Justice & Law Quote by Adam Smith

Resentment, in Adam Smith's hands, isn’t the petty fuel of grudges; it’s a calibrated alarm system. The exclamation marks matter because they do rhetorical enforcement: he’s policing the emotion’s jurisdiction. Resentment is granted by nature "for a defense, and for a defense only" - not for conquest, not for vanity, not for keeping score long after the threat has passed. Smith is trying to domesticate a dangerous feeling by giving it a narrow moral job description.

The subtext is a quiet argument against both saintly passivity and vengeful excess. A society that never resents wrongdoing invites predation; a society that resents indiscriminately becomes predatory. By calling resentment the "safeguard of justice", Smith links private emotion to public order. Justice begins as an internal recoil: the instinctive sense that a boundary has been violated and that violation demands a response. That same recoil becomes "the security of innocence" because it signals to would-be aggressors that harm has social costs, even before courts or laws arrive.

Contextually, this fits the Scottish Enlightenment project: explaining moral life without appealing to divine command. Smith, best known for markets, is also building an account of moral sentiments that can sustain liberal society. Resentment, properly aimed, is how ordinary people enforce norms when institutions are imperfect - a natural check on power. The line also reads like a warning to his own era: if resentment is misdirected into status anxiety or factional rage, it stops being defense and starts masquerading as justice.