OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

LELAND STANFORD JJUNIOR
UNIVERSITY

RICHARD JENNINGS, M.A.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

"The most profitable and philosophical speculations of Political Economy are,
however, of a different kind: they are those which are employed, not in reasoning
from principles, but to them."-WHEWELL, Trans. Camb. Phil. Soc., vol. iv. p. 197.

"The time I trust will come, perhaps within the lives of some of us, when the
outline of this science will be clearly made out and generally recognised.
I scarcely need repeat how far this is from being the case at present."

....

N. W. SENIOR, Lectures on Political Economy, p. 52.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.

PREFACE.

THE object of this treatise may, perhaps, be best explained by pointing to a passage in the history of philosophy, which, frequently as it has been referred to, has always proved a trustworthy exponent of the principles of scientific discovery.

When the astronomers of the Ptolemaic school undertook to explain the courses of the heavenly bodies, they taught "that the real motions of such beautiful and divine objects must necessarily be perfectly regular, and go on in a manner as agreeable to the imagination as the objects themselves are to the senses." They accordingly ascribed to each of these intricate courses a geometrical form, which they conceived to be the most perfect—a method admirably simple, easily understood, and vitiated only by this defect, that

it does not faithfully represent Nature. "Having settled it in their own minds that a circle is the most perfect of figures, they concluded of course that the movements of the heavenly bodies must all be performed in exact circles and with uniform notions; and when the plainest observation demonstrated the contrary, instead of doubting the principle, they saw no better way of getting out of the difficulty than by having recourse to endless combinations of circular motions to preserve their ideal perfection."*

The science of astronomy, at this stage of its growth, was in much the same state as Political-economy now is. The art of "confession and avoidance" has indeed advanced since the days of Hipparchus, and the doubting pupil is now dismissed, not merely instructed in the use of verbal epicycles, but with the assurance that the principles of Political-economy which he has been taught, if not true, have a tendency to be true: that if found imperfect in the abstract, they are perfect in the con- » crete, and that an allowance must always be

* Herschel's Natural Philosophy, p. 97.

made for the influence of disturbing causes. But these are considerations which can never establish an unproved proposition, and ought no more to induce a belief in such dogmas as the definitions of value,* advanced in our days by the conflicting schools which profess to explain its laws, than in the principles of Ptolemaic astronomy.

It is not to be denied that the propounders of any system of philosophy, however radically unsound, may render important services to the advance of knowledge by exhibiting approximations to truth at periods when truth itself is yet below the horizon, and by presenting these in a shape adapted to excite further inquiry, and to bring into early existence arts

*"Le principe de la valeur est pour Smith dans la matérialité et la durée, pour Say dans l'utilité, pour Ricardo dans le travail, pour Senior dans la rareté, pour Storch dans le jugement," &c.-Harmonies Economiques, par F. Bastiat, p. 120.; to which may be added this author's own definition (p. 118.) — “La valeur, c'est le rapport de deux services echangés;" and that of J. S. Mill-" The value, or exchange value, of a thing, its general power of purchasing."- Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 516.

See also Whateley's Logic (Appendix), Ambiguous Terms,―Value, Wealth, Labour, &c.