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