Thoughts and Details on Scarcity

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Originally Presented to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the month of November, 1795is a memorandum written by theWhigMPEdmund Burketo thePrime Minister of Great BritainWilliam Pitt the Younger.It was published posthumously in 1800, along with an unfinished letter Burke was writing to the Secretary to theBoard of Agriculture,Arthur Young.

In the memorandum Burke claimed that it was not the government's responsibility to provide for thenecessities of lifeand thatlabouris acommoditywhich will rise and fall according to the laws ofsupply 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 ofGod.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 istruly and properlypublic, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.

Samuel Whitbread,a parliamentary ally of Burke's rivalCharles James Fox,introduced a Bill on 9 December 1795 to enablemagistratesto setminimum wagesfor agricultural labourers. Burke's letter to Young likely grew out of his opposition to this Bill.

This tract was often praised by theRadicalandLiberalMP and anti-Corn Lawactivist,Richard Cobden.

External links

• Thoughts and Details on Scarcity