Liberalism: Adam Smith, David Hume

About the friendship between David Hume and Adam Smith, is important how the liberalism defines the thoguht of both.

Liberalism is sometimes stigmatized as extremist and utopian, as if the liberals were characterized by thinkers without hearts, who only watch the evidence. There is even talk of extremism in liberalism, as the populists or communists, whose lack of realism is regrettable.

What kind of liberalism did Smith and Hume share? They were pragmatic liberals, the basic ideals of the liberal tradition and the importance of moderation, caution, flexibility, and the need to address the context when those ideals are put to the test, even in a moment when the the free market and the industrial society were raised .

But to be pragmatic is different to lack of principles: the speech of a pragmatic politician refer to him as an opportunist or a demagogue, who adjusts his messages to the circumstances, and it was not so in the case of these great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

[David Hume](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume)

The principles of David Hume and Adam Smith, are liberal principles: the belief in the limitation of power, civil liberties and private property. The fallibility of human reason, and the complex and variable nature of the political world, they affirmed that we should be cautious before major projects to radically restructure society. They defended some reforms in their time-freer trade and greater religious tolerance, they always insisted that these changes should be applied gradually and moderately.

On the pragmatism of these great liberals of the eighteenth century, attributed the highest priority on the importance of economics lay in the promotion of personal freedom, and the the problems of inequality in the market, but both agreed to consider the commercial society as something unequivocally preferable to its alternatives.