Would Adam Smith have Approved?

In the USA, christians often ask the question, "what would Jesus do?" Those of us of a more secular bent, are however not much different. We frequently read commentators claiming that some political philosopher or other would take some view or other. The name of this blog even, is a case in point.

In a letter to the Herald, Alex Orr claims that Adam Smith would be a Europhile:

Our open single market established with the European Union involves more than 500 million people and allows for the free movement of goods, capital, services and people across that Union, something of which Adam Smith would undoubtedly have approved.

So is he correct, would Adam Smith indeed be cut from the same cloth as Ken Clarke? Read this and make your own mind up:

No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.

A criticism of regulations, the very reason for the EU's existence.