A Study of the thoughts of poor relief in mid eighteenth-century Scotland.

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The tobacco trade and the linen manufacture had grown by the mid eighteenth century in Scotland. Behind this there was a hidden stream towards genuine industrialization and urbanization that started in the late eighteenth century. This historical fact was reflected on the. idea on poor relief of Patrick Lindsay, who argued that the Scottish economic development would be made possible only by establishing the linen manufacture as an industry for export and therefore pointed out that even beggars and robbers, the number of whom had increased due to lack of employment, would be able to contribute to the Scottish economic prosperity if they were employed as linen workers. He went on to propose that they should be not only punished but enforced to master line production techniques and change their habits to suitable ones for market economy in a workhouse. Thus, he argued that they should be transformed into adequate agents for the Scottish economic progress. Proposals for establishing a workhouse in Glasgow and Edinburgh appeared in those years. Both proposals shared Lindsay's view of the transformation of the Scottish poor agents, although they didn't connect the poor relief to the economic development so much as Lindsay. After the establishment of a workhouse poor rate controversy happened in Edinburgh. The supporter for and the opponent of the poor rate seem to have anticipated the issues of poor relief in the early nineteenth century when some people were deeply concerned with the nature of voluntary contribution and the effects of a workhouse.