It is often claimed that Adam Smith and Edmund Burke held similar views on matters relating to political economy. One area of tension in their thought, however, was the institutional credibility of Britain’s East India Company. They both argued that the Company corrupted market order in India, but while Smith supported the termination of the firm’s charter, Burke aspired to preserve it. This article examines why they arrived at such divergent conclusions. It argues that the source of Burke and Smith’s friction arose from the dissimilar frames of reference through which they assessed the credibility of the Company. Burke examined the corporation’s legitimacy through the lens of British prescriptive, imperial, and constitutional history, yet Smith evaluated it as part of his larger attack on the mercantile system. These different frames of reference were responsible for the further incongruities in their thought on the Company relating to the role of prescription and imperial honor in political communities, the qualifications of traders to rule, and the appropriate tempo of policy reform. This article concludes that, even with such differences, the two thinkers’ respective criticisms of the Company illustrate the threat that monopolies pose to the liberal order.

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商业管理的局限：亚当·史密斯和埃德蒙·伯克谈英国东印度公司

人们经常声称亚当·斯密和埃德蒙·伯克在与政治经济学有关的问题上持有相似的观点。然而，他们思想中的一个紧张领域是英国东印度公司的制度信誉。他们都认为公司破坏了印度的市场秩序，但史密斯支持终止公司的章程，而伯克则渴望保留它。本文探讨了他们为何得出如此不同的结论。它争辩说，伯克和史密斯摩擦的根源在于他们评估公司可信度的不同参考框架。伯克从英国的规定、帝国和宪法历史的角度审视了公司的合法性，但史密斯将其评估为他对商业体系的更大攻击的一部分。这些不同的参照系导致了他们对公司的看法在政治共同体中的处方和皇室荣誉的作用、商人的统治资格以及政策改革的适当节奏等方面出现了进一步的不一致。本文的结论是，即使存在这样的差异，两位思想家各自对公司的批评也说明了垄断对自由秩序构成的威胁。