A study of the changes of economic thought and policy in the late Scottish Enlightenment

从18世纪末到19世纪，苏格兰经历了戏剧性的工业化和城市化。这意味着在不断扩张的城市中出现了穷人的问题。在18世纪后半叶作为苏格兰启蒙运动蓬勃发展起来的苏格兰知识分子活动家，被迫解决这个问题。这项研究关注的是约翰·辛克莱爵士和托马斯·查尔默斯如何应对这一问题，并将阐明他们的历史意义。辛克莱主张他自己的“统计”，他的意思是通过投资和分析一个国家的居民的实际情况来调查他们的居住条件和他们“未来改善”的手段。事实上，根据他自己编辑的《苏格兰统计账户》等统计数据，他坚持认为，小社区的解散、快速工业化带来的城市化以及城市居民节俭节俭的丧失导致了…的产生更多的是受城市环境的影响。然而，他提出的措施并不是重建一个小社区，而是通过为城市居民提供教育，鼓励他们加入一个友好的社会，以改善他们的举止和独立性。从圣安德鲁斯大学毕业后，查尔默斯希望继续他的学术工作，但在某个时刻，他开始成为一名乡村教区的福音派牧师，同时他对马尔萨斯的经济学比斯密的经济学评价更多，并指出对经济活动进行自然检查的重要性。他认为，这种自然的制约是贫困问题的最终原因，并辩称，要解决这个问题，不通过劳动节育将人口控制在粮食生产的限度内是不可能的，他认为这是可能的，因为他们与生俱来的谨慎和来自内部的原则可能会抑制生育。基于这一理论以及他在一个乡村教区担任福音派牧师的经历，他在一个大城市格拉斯哥的一个新教区进行了一次“实验”。辛克莱和查尔默斯虽然在理论上是不同的，但他们都在寻找在工业化和城市化社会中塑造合适的行动者的方法。这似乎就是他们的历史意义。较少

Scotland was dramatically industrialized and urbanized from the late 18th to 19th century. This means that a problem of the poor took place in the expanding cities. The Scottish intellectual actives, which had been blooming as the Scottish Enlightenment during the latter of the 18th century, were forced to tackle this problem. This study is concerned with how Sir John Sinclair and Thomas Chalmers coped with the problem, and will make clear their historical significance. Sinclair advocated his own 'statistics' by which he meant an inquiry into the habitants' conditions of a country and the means of their 'future improvement' by investing and analyzing their factual conditions. In fact on such statistical data as The Statistical Account of Scotland edited by himself and so on he insisted that the problem was responsible for the dissolution of a small community, the urbanization caused by the rapid industrialization, and the urban population's loss of prudence and frugality brought about … More by the urban circumstances. However, the measures that he proposed were not the reconstruction of a small community but the improvement of the urban population's manners and independence through providing an education for them, encouraging them to join a friendly society. After graduation from the University of St Andrews Chalmers wished to continue his scholarly work but at a moment begun to become conspicuous as an Evangelical minister in a country parish, while he evaluated more Malthus's economics than Smith's, and pointed out the importance of the natural check on economic activities. He thought that this natural check was the final cause for the poverty problem, and argued that in order to solve the problem there was no way without keeping population within the limitation of food production by laborers' birth-control, which would be, he thought, possible because their innate 'prudence and principle from within' could have restrained a childbirth. Based on this theory as well as his experience as an Evangelical minister in a country parish he made 'an experiment' in a new parish of a large city, Glasgow. Both Sinclair and Chalmers, though they were theoretically deferent from each other, were looking for the way of the shaping of adequate actors in the industrialized and urbanized society. This seems to be their historical significance. Less