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Ward, Lester F., 664
Watt, 24

Wayland, Dr. Francis, 330, 504, 595

Webster, Daniel, 38, 153, 413, 577, 669 Washington, George, 38; as to canals, 140-141, 629 Warner, Consul, 523

"Wealth," a New York financial journal, 43

Wells, David A., 438; on undervaluation, 605; tonnage taxes, 654, 666

Wenck, on Roman tributes, 454 Western Association of Ironmakers, 581

Western Pacific Co., 158
Whateley, Archbishop, 9, 82
White, Horace, 330
Whitney, Eli, 686

William III., coinage under, 342,
407, 409; on woolen manufac-
ture, 491, 670, 671
William and Mary-coinage, 342;
on wool, 670

William IV., act of, 481

William, Emperor of Germany, 516, 524, 630

Williams, Monier, 331

Williams, S. Wells, 540
Willoughby, Lady, land, 270
Wilmington Morning Star," 698
Wilson, Mr., 658

Wingate, Sir George, 466
Wood, Martin, 485

Wool Growers' Association, 680
Wool Manufacturers' Association,
on prices of wool, 680
Wright, Silas, 38

Wright, Carroll D., 39

Wolowski, M. L., on moral influ

ence of wealth, 49, 78, 528

Wood, Jethro, (plow) 264
Wrangell, 50

Wu-ti, emperor, 276

Wynn, Sir W. W., 270

Y.

Yarborough, Earl of, 270 Yi Shon, Commissioner, 531 Young, Arthur, 177, 178 Young, Dr. Ed., 391

Zend-avesta, 668

See "General Index" at end of volume.

Z.

PRINCIPLES OF

ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER I.

SCOPE AND METHOD.

1. Definitions.-Philosophy is, in its root-ideas, the love or pursuit of wisdom. In modern usage it is the body of principles which give logical coherency and harmony to science, as distinguished from the body of facts constituting the science or branch of knowledge from which the principles are deduced. An economic philosophy would consist of the logical, coherent and harmonious body of principles which had been deduced from a sufficient observation, collation and comparison of economic facts. The body of economic facts would be, if systematically arranged and classified, the science. The body of principles which give logical coherency and harmony to these facts, would be the philosophy. The application of these principles and facts to any economic purpose would be the art or practice of economy. Economy consists in getting away from poverty and toward wealth, whether it is attained by diminution of expenditure or increased production. It may occur to an individual, to society, or to the state.

The term Political Economy has been applied indifferently to the science, the philosophy and the art of economy, whether as practiced by individuals, by society, or by the state.

It has the convenience which arises from its capacity to take on several meanings. As most of these meanings will in turn form the topic of this treatise, it would be in no way improper to be content with the general name, Political Economy. As that name, by reason of the many uses to which it has been put, has

ceased to be a precise designation of doctrine, it is thought proper to say that among the various works which are offered to the public on Political Economy, the present aims particularly to present the outlines of the economic philosophy of existing society, industry and government.

In the presentation of this philosophy in its outlines, so many facts are necessary, that to many readers it may seem more scientific than philosophical-more an array of facts than a study of principles.

If, however, this book successfully explains society to itself, vindicating its economic methods at the bar of its conscience, then it is conceived its scientific quality is subordinate to its philosophic-its facts are less important than its sociodocy. If it helps man to know himself, in his three relations, as a unit of society, as a worker in business, and as a citizen of the state, its moral aim rises far above its scientific; yet this difference of aim does not alter the fact that the field in which our discussions lie is identical with that which has so long and by so many been designated "Political Economy" that it would be an unavailing affectation to attempt to change the name.

Political Economy treats of the duties of the Government to the people as respects their social well-being, and of the natural laws, principles and truths which apply to society as an organization that subsists by material means, growing if they are supplied and dying if they are withheld.*

* Aristotle ("Politics and Economics," Bohn's Class. Lib., p. 1), defined politics as the study of the highest possible and most excellent end and aim of the perfect city or state.

He said (Id. 289): "It is the province of political science to constitute a city from the very first, and when constituted to turn it to a proper use." But a city "is such a collection of houses, land and wealth as brings about an independent and happy life.' (Id.) "As these are the essence for which men combine into a city or state, evidently economics are prior to politics in the order of nature."

Adam Smith defined political economy only in his title, viz.: "An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations."

Roscher (vol. 1, p. 87, "Polit. Econ. by Lalor "), says: "By the science of national or po litical economy we understand the science which has to do with the laws of the develop ment of the economy of a nation, or with its economic national life. Like all the political sciences, or sciences of national life, it is concerned on the one hand with the consideration of the individual man, and on the other it extends its investigations to the whole of human kind."

John Stuart Mill says: "Writers on political economy profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of wealth, and the laws of its production and distribution; including, directly or remotely, the operation of all the causes by which the condition of mankind or of any society of human beings, in respect to this universal object of human desire, is made prosperous or the reverse."

UNITY OF LAW.

The broadest law of being, of which every plant, animal and mind are alike illustrations, is that growth arises from an ability in the individual to assimilate nutrition in excess of its expenditure. This is equivalent to making a profit out of its environment. A person walking through a forest, which is a city of vegetation, where tree-life is forced against itself most compactly, observes that all but the outer and top limbs die for want of light. They can not make a profit out of their environment sufficient to supply their waste. The grass in the field, and the birds of the

Henry C. Carey says: "Social science, treating of man in his efforts for the maintenance and improvement of his condition, may be defined as being the science of the laws which govern man in his efforts to secure for himself the highest individuality, and the greatest power of association with his fellow men. Man, the molecule of society, is the subject of social science. Of all the departments of knowl. edge social science is the most concrete and special, the most dependent on the earlier and more abstract departments of science, the one in which the facts are the most difficult of collection and analysis, and therefore the last to obtain development. Of all, too, it is the only one that affects the interests of men, their feelings, passions, prejudices, and therefore the one in which it is most difficult to find men collecting facts with the sole view to deduce from them the knowledge they are calculated to afford."-Soc. Sci. Cond., by McKean, pp. 47, 37, 33.

Fawcett (Henry) says: "Political economy is concerned with those principles which regulate the production, the distribution, and the exchange of wealth."-Manual of Pol. Econ., p. 4.

Bastiat ("Harmonies of Political Economy," by Frederick Bastiat, by Stirling, p. 67), says: "The subject of political economy is man. But it does not embrace the whole range of human affairs. The science of morals has appropriated all that comes within the attractive regions of sympathy- the religious sentiment, paternal and maternal tenderness, filial piety, love, friendship, patriotism, charity, politeness. To political economy is left only the cold domain of personal interest. This is unjustly forgotten when economic science is reproached with wanting the charm and unction of morals. How can it be otherwise? Dispute its right to existence as a science, but don't force it to counterfeit what it is not and cannot be. If human transactions which have wealth for their object are vast enough, complicated enough, to afford materials for a special science, leave to it its own attractions, such as they are, and don't force it to speak of men's interests in the language of sentiment. Take a lyre and

chant such themes! As well might Lamartine sing his odes with the aid of the Logarithm tables!"

"This asso

Henry George (" Progress and Poverty," Lovell's edition, p. 12), says: ciation of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social and political difficulties that perplex the world, and with which statesmanship, and philanthropy, and education, grapple in vain.

It has not yet received a solution. It must be within the province of political economy to give such an answer.”

Henry Dunning McLeod says "it is the science of exchanges or of values," thus omitting from it all relation to politics, nations or government.-Principles of Econ. Phil., vol. 1, p. 103.

Collon (Public Economy," p. 26), says: "Political economy is the application of knowledge derived from experience to a given position, to given interests, and to given institutions of an independent state or nation, for the increase of public and private wealth."

Elder ("Conversations in Pol. Econ."), says it "is primarily occupied with the laws

air, the artist studying at his easel, and the banker in his directors' room, the sewing girl

Sewing at once with a double thread

A shroud as well as a shirt;

and even the charity or aid society that seeks to carry relief to the poor,* all live by this same law-of making income exceed expenditure. No coral insect can live without it and the Roman Empire could not get above it.

In affirming this unity of law between Economic Nature and Physical Nature, we do not affirm whether the life which thus adapts itself to its environment is the cause or the effect of the organism in which it acts. The materialist says that life is an effect of its organism. The supernaturalist says that the soul is of an origin above and anterior to physics, and is the immediate cause of the laws which, in the living organism, contrast with the laws which govern mere inanimate matter. Upon this issue the economist in no way pronounces, when he sets out with the statement that in economics as in physics there are living organisms, viz: the individual-society-the State-the world of States; that all these grow and decay in their economic aspect, and that the law of the growth of each is the same as in physics, viz; that it is dependent on the power of the individual to absorb more than it expendsto make income exceed waste.

Political economy is the study of the natural laws which govern the supply or exhaustion of the means whereby the organism called society grows, and of the reasons of its decline and dissolution.t

natural and social, which govern in the production and distribution of wealth in material things, with a constant outlook to the general welfare of society, so far as that welfare depends upon the necessaries, comforts and luxuries of physical life."

Ricardo says: "To determine the laws which regulate this distribution (of the whole produce of the earth, all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labor, machinery and capital, between the three classes of the community, namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the laborers by whose industry it is cultivated), is the chief problem in political economy."-Preface to Principles. Works, p. 5.

*Recently in New York city, an Episcopal clergyman named Crowley was sent to the penitentiary as a swindler for purporting to run an orphan asylum without having the means to feed his orphans, being unsuccessful in begging them.

+ Roscher says: "The public economy of a people has its origin simultaneously with the people. It is neither the invention of man nor the revelation of God. It is the natural product of the faculties and propensities which make man man. It grows with the nation, with the nation it blooms and ripens, and finally it declines with the people."-Polit. Econ., Lalor, 84.

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