Thoughts and Details on Scarcity 1795

Abstract

Edmund Burke's literary executors French Laurence and Walker King issued "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" in 1800, three years after Burke's death in 1797. The document-reproduced in entirety here though without their informative Preface 2 -comes principally from a memorial Burke wrote to Prime Minister William Pitt in 1795, but almost half comes from other draft material, intended for the public but to be framed as letters addressed to Burke's friend Arthur Young. 3 The material began as a timely warning against interventionist measures in the face of dearth, including a locally administered minimum-wage scheme (referred to as a "tax" by Burke, because employers pay more for labor). But the interpolations from the letters are more of the nature of general political economy. The final document, "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity," then, is an admixture-"Details," the more specific facts from the memorial, including testimony of Burke the farmer, which work as illustration of the "Thoughts," formulated especially in the material that the executors had drawn from the subsequent draft letters.We have made a few very minor corrections to Burke's text, and we include most of the footnotes added by Francis Canavan for the Liberty Fund edition (Burke 1999), which relate the text to affairs of the moment. We thank Liberty Fund for their kind permission to reproduce Canavan's notes.Why do we draw attention to "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity"? Adam Smith's "liberal plan" or "liberal system" (WN, 664, 538-539) is cen-

Seduced by System: Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Embrace of Adam Smith's Philosophy

“…'They pull down what is above; they never raise what is below; and they depress high and low together beneath the level of what was originally the lowest'. 75 It is not necessary here to evaluate the validity of Burke's argument that even a temporary redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor would prove deleterious to the material welfare of all, though this argument does demonstrate that Burke possessed more than a moderate facility for political economy in the Smithian mold.…”

El retorno de los saberes de subsistencia

“…El filósofo Edmund Burke, autor de una teoría de lo sublime, abunda en éste sentido, pues, sólo la amenaza de la miseria y del hambre permite a los hombres que su condición destina a los trabajos serviles aguerrirse a los peligros de las guerras y la intemperie de los mares: "Fuera de los apuros de la pobreza, ¿qué podría obligar a las clases inferiores del pueblo a enfrentar todos los horrores que les esperan en los océanos impetuosos y los campos de batalla?" (Burke, 1795). Por si acaso aun no lo entendieran, el filósofo de lo sublime recalca que todas las veleidades de socorrer a los pobres provienen de principios absurdos que profesan cumplir lo que, por la misma constitución del mundo es impracticable: "Cuando afectamos tener piedad por esa gente que debe trabajar -sino el mundo no podría subsistir -estamos jugando con la condición humana" (Ibid).…”

The Debate on Economic and Social Security in the Late Eighteenth Century: Lessons ofa Road Not Taken

“…This is a phrase which Smith uses repeatedly in the Wealth of Nations (and ten times in the few pages of his discussion of wages). Providence sometimes withholds 'necessaries' from the poor, Burke says; 'it is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of Nature, and consequently the laws of God, that Divine displeasure is to be softened' (Burke, 1894: V, 135; see also Rothschild, 1992b).…”