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11 AMPLA Bull. 7 (1992)
The Same Wind That Carries Them Back Would Bring Us Hither

handle is hein.journals/ausreen11 and id is 15 raw text is: THE SAME WIND THAT CARRIES THEM BACK WOULD BRING US THITHER* By H. M. Morgan Lawyers in our industry tend to be looked upon as unnecessary and expensive appendages by our engineering colleagues. However, one of the points I wish to develop tonight is the primacy of law, not only for the mining and petroleum industry but for all economic activity. The title for my remarks comes from a little storybook written over 200 years ago, in 1759, by the great lexicographer, poet, essayist and moralist, Samuel Johnson. The storybook was called The History of Rasselas; Prince of Abysinnia but the book essentially comprises a series of philosophical and moral reflections. It is very short on plot, but very rich in sagacity and perception. The two main characters are the prince, Rasselas, an Abyssinian or Ethiopian, and his mentor, a poet and philosopher called Imlac, who could have been a Persian. The prince asks Imlac a question which has perplexed many people since 1759: By what means, said the prince, are the Europeans thus powerful? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither. Imlac, who is Johnson's alter ego, cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the young prince. His response was this: They are more powerful, Sir, than we, ... because they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being. Rasselas was written 17 years before The Wealth of Nations was published. The full title to Adam Smith's great work is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations in which he laid down the foundations of economics as a disciplined form of intellectural inquiry. Smith was interested in the very clear differences in prosperity which existed between England, Scotland and The Netherlands on the one hand, and the other major European powers, France and Spain on the other, and his consideration of the fundamental causes of this relative prosperity led to his extraordinary intellectual achievement. Because of our historical perspective we can look back at the period from 1700 onwards and can see, as Adam Smith and Samuel Johnson could not see (because it was happening all around them) the extraordinary changes in the human condition that was then taking place, as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The world would never be the same again because the populations of Britian, North America and The Netherlands were rapidly increasing, but at the same time, per capita income and wealth was also increasing. This had never happened before in the history of mankind. Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in these small countries, on the fringe of Western Europe, rather than in the great European powers, or more pertinently, in the technologically advanced society of Imperial China, a nation * Address to AMPLA South Australian Branch, 12 December 1991. AMPLA Bulletin VOL 11(l)

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