ABSTRACT
The ‘polite’ readers for whom the works represented in the anthology are produced form the audience for the imaginative literature of the period. The ideological content of the debates which run through the anthology can be identified by considering each individual passage as a text, and using the techniques of literary analysis to examine the construction of the arguments it employs. Equally the ‘traditional’ order has considerable investments, literal and ideological, in the new economy, which largely goes to confirm its position and power in society. In the 1740s, particularly in Scotland, political economy begins to emerge as an important new discipline of social thought. The Revolution Settlement represents a victory for the great land-owning and merchant classes in society, which then form an unchallenged establishment, monopolising political and economic power and dominating the social life of the country throughout the eighteenth century.
