INTRODUCTION

In 1954 A. L. Macfie gave a lecture to the revived Scottish Economic Society on the subject of the 'Scottish Tradition in Economic Thought', which has produced a considerable debate. While it seems doubtful that a tradition can be identified, there is ample evidence of a particular Scottish approach to the study of the social or moral sciences in the eighteenth century, which laid great stress on socio-economic aspects. In particular, Macfie noted the emphasis on the history of civil society, a procedure which has been neatly described by Donald Winch as involving 'the pursuit of the origins and development of civil society from rudeness to refinement by means of a form of history in which universal psychological principles and socio-economic circumstances played twin illuminating roles'.

The impact of Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois (1748) has been noted by numerous commentators. For example, Terence Hutchison has confirmed that ‘the great significance of L’Esprit des lois for the development of political economy in the eighteenth century, and after, lay in its fundamental methodological approach, which is especially important in Scotland’. A second major influence on Scottish writers at the time is represented by Isaac Newton, whose ideas were disseminated much earlier than was at one time supposed.