OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. BY FREDERICK LIST. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY G. A. MATILE, DOCTOR OF CIVIL LAW; LATE PROFESSOR OF LAW AT NEUFCHATEL; MEMBER INCLUDING THE NOTES OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION, BY HENRI RICHELOT Chef du Bureau de la Législation des Douanes Etrangères au Ministère du Commerce de France; Auteur WITH A Preliminary Essay and Notes, BY STEPHEN COLWELL. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 232. a. 50. Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. (BY THE TRANSLATOR.) FREDERICK LIST* was born, the 6th August, 1789, at Reutlingen, a free city of Suabia. His early education was incomplete. At the Classical School he exhibited so little taste for its studies, that his father withdrew him; but as he showed equal indisposition to learn his father's business, he was subsequently left to shape his own education. This he did, however, to such purpose, that we find him, in 1816, holding an appointment in the Central Administration of Wurtemberg, in which he justified the confidence placed in him by a distinguished statesman, the Minister Wangenheim, who offered his young assistant, in the following year, the chair of Political Economy, in the University of Tübingen. List accepted this position. "It He tells us in the Preface to his National System, that the principle of free trade was one of the first encountered in his new career. seemed to me at first reasonable; but gradually I satisfied myself that the whole doctrine was applicable and sound only when adopted by all nations. Thus I was led to the idea of nationality; I found that the theorists kept always in view mankind and man, never separate nations. It became then obvious to me, that between two advanced countries, a free competition must necessarily be advantageous to both, if they were upon the same level of industrial progress; and that a nation, *The sources of this biography are — -1st. List's life, by Professor Häusser, of Heidelberg, who was commissioned by our Author's family with the collection and publication of List's works, and who has fulfilled his task with zeal and talent. 2d. List's biography, written by his French translator, Henry Richelot. 3d. The article in the Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, (Paris, 1853). 4th. The National System itself. 5th. We have made free use of the Author's Preface, which is therefore omitted in the translation. I cannot omit here to express my obligations, in all that concerns this publication, to Stephen Colwell, who has so kindly consented to be its Editor, and to point out some of my errors in a language with which I am yet far from being |