I.

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

CHAPTER FIRST.

DEFINITION AND HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE.

§1. POLITICAL or NATIONAL ECONOMY is that branch of the science of man which treats of man as existing in society, and in relation to his material wants and welfare. It is therefore a subdivision of the science of Sociology, or the science of social relations, which itself is a subdivision of the greater science of Anthropology, or the science of man.

§ 2. It has been objected by some that there can be no such thing as a science of man. "Science," they say, "deals only with things whose actions and reactions can be foretold, after we have mastered the general laws by which they are governed. The test of science, as Comte says, is the power of prediction. There is a science of Chemistry, because there is a possibility of foretelling what compound will be produced by the union of any two elements or known compounds. But man is not governed by laws of that sort; he is a being possessed of affec tions and a will, which often act in the most arbitrary way,-in a way that no one can foresee or predict."

never be left out conditions under Men can never

This objection expresses a truth which can of sight. If we ignore it we shall miss the which man's material welfare is to be achieved. be put to a good use of any sort, while they are regarded or

treated as things. To do so will be to keep them poor, as well as to degrade them morally; for the best work and the wisest economy can be got out of them, only by bringing their free will into play in the desirable direction.

But the possibility of constructing a science of man does not rest upon the power to foresee the line of action that each individual man will pursue. Man lives in a world which his will

did not create, and whose "constitution and course of nature he cannot change. If he act in violation of its laws, he must take the penalty. Thus if he indulge in habits that contravene the constitution of his moral nature, then moral degradation, unhappiness and remorse will be the necessary results. Because there is such a moral "constitution and course of nature," there is a science of ethics, which enables us to predict, not the conduct of each individual man, but the consequences of such conduct, whatever it may be. And there exists equally for society an economic "constitution and course of nature;" the nation that complies with its laws attains to material well-being or wealth, and the nation that disobeys them inflicts poverty upon itself as a whole, or upon the mass of its people. To learn what those laws are, is the business of the student of social science; to govern a nation according to them is the business of the statesman, and is the art of national economy.

While men are beings possessed of a will, they ordinarily act from motives. This is especially true of their conduct in regard to their material welfare; in this connection the same motives act with great uniformity upon almost all men. The same wants exist for all; the same welfare is desired by all; so that in this department of the science of man there is so little caprice, that there is nearly as much power to foresee and foretell what men will do, as in some of the sciences to foresee the actions of things. Nearly, but not quite so much; for while men are agreed as to the end here, there is room for dif ference of opinion as to the means, and consequently for variety of action-for wise and unwise ways of procedure.

§3. What the science of man and of society lacks in certainty,

SOCIETY A PRIMARY FACT.

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as compared with the sciences of nature, it more than makes up in the higher interest that it excites. Whatever science deals with our own species and its fortunes, comes very close to each one of us. Whatever it can tell us of the probable future of our nation, or our race, concerns us more than predicted eclipses or chemical discoveries. The most brilliant chemical or astronomical certainty could not move an Englishman so deeply as that bare conjecture of Macaulay, that the time may come "when some traveller from New Zealand shall take his seat on a broken arch of Westminster bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." The other sciences have an independent value; but they interest us most when we see that they have a bearing upon this, when they open still larger utilities of nature to human possession, and add to the welfare of mankind. We ask the chemist: "Shall the time ever come when we shall no longer be dependent upon our coal deposits for light and warmth, but shall be able to produce both from the decomposition of water ?" We ask the physicist: Shall we soon be able to use this subtle, omnipresent electric force as a motive power? Shall we ever be able to move through the air in manageable balloons, with speed and safety?" These are not the greatest problems that science has to solve, but they have an interest for us all that more abstract questions can never possess.

§ 4. Our Science considers man as existing in society; we find him, indeed, nowhere else. The old lawyers and political philosophers talked of a state of nature, a condition of savage isolation, out of which men emerged by the social contract, through which society was first constituted. But no one else has any news from that country; everywhere men exist in more or less perfectly organized society;-they are born into the society of the family without any choice of their own; and they grow up as members of tribes or nations, that grew out of families. All their material welfare rests upon this fact, and must be considered in connection with it. The coöperation by which they emerge from the most utter poverty to wealth, is possible only within society and under its protection. Upon

the wise management of its general policy, and the efficiency of its government, the welfare and the security of the individual depend. The natural right to property, by which that welfare is perpetuated from day to day, is realized only in society. The transmission of the things that contribute to material welfare from one generation to another-of real and personal property, of knowledge, skill and methods of industrywould be impossible but for the existence of bodies that outlive the single life, and aim at their own perpetuation. Vita brevis, ars longa, or else each new generation would have to begin at the foundation. Hence it is that this science begins with the conception of social state; not with the study of wealth in the abstract, nor of the individual man and his desires.

At the fall of the civilized societies that made up the ancient world, the useful arts and sciences would have perished in Western Europe with the polities under which they were developed, had not the great Benedictine order gathered both into their monasteries. These were at once schools of learning and industrial establishments, and the only places safe from the barbarous intrusions of half-Christianized barbarians.

§ 5. Political economy is an art as well as a science. The term economy, or house-thrift, does not mean here wise saving, any more than it means wise spending. It is borrowed from the management of the first and simplest of all human societies, the unit out of which all other societies have grown-the family. The adjective political prefixed indicates the transfer of the conception of thrift to the society which exists that justice may be done and natural rights be realized, and which for that purpose is put in trust with the lives and the material possessions of the whole people.

§ 6. The art of political economy is much older than the science. The former came into existence with the first nation, the latter began to be studied about the time of the discovery of America, and first gained a place as a recognised science a century ago. There is nothing unusual in this, for nearly every science lags for a time behind its related art. Themistocles knew "how to make a small city great" long before Plato and Aristotle

ART BEFORE SCIENCE.

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founded the science of politics. Dyeing, cooking, and a thousand other applications of chemistry were in use from the earliest historic periods; but the first centennial of Dr. Priestley's discovery of oxygen, that laid the foundation of that science, has been celebrated in our own time. Sometimes the two-the science and the art-exist together, with little or no influence upon each other, for a long period. Thus there was for centuries a science of music, taught and studied by men who were not practical musicians; while those that were, pursued their art without giving the slightest heed to the science.

All human experience shows that science can be of the greatest service to its related art. As chemistry has improved and simplified the industrial methods that existed before Priestley and Lavoisier, so the discovery of the economic laws that govern the advance of society in wealth, has greatly changed for the better the economic methods of the nations. Some of the older empirical rules it has vindicated as right; others it has condemned and set aside as wrong; it has suggested new and extended the applications of others that were old. It runs the risk, indeed, of rejecting some methods that were clearly right; and it must guard against this, by making the most careful and thorough survey of all the facts of the case.

In the first stages of a science, which we may call the mechanical, empirical rules predominate among the doctrines; but gradually the simpler and far less numerous scientific principles that underlie these rules are perceived. When these are once grasped, the process of submitting rules to the test of principles is an easy and safe one. The science has then passed into its dynamical stage.

The ancients knew no science of political or national economy. Commonplace remarks and moralizing reflections on the subject are found scattered here and there through their literatures. Single facts that could hardly escape their notice, such as the advantage of the division of labor, and of the transition from barter to the use of money, and the difference between value and utility, were remarked upon, especially by Aristotle. In