Michael Perelman asks,
> To what extent was the Wealth of Nation written as a blueprint for
> Scotland rather than England?
Whew! Now there's a broad and ill-defined question, which, no doubt,
can be approached from a number of perspectives. I will simply observe
that Smith did not seem to draw much of a distinction between the two
regions beyond praising their 1707 Union. Recall his comment to Strahan
(Letter 50, dated 4 Apr, 1760), that "the Union was a measure from which
infinite Good has been derived to this country," though he acknowledged
that, at the time, "the Prospect of that good, however, must then have
appeared very remote and very uncertain." Nevertheless, although, "at
the time, all orders of men conspired in cursing a measure so hurtful to
their immediate interest, [t]he views of their Posterity are now very
different."
The nature of that "Good" was both commercial and political. As to the
former, the Union spurred agricultural improvement by its stimulus to
meat prices. Because "the union opened the market of England to the
highland cattle," Scottish cattle prices were, by Smith's reckoning, "at
the present about three times greater than at the beginning of the
century" and, what was more important, meat prices "in almost every part
of Great Britain" were double that of bread by weight (WN, I.xi.b.8).
Because "the quantity of well-cultivated land must be in proportion to
the quantity of manure which the farm itself produces," and because
cattle cannot be fed on cultivated land unless their price is
"sufficient to pay for the produce of improved and cultivated land,"
agricultural improvement requires a concurrent rise in the price of meat
relative to that of wheat: "The increase of stock and the improvement
of land are two events which must go hand in hand." Consequently, "Of
all the commercial advantages ... which Scotland has derived from the
union with England, this rise in the price of cattle is, perhaps, the
greatest." (I.xi.l.3). It is true that by the Union, Scottish wool "was
excluded from the great market of Europe and confined to the narrow one
of Great Britain," thereby producing a sharp fall in its price; but "the
rise in the price of butcher's-meat fully compensated the fall in the
price of wool" (I.xi.m.13)
As to the political benefit, "by the union with England, the middling
and inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a compleat deliverance
from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed
them," a benefit which would accrue to the people of Ireland as well
(V.iii.89).
Hence, I do not see in The Wealth of Nations an effort to distinguish in
any significant way between Scotland and Britain; they are treated as a
unified nation, which, of course, was the case.
Glenn Hueckel
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