''Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Originally Presented to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the month of November, 1795'' is a memorandum written by the
Whig MP
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (; 12 January NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">N ...
to the
Prime Minister of Great Britain William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger (28 May 175923 January 1806) was a British statesman, the youngest and last prime minister of Great Britain (before the Acts of Union 1800) and then first prime minister of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ire ...
. It was published posthumously in 1800, along with an unfinished letter Burke was writing to the Secretary to the
Board of Agriculture,
Arthur Young.
In the memorandum Burke claimed that it was not the government's responsibility to provide for the
necessities of life and that
labour is a
commodity which will rise and fall according to the laws of
supply and demand. Whenever people fall on hard times it should be left to private charity rather than state aid to alleviate their suffering. Burke further claimed that the laws of commerce were the laws of nature and therefore the laws of
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
. He accepted that there were exceptions to these rules and he set out what he believed should be the limits:
That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is ''truly and properly'' public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.
Samuel Whitbread, a parliamentary ally of Burke's rival
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...
, introduced a Bill on 9 December 1795 to enable
magistrate
The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...
s to set
minimum wages for agricultural labourers. Burke's letter to Young likely grew out of his opposition to this Bill.
This tract was often praised by the
Radical and
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
MP and anti-
Corn Law
The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They wer ...
activist,
Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty.
As a you ...
.
[John Morley, ''The Life of Richard Cobden'' (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 167.]
Notes
External links
''Thoughts and Details on Scarcity''
British essays
1795 documents
Works by Edmund Burke
Works about scarcity
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