OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH SOME OF THEIR APPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. BY JOHN STUART MILL. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. THIRD EDITION. LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. M.DCCC.LII. Econ 423.12.9 V HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF THE OVERSEERS COMMITTEE TO VISIT THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS-STREET. To supply, however, these deficiencies in former treatises bearing a similar title, is not the sole, or even the principal object which the Author has in view. The design of the book is different from that of any treatise on Political Economy which has been produced in England since the work of Adam Smith. The most characteristic quality of that work, and the one in which it most differs from some others which have equalled or even surpassed it as mere expositions of the general principles of the subject, is: that it invariably associates the principles with their applications. This of itself implies a much wider range of ideas and of topics, than are included in political economy, considered as a branch of abstract speculation. For practical purposes, political economy is inseparably intertwined with many other branches of social philosophy. Except on matters of mere detail, there are perhaps no practical questions, even among those which approach nearest to the character of purely economical questions, which admit of being decided on economical premises alone. And it is because Adam Smith never loses sight of this truth; because in his applications of Political Economy, he perpetually appeals to other and often far larger considerations than pure Political Economy affords that he gives that well-grounded feeling of command over the principles of the subject for purposes of practice, owing to which the "Wealth of Nations," alone among treatises on Political Economy, has not only been popular with general readers, but has impressed itself strongly on the minds of men of the world and of legislators. It appears to the present writer, that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The "Wealth of Nations" is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy, properly so called, has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith: and the philosophy of society, from which practically that eminent thinker never separated his more peculiar theme, though still in a very early stage of its progress, has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it. No attempt, however, has yet been made to combine his practical mode of treating his subject with the increased knowledge since acquired of its theory, or to exhibit the economical phenomena of society in the relation in which they stand to the best social ideas |