Summary: The laws of the market are the laws of nature, and therefore the laws of God. He decided on the fate of the poor, and we can not change this by breaking the laws of God. There are always famines and good times, but the main reason for poverty is the great number of the poor; even redistributing all wealth would change very little. It would also be a very bad idea: We can regulate commerce to achieve equality, but it will always be equality of poverty and desperation. Artificially raising or lowering the price of a commodity, and be it labour or corn, can only ever lead to one of three bad outcomes: Decreased trade, individual ruin, or general inflation. We should teach the poor “patience, labour, sobriety, frugality, and religion”. We have to strongly resist the notion that it is the place of government or the rich to supply the poor. Once we start, they will get used to this, and at the sign of the first scarcity, they “will turn and bite the hand that fed them”. Think about what happened during the French Revolution: Monstrous terror. The state should restrict itself to this: Public peace, public order, public safety and public prosperity.

Source: Edmund Burke (1795) Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. Memorandum presented to Prime Minister William Pitt, November, 1795.

Published in Edmund Burke (1999) Select Works of Edmund Burke: A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Indianapolis: :Liberty Fund.

(Full text at libertyfund.org, English)

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