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be seen as soothed by lowering expectations as well as by Fergusonian “active exertions”. From the point of view of political economy this meant making room for concerns not typically connected to “the Italian utility-cum-scarcity version of the natural-law theory”12. Verri’s first concern was with the stimulating effect of demand outgrowing supply. He insisted that such a disequilibrium could result in an increase of supply, not of prices. Therefore, some inflow of money would promote growth, contrary to theoretical expectations within any commodity theory of money. Verri’s second concern was with the structure of the market. When he insisted that a proportion between the number of buyers and that of sellers was required, he was not just talking, however loosely, of the balance of supply and demand — as he sometimes meant by that phrase. He was rather pointing to a problem in the optimal structure of production, distribution, and ultimately society. He was also recognizing that the sheer network of transactions would be unable to bring about that optimum.
    Either concern was typical of the way a macroeconomic approach could frame the problem of the relationship between money, the disequilibrium of supply and demand, and the market as an institution. At a lower level of analytical sophistication, Verri was here close to James Steuart’s views published just a few years earlier. But he was far from acknowledging the benevolent intention behind the statesman’s drive towards regulating the economy, as Steuart did.
        Restrictive and prescriptive laws represent one level of authority, and the common pride is always more flattered when it believes it is making an impression and creating activity among the people than when it is limited to merely smoothing the way and removing obstacles13.
    This meant that the struggle for economic freedom was ultimately a struggle for diffusing autonomous agency. Hence in Verri’s view there was asymmetry between the despotic policy of stripping a society of its cherished traditional bonds — leaving its members, however unwilling, to their own devices — and the despotic policy of restrictive laws.
      12. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith, p. 304.
      13.     Verri, Del piacere, p. 170. The translation is taken from Pietro Verri, 1771 Reflections on Political Economy, tr. B. McGilvray in collaboration with P. Groenewegen (University of Sydney, Dept, of Economics, Sydney, 1986), pp. 38-9. I am not sure the English “level of authority” has the same force as the corresponding Italian expression.