Editing Edmund Burke (section)

==Later life==
In November 1795, there was a debate in Parliament on the high price of corn and Burke wrote a memorandum to Pitt on the subject. In December, [[Samuel Whitbread (1764–1815)|Samuel Whitbread]] MP introduced a bill giving magistrates the power to fix minimum wages and Fox said he would vote for it. This debate probably led Burke to edit his memorandum as there appeared a notice that Burke would soon publish a letter on the subject to the Secretary of the [[Board of Agriculture (1793–1822)|Board of Agriculture]] [[Arthur Young (writer)|Arthur Young]], but he failed to complete it. These fragments were inserted into the memorandum after his death and published posthumously in 1800 as ''[[Thoughts and Details on Scarcity]]''.<ref>Robert Eccleshall, ''English Conservatism since the Restoration'' (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), p. 75.</ref> In it, Burke expounded "some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade".<ref>Prior, p. 419.</ref> Burke criticised policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages and set out what the limits of government should be:
<blockquote>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.<ref>Eccleshall, p. 77.</ref></blockquote>

The economist [[Adam Smith]] remarked that Burke was "the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us".<ref>E. G. West, ''Adam Smith'' (New York: Arlington House, 1969), p. 201.</ref>

Writing to a friend in May 1795, Burke surveyed the causes of discontent: "I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism [i.e. corporate tyranny, as practised by the British East Indies Company], as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil".<ref>R. B. McDowell (ed.), ''The Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII'' (Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 254.</ref> By March 1796, Burke had changed his mind: "Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be employed with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism with its strongest arms against all ''formal'' Government".<ref>McDowell (ed.), ''Correspondence of Edmund Burke. Volume VIII'', p. 432.</ref>