There is more to a commercial society than a better material standard of living, than simply the blessing of opulence (vitally important and significant though that is). This type of society also enjoys the blessing of liberty. That second blessing is the focus of Chapter 5, although admitting the division is somewhat artificial, this chapter considers the framework (so to speak) that facilitates liberty as well as other commercial virtues. At the heart of the ‘idea’ of a commercial society is a series of connected conceptual relations. This chapter explores these and comes in three parts. The first examines the relation between the impersonality of commercial exchange and law. Markets deal in impersonal transactions (commercial life is seen as comprising a ‘society of strangers’) and the rule of law means that it is ‘no respecter of persons’. The second part investigates the complementary conceptual relation that pertains between commercial inter-dependence and legal/political independence from the authority of specified individuals. These connected relations explain why justice has such a central, if not in all respects convergent, place in the Scots' writings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how/why the implementation of justice is seen as a key task of a government and what, in the light of the earlier discussion, can be said about the politics of a commercial society.