I am sure Smith didn't see the Wealth of Nations as a blueprint for any
particular country or region - the 'the obvious and simple system of
natural liberty' is entirely general. His examples are drawn from Great
Britain as a whole, from its component parts (England and Scotland), and
other places (France, the American colonies, etc.). If he was addressing
himself to any political body it was the British Parliament - separate
English and Scottish bodies did not exist. His intellectual context was
Scottish, of course, though not narrowly or exclusively so, but that is not
the same as having a 'blueprint' for Scotland as opposed to anywhere else.
Incidentally, Scot Stradley's terminology is in fact correct - it was 'the
Brits', that is to say, anti-Catholic, anti-Jacobin 'Brits' of both sorts,
English and Scottish, who took revenge against those parts of the highlands
which had supported the Jacobin uprising. Smith would not have had much
sympathy for the Catholic, divine-right, absolutism of the Jacobins.
Tony Brewer
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