Roy Foster: belief

Transcript context

…Adam Smith made the claim in one of his letters that the Scot elites did poorly out of union because a lot of the positions they would have taken in the home country in essence went to English people. He argued, well, the union is good for the country, bad for the elites. Do you think he was wrong? I’d take a more nuanced view. I think the elites did a lot better than Adam Smith, for his own purposes, was admitting. If we look to the 17th century, we see England, in particular, being ideologically radicalized along numerous dimensions — including religion, so much open talk of tyrannicide, politically — and Ireland doesn’t seem to be. What accounts for that difference?…

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