consensus. Before the digitization of millions of texts, mounting a case for Hayek’s view would mean spending years gathering a few score quotations. Tedious quotations, cherry-picked by one of those Hayek votaries with an axe to grind, from the vast uncharted forests of innumerable texts, could not get far. Such curiosa could easily be ignored and dismissed.

　　But, around 2012, the data came readily to hand, thanks to the Google Books Ngram Viewer. My utilization of data is simple and straightforward. There are no hidden assumptions of the sort that often attend big-data claims. There are no complicated models behind my results. In fact, there are no models at all. The data clearly show origination and sustainment. They also show who got there first. The adjective “liberal” first took a political meaning in Smith’s time, and that meaning was sustained ever after, and exported from Britain to the Continent.

　　So, basically, Hayek was right. But I do not wish to overstate matters. First, Hayek’s passage above suggests that Smith christened his policy views “liberal” quite single-handedly. Although Smith looms large in the christening, he did not do it single-handedly, and he was not the very first. More importantly, the conclusions from the data do not deny that the nouns liberalism and liberal came to mean more than, or things in addition to, Smith’s “liberal plan” or “liberal system.” “Liberalism” was quickly somewhat polysemous, and over time it grew more so, and especially after 1890 or so, when it began to take on a meaning directly at odds with Smithian liberalism (the “New Liberalism”).

　　Hayek says in an encyclopedia entry of “liberalism” that Smith’s outlook continued as one strand of liberalism. A second strand during the nineteenth century was associated with “the Continental tradition.” Hayek says that “liberal” had on the Continent a stronger connotation of rationalism and constructivism than in Britain. Also, what often occupied the highest place on the Continent was “the demand for the self-determination of each group concerning its form of government.” Britain was an island. Many of its writers, from about Hume’s time, worked with the assumption of a stable polity—an assumption that island geography helped to make apt. Continental politics, however, were less stable, and Continental polities more undulating. To have “the science of a legislator,” as Smith called the policy outlook offered by The Wealth of Nations, you first need a legislature.

　　To abandon the word “liberal,” with its venerable pre-political history and its long history as signifier of a worthy political outlook, would be to abandon our history.

　　Those points from Hayek about different early liberalisms strike me as valuable, even if I doubt some smaller points in Hayek’s “Liberalism” encyclopedia entry.I suspect that liberals throughout most of the nineteenth century, such as Benjamin Constant, F. P. G. Guizot, and Alexis de Tocqueville, all of whom Hayek mentions in the encyclopedia entry, generally shared Smith’s precepts and judgments on “the science of a legislator,” and that is why they were called liberals.

　　As Hayek indicates, in Great Britain it was not until the last decades of the nineteenth century that one vein of “liberals” began to subvert the Smithian spine. That subversion proved effective; today, in the United States and Canada, “liberal” is applied to the parties more inclined toward the governmentalization of social affairs and more opposed to Smith’s idea of “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way.” Hayek wrote in 1973:

　　The name “liberal” is coming to be used, even in Europe, as has for some time been true of the USA, as a name for essentially socialist aspirations, because, in the words of J. A. Schumpeter, “as a supreme but unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate the label.”

　　“Liberal” Was a Decision

　　It seems clear to me that in Scotland in the mid-eighteenth century there was a nest of thinkers who saw, developed, and advanced a political outlook in need of a name. That the outlook christened “liberal” was destined to have that particular name is not so clear. But “liberal” was indeed what emerged. I do not suppose that these thinkers fancied that their outlook was something that they had birthed. I use “christening” not for its birthing connotation but for its naming connotation.

　　It is tantalizing to imagine that members of the Scottish nest discussed what name to select. When we name a child or a boat, we formulate alternative options and weigh the options. What alternatives might have been considered? I do not know of direct evidence, however, of any such explicit, coordinated discussion of that kind. Still, Robertson, Smith, and others did consciously select the adjective liberal; they started to use that adjective in a novel way, thus christening their outlook “liberal.” It was a semantic decision. Each writer may have made the decision in the solitude of his study, but it was a decision.

　　Was the word liberal a bad choice? On that question, I maintain that no matter what word they had chosen, if it had taken, it would, subsequently, have been abused and pilfered. Man is destined to what resulted in Babel, particularly in things political.

　　I believe that “liberal” was a good choice, for reasons elaborated both in my article and in Erik Matson’s Southern Economic Journal article “What Is Liberal about Adam Smith’s ‘Liberal Plan’?” At any rate, “liberal” is the choice that was made. To abandon the word “liberal,” with its venerable pre-political history (“liberal arts,” “liberal sciences,” “liberality”) and its long history as signifier of a worthy political outlook, would be to abandon our history.

　　Editors Note: This is a condensed version of an article published in the Journal of Contextual Economics.